Chapter 4

A black armored transport stood at the end of the street, snow swirling around it as its engine rumbled.

Garrett Shaw, the northern legion’s intake officer, tossed my duffel into the back for me.

“Chloe, once you get in this vehicle, you’re bound by the border’s secrecy rules.”

He held out a signal-blocking pouch. “From now on, your personal communications and social media accounts will be temporarily suspended. Is there anyone you need to contact before we leave?”

I looked down at my communicator.

My parents worked on classified assignments and couldn’t come to see me off. When they told me to take care of myself the night before, I could hear how much it hurt them.

Holden. Elias. The familiar names flashed through my mind one by one.

They’d once mattered so much to me. We’d been so close. But now they belonged to the past.

“No one.” I climbed into the vehicle and was about to turn my communicator off.

At the same time, the party at Elias’s apartment was just getting started. They were celebrating because Mia had been allowed to stay in Central City.

They’d started a new group chat.

Mia changed the group name from “The Fantastic Four” to “City Guard.”

Then she changed my display name in the chat to “Pen Pal Up North.”

Mia sent an emoji of someone giggling behind their hand.

“I just changed it for fun. Chloe won’t be mad, will she?”

Holden replied right away.

“If she’s got the nerve to be mad, she can crawl back from the ice fields and change it herself.”

Elias replied last.

“Suits her.”

As I watched the messages pop up on my screen, my chest tightened painfully.

18 years of friendship, reduced to a name they could mock whenever they felt like it.

No one was waiting for my reply, and I wouldn’t dignify it with one.

I opened the settings, left the group chat, and blocked all three of them for good.

When I got to Elias, I hesitated for a second.

Just then, a message from Elias popped up. “Stop being difficult. Bring the edited footage to the party tonight.”

Still giving orders. He was still sure that all he had to do was crook his finger and I’d come back wagging my tail.

I stared at that line for a long time. I didn’t reply. I just hit “Deactivate and Delete.”

Then I dropped the communicator into the shielded pouch.

The moment the screen went dark, I finally severed my last tie to the life I’d known for 18 years.

It left an empty ache inside me. But after the ache came a lightness I’d never felt before.

At least this time, they weren’t the ones leaving me behind. I was the one who chose to go.

The armored transport slowly pulled away, its treads crushing the snow covering the street.

Outside the window, the statue of the Wolf God we’d grown up with flashed by.

When we reached the energy boundary marker at the edge of Central City, I felt the last thing left in my pocket.

It was a custom-made silver badge that Holden, Elias, and I had registered together. Both of them had left their claw marks on it, a reminder of the 18 years we’d spent together.

Garrett looked ahead at the energy barrier and warned me in a low voice, “Once we’re past this marker, there’s no turning back for five years.”

I gripped the badge so hard the cold metal bit into my palm. My eyes stung a little. “I know.”

I rolled down the window. The frigid wind from the far north rushed in and whipped my long hair around.

I opened my hand. The badge fell onto the open ground beyond the marker and was quickly buried by windblown snow.

The transport left Central City behind and headed for the ice fields of the far north.