LOGINA year later, my parents left the territory for good.They gave every dollar of the damages to Mercy General, to start an emergency program for injured wolves who can’t be woken.My mother said money couldn’t buy me back.But maybe it could keep some other Aurora alive.She went to see it the day they opened the first quiet room. There was a sign on the door.Patient sleeping. Do not wake.She stood in front of it for a long time.A nurse asked if she wanted to go in.She shook her head.“No. Let them sleep.”Something on me got a little lighter when she said that.My father still doesn’t talk much.He’s learning to cook. The first time he made chicken soup, he put in three spoonfuls of salt.My mother took one sip and her whole face puckered.“Are you trying to send me to see our daughter?”He froze.Then they both started laughing.They laughed until their eyes turned red.But they can talk about me now.They talk about more than how I died. They talk about how I stole candy when I w
The day of the hearing, I sat next to my mother.The Council met in a plain room with bad lights. Five elders sat at the front, and every Alpha in the territory had sent someone to watch.Jo had lost a lot of weight. She kept her eyes down, and there was nothing left of the girl from the stream.The Council’s prosecutor put in the monitor record, the video, the screenshots and the search history.Her lawyer stuck to one story. It was an accident.“My client had no intent to kill Aurora Mercer. She misjudged the seriousness of her condition.”My mother laughed out loud.The presiding elder looked at her.My mother stood up.“She misjudged it?”“She saw the diagnosis.”“She looked up whether it could kill her.”“She shut off the alarm.”“My daughter begged for her life, and she called it good content.”“The first thing she did after my daughter died was try to delete the video.”“She’s a warrior. She has the best ears in that pack, and she stood over my girl for five minutes after her he
My funeral was seven days later.My mother dressed me in my ceremony gown.I’d spent three nights picking it out. The waist couldn’t be tight. The fabric couldn’t scratch. The color had to go with Dominic’s tie.Nobody needed it to go with anything now.She brushed my hair herself, and she kept murmuring to the room.“Rory hates noise. Walk softly, all of you.”“Don’t wake her up.”The funeral director’s eyes were red. She didn’t correct her.My father stood outside the door. His hair had gone mostly white in a week.My parents wouldn’t let Silver Ridge bury me on pack land.Dominic came anyway.He was wearing the suit from the ceremony. He hadn’t shaved, and his eyes were full of broken veins.He was carrying the dented thermos in both hands.My mother saw him and started to close the door.He put a hand out and stopped it.“Helen. I only want to see her once.”“Just once.”She looked at him without any expression at all.“Did you ever see her when she was alive?”His fingers twitched
They took Jo in first.She screamed the whole way down the hall.“I didn’t kill anyone!”“It was a joke!”“Dominic was there too! Why isn’t he going?”The enforcer gave her a flat look.“Everyone’s going.”Before he got in the SUV, Dominic turned to look back at the stretcher.They had already pulled the white sheet over my face.He opened his mouth.My mother stepped in between.“Don’t look at her.”“You don’t get to.”The original stream was recovered that same day.Jo had thought deleting it would make it go away. The platform kept a copy on its servers, and more than a dozen viewers had recorded it.On the screen in the interrogation room, Jo put on the ghost mask and poured half a bucket of ice under my blanket.I didn’t stir, so she took the cannon out of the case Dominic had ordered for the ceremony and held it next to my ear.A comment floated by.her color looks off, maybe stopJo grinned into the camera.“Relax. She’s faking.”The cannon went off.I rolled off the bed, and th
My mother didn’t cry.She walked in, one step and then another, and crouched down next to me.“Rory.”“Mom brought your pills.”“You said after the ceremony we’d go shopping for clothes. Remember?”She reached out and touched my face.The second her fingertips met my skin, her whole hand began to shake.My father came running in behind her. He saw me, and his legs went, and he caught the wall.“What happened?”“What happened to my daughter!”Dominic knelt there and couldn’t produce a single word.Jo could.“Mr. Mercer, Mrs. Mercer, this really isn’t on us. Aurora was sick to begin with. We were all fooling around last night and she suddenly lay down.”My mother lifted her head slowly.“Fooling around?”Jo took a step back.“It was one little cannon. Nobody touched her. She was hanging on to Dominic’s pants, and then who knows, she stopped moving.”My mother stood up and slapped her.Now the other side of Jo’s face was red.“She was hanging on to him because she was begging for help!”J
His fingers were on the side of my neck.He waited for a beat. He waited for another one.He didn’t believe it. He put his ear on my chest and held his breath.For the first time since three o’clock that morning, he listened.The soundproofing worked beautifully. There wasn’t a sound in that room.“Aurora.”“Quit it.”“This isn’t funny.”He patted my cheek. His hand was gentle and his voice was shaking apart.“Get up. Forget the ceremony. We’ll skip it, all right?”“You can punish me however you want.”“Aurora, open your eyes.”I stood beside the bed and watched him.When I was alive, this was the voice I could never stand up to. Every fight we had, the second he got soft and quiet, I’d start making excuses for him.Jo lost her dad on patrol.Jo’s just blunt.Jo only sees him as a brother.I didn’t need to do that anymore.Dead girls don’t have to be understanding.He threw back the blanket and pulled me into his arms.My head stayed stiffly turned to one side. He reached to support it







