Chapter Eight— No Longer Weak

Lena's Pov

I stared at myself in the mirror.

My eyes were steady. not a trace of what had happened in that dining room showing on my face. That was the thing about being invisible for so long — you learned how to keep everything locked inside where nobody could see it.

I had walked out of that room with my spine straight and my face composed. I had kept it that way all the way home through the dark corridors of the pack house. Past the kitchen where Cook was finishing service. Past the servants' quarters. Out through the side door without looking back.

I wasn't going to fall apart now.

I sat on the edge of my bed and changed into an old sweater and jeans from three years ago. I moved with purpose. Deliberately. This wasn't panic. This was a decision I had made the moment Damien's voice cut across that dining room.

That was when I knew.

I was done.

I packed my backpack with steady hands. Two changes of clothes. The notebook with all my calculations, two years of mapping every coin, every cost, every possibility. Few silver coins saved from shifts that started at dawn and ended at midnight. A photograph of my mother from before my father left, when she was smiling and didn't know what abandonment felt like yet.

Everything else could stay.

I went to her room.

She was sitting up in bed, lamp on, waiting like she had known this moment was coming. When she saw me she didn't speak. She just held out her hand.

"I'm leaving," I said.

"I know."

"Tonight."

She nodded, no surprise, no questions, no tears. Just a mother understanding what her daughter had already decided.

I sat on the edge of her bed and took her hand. It was thin and warm and shaking slightly from the sickness.

"Are you scared?" she asked.

"No," I said. And I meant it. Fear was for people who didn't know what they were walking toward. I knew exactly what I wanted. I had known since I was fifteen years old and my father left and I decided I would never depend on anyone again.

She smiled. "Then you're ready."

"I don't have a plan," I said.

"You do," she said. "Survive, build, become unstoppable." She paused. "And come back to show them what they lost."

I didn't tell her she was right. I just squeezed her hand once and held it tight.

"Nadia is coming tomorrow," I said. "Her family will take care of you."

"We already arranged it," she said.

Of course we had. We had talked about this possibility weeks ago. Not because I knew for certain I would leave. But because some part of me had always known I might have to.

I hugged her tight — not because I was saying goodbye, but because she needed to know that I was going to be okay. That she could stop worrying. That the strongest thing I could do right now was walk out that door and build the life she had always believed I could have.

Then I let go.

I grabbed my backpack.

It wasn't heavy, everything I owned fit on one shoulder.

I walked to the door and stopped.

My mother was watching me. Her eyes were wet but she wasn't crying. She was proud.

"I love you," I said.

"I love you too," she said. "Now go."

I opened the door and stepped into the dark.

The forest was quiet. I had walked these paths a thousand times — to work, from work, to the market, back home. Tonight felt completely different. Tonight I wasn't walking through a place I belonged. I was walking away from a place that never deserved me.

My feet moved forward.

I didn't look back at the cottage. I didn't hesitate. I didn't second guess or reconsider or think about what I was leaving behind.

This was the beginning.

Not the end of Lena Cole.

The forest swallowed me and I let it. The darkness felt like possibility. The unknown felt like freedom.

And for the first time since the Moon Ceremony, I wasn't thinking about Damien Stone at all.

I was thinking about the woman I was going to become.

The woman who would make them all regret ever looking through her like she was invisible.