All Chapters of I Was Made From What You Couldn’t Let Go: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

The first thing I noticed was the silence.Not the silence of an empty room. The silence inside my head. The absence of a voice that had lived there for so long I had forgotten what quiet felt like. Elio was gone. Truly gone. Not hidden. Not waiting. Just gone.I opened my eyes and stared at the canvas ceiling of the medical tent. Pale morning light filtered through the fabric. I could hear birds outside. The sound of distant voices. The normal sounds of a pack waking up.I was alive. The thought hit me like a wave. I was actually alive.I turned my head and my breath caught in my throat. Rhydian was asleep in a chair beside my cot. His head was tilted back, his mouth slightly open. Dark circles ringed his eyes. He looked older somehow, his face drawn and exhausted.And he felt different.I could not explain how I knew. There was no bond anymore, not the way there had been before. But I could feel the absence of something. The power that had

The first time it happened, I thought I was seeing things.I was in the records room, going through the old patrol schedules. The morning light was thin through the window. My head was aching from hours of numbers and dates. I rubbed my eyes and looked up at the glass to check my reflection.My eyes were silver.Not gray. Not light brown. Silver. Like mercury. Like the edge of a blade catching light.I blinked. The color faded. My normal hazel eyes stared back at me. I told myself I had imagined it. The strain of the work. The lack of sleep. My mind was playing tricks on me.It happened again the next day. I was in the main hall, talking to Tarn about the border allocations. He was asking about the eastern patrols and I was explaining the rotation system. I felt a surge of frustration when he kept interrupting me. The silver flashed in my eyes. Tarn stepped back. His expression changed."Soren," he said slowly, "your eyes."I turned a

The crowd was still roaring when I walked out of the ring, but I barely heard them.My heart was pounding so loud in my ears that everything else faded to a dull hum. My legs were shaking. My chest was burning. But I was still standing. Varick was on the ground. The elders were pale. And the wolves of the pack were looking at me like they had never seen me before.I did not stop to bask in it. I kept walking. I walked straight past the cheering wolves, past the stunned elders, past the confusion and the noise. I walked until I reached the records room. Then I closed the door and leaned against it.My knees gave out.I slid to the floor and sat there, breathing hard, my head tipped back against the wood. The adrenaline was fading. The pain was rushing in. My body was screaming at me for what I had just done.But I had done it. I had won.The door opened. Rhydian stepped in, his face pale but his eyes warm. He crossed the room and knelt in fro

The rebuilt alpha quarters still smelled like fresh wood and new paint.I stood at the window, looking out at the territory. The sun was setting. The sky was streaked with orange and pink. The pack was moving below, going about their evening routines. Wolves walking, talking, laughing. Normal life. After everything we had been through, normal life.Rhydian came up behind me. His footsteps were softer now, less certain. He had not fully recovered his strength. But he was getting better. Day by day, the color was returning to his face."You are brooding again," he said."I am thinking," I said. "There is a difference.""Not really." He handed me a cup of tea. "You get the same look on your face either way."I took the cup and smiled. "What are we eating tonight?""Something that does not come from a dried ration packet," he said. "I actually managed to get fresh meat. And vegetables. The healers said I need to eat better. Apparently bas

The answer was buried in a footnote on page forty seven of the developers' own environmental impact assessment.I had been reading the same document for six hours. My eyes were burning. My neck was stiff. The coffee had gone cold hours ago. But I could not stop. There was something there. I could feel it. The way I had always felt the small details that everyone else missed.Charles was asleep in the chair across from me. He had been working all day too. His old body could not keep up with my desperation. But I did not need him for this part. I needed my own mind. My own eyes. My own patience.Page forty seven. Footnote three.It referenced the Indigenous Environmental Protection Act, a human law that protected sacred lands from corporate development. The developers had mentioned it in passing, dismissing it as irrelevant. But I read it again. And again. And then I read the actual act itself.The words were dry and legal. But the meaning was clear.