Kara’s POVThe rain had stopped sometime after midnight, but the cold never did. It lived in my bones now, just as hunger lived in my stomach. Both were constant, gnawing, and no longer sharp enough to surprise me.I lay half-curled against the collapsed concrete wall of what used to be a corner pharmacy, one hand pressed uselessly over the gash in my side.The bandage had soaked through hours ago. Blood mixed with the black grime on my fingers until I couldn’t tell which was which. Every breath scraped. Every small movement sent a white-hot thread of pain through my ribs.They had left me here on purpose.I could still hear Marcus’s voice, calm and reasonable, the way it always was when he was cutting someone loose.“She’s slowing us down. We can’t carry dead weight.”Sarah hadn’t even looked at me when she nodded. The same Sarah who once cried on my shoulder after her brother died. The same Marcus who had sworn, three winters ago, that we were family now.Family.The word tasted lik
Last Updated : 2026-10-10 Read more