Alpha, I Won’t Let You Banish Me Again
And it had never once, not in twenty-eight years, looked that peaceful while it lied to me.
"Aiden," I said. "Step back from her."
He didn't move. None of us did, not when the wind shifted and brought the smell up from the treeline, smoke and something colder underneath it, something that did not belong to any fire we had lit.
Then I heard it. Footsteps on the ridge in front of us, unhurried, almost gentle, the way you walk when you already know you've won. I turned my focus on the small figure in the middle, and there she was, my actual sister, alive, bound at the wrists, being walked down the slope like a leashed animal beside a man I had only heard about.
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