Ember did not remember deciding to keep walking.
One moment she was standing in the clearing, dirt clinging to her palms, breath ragged in her throat. The next, her feet were moving again, carrying her farther beneath the canopy where the light thinned and the air cooled. The forest swallowed sound the deeper she went, muting the world until even her own footsteps felt intrusive.
She welcomed it.
With distance came quiet. With quiet came the illusion of control.
The pack bond tugged weakly now, stretched thin as spider silk. Ember felt it more as pressure than connection, a dull ache at the back of her skull. Someone—Aurora, again—pushed gently against it, concern threading the contact.
Ember recoiled.
“I’m fine,” she whispered aloud, though no one was there to hear her. The words ta
