"Hey, baby," I say softly.
Asher looks up. His mismatched eyes—one green, one silver—are dull, the vibrant light entirely absent. He forces a small, fragile smile. "Hi, Mama."
I sit on the grass beside him, ignoring the damp chill of the earth seeping through my trousers. "What are you drawing?"
He hesitates, then turns the sketchbook toward me.
It is not a drawing of the pack, or the Academy, or the integration school pups.
It is a drawing of a geometric lattice. Thousands of tiny, interlocking hexagons, drawn with hyper-detailed, obsessive precision. The charcoal is pressed so hard into the paper that the page is nearly torn.
"It’s the echo," Asher says, his voice quiet. "It’s in my head, Mama. It’s like a song that won’t stop playing. It wants me to draw the shapes. It wants me to
