Arianna
Home.
I stared at the word until it stopped looking real.
For most people, home meant safety. Familiar walls. A kitchen table. Someone calling from another room.
For me, home had always meant cameras, locked doors, whispered conversations that stopped when I walked in, and a father who could make an order sound like affection.
I folded my mother’s letter carefully and slid it back into the envelope.
Easton watched me from across the destroyed library.
“You’re thinking about going.”
It wasn’t a question.
“I have to.”
“No.”
I looked up.
He leaned against the edge of the desk, shirt torn at the shoulder from the fight with Darius, blood drying along one forearm where claws had caught him.
“I said I have to.”
“And I said no.”
Louie looked between us.
“I’m going to stand
