CHAPTER 182
The heavy furs felt like lead. Isabella didn't know how long she had been staring at her palm, but the image of her skin fusing back together was burned into her retinas.
It was an impossible kind of miracle, a biological glitch that her mind kept trying to reboot, hoping to find a version of reality where the blood stayed on the surface and the skin stayed parted.
She lay curled on the mattress, her knees pulled toward her chest. The silence of the room was no longer comforting.
'Why now?' The question pulsed in her mind, timed to present rhythm of her heart. For eighteen years, she had been the "broken" girl.
She had been the disappointment of the pack, the one who couldn't shift, couldn't heal, and couldn't fight.
She had built a life out of the scraps of being "wolfless," wearing her fragility like a second skin because it was the only thing she truly owned.
