Cry Wolf (Unabridged‪)‬

I roll into a dead Oregon town with a backpack, a body full of old damage, and a head that won’t shut up. I tell myself the work will help. Fix the house, keep my hands busy, keep the worst of me contained. The old man who hired me, we get along fine. The place is falling apart, so am I.

That’s when I meet Shadow.

She isn’t soft. She isn’t safe. She’s broken in ways I recognize immediately, like seeing your own reflection in a cracked mirror. What happens between us isn’t love. It’s sharp and reckless and built out of need. Survival, not hope.

I know better than to want her. She knows better than to trust me. Neither of us listens.

This isn’t a love story. No one gets saved. There’s no clean arc, no hero waiting at the end of it. Just two people dragging their damage into the same small space and calling it connection. It was wrong from the first breath, and we both knew it.

This story never leaves my head. You’re stuck in here with me. Shadow only speaks once—one break in the silence—but the spiral is mine. I go down alone.