Where The Ice Gives Way (Charlotte and Blake) novel Chapter 159

Chapter 159 Pieces of What is Left

Emily

Puzzle pieces are scattered across the small table in front of me. I stare at them for a while, then down at the hands in my lap. My hands. I turn one over slowly and watch my fingers curl, then open again. There are scratches across my knuckles and dirt still caught in places I couldn’t clean last night, but they move when I ask them to. They listen to my brain. For a long time, I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to use them again.

My mother used to love doing puzzles with me when I was small. After she finished her shift at the pack house, she would come home smelling like bread and sit on the floor beside me. We would build tiny worlds out of pieces while Dad pretended not to care. But when we finished one, he would glue it and proudly hang it on the wall.

I pick up a corner piece and run my thumb over the little notch in the side. Then I place the corner at the top of the table and start

sectioning the pieces. I find the corners and edges and put colours into piles. “You like puzzles?” Mara asks.

I look up from the edge piece in my hand. “I… yeah. I used to.”

Mara hums and pushes the tray of food a little closer to me. I have spent so long not talking that words still feel strange in my

mouth. Last night they came easier with Charlotte. She has a way about her, and I don’t think it is only the magic in her blood. I

think it’s because she has known pain too-different pain, but pain all the same.

I try another puzzle piece, but it doesn’t fit, so I turn it once, then set it down in the edge pile. After a few minutes, Mara stands and walks into the bathroom. My fingers freeze around a blue piece as I listen to every movement. When she comes back, she has the hairbrush I fought with this morning in her hand. “May I?”

I stare at the ordinary, harmless brush. The brush that I couldn’t operate because my hands had forgotten how. “Only if you want

me to.”

I look down at my hands again. “It’s bad.”

”

“Hair can be fixed,” she says, as if it were just that simple. She moves behind me, and the brush touches the ends of my starts working through the worst knots as she continues to talk.

hair. She

“Charlotte didn’t know what to do with all her knots either. Honestly, I’m glad to have two girls around to do these little things with. I always wanted a little girl. Don’t get me wrong, I love my son to bits, but when you live in a house full of testosterone, stinky socks, and hockey gear, you start craving a puzzle partner and someone’s hair to play with.”

The brush moves through another knot slowly, and my eyes burn until the puzzle blurs in front of me. When was the last time someone touched me like this?

My fingers curl tight around the table as my breath comes in hard, and Mara pauses. “Too much?”

I swallow down my tears and shake my head. “No.”

1/3

alt

09:26 Thu, Jul 9 ”

Chapter 159 Pieces of What is Left

She waits another second before continuing, even slower than before. I don’t know what to do with all of this. There are so many broken pieces of me. I don’t want to be a rogue. I never did. But the pain, this pain that I’m feeling now, it led me there. It consumed me until that’s all that was left. For a while,e it was easier that way, to let Sasha take over and to let myself curl up inside my consciousness. But then even she began to lose herself. She was just as confused and hurt as I was. Why did our mate reject us? Why did our parents allow us to be exiled? Why didn’t our Alpha protect us? Why didn’t anyone want us? It made her angry, savage, lost… Until one day, she shut herself off from feeling too, and all we became was a vessel for her basic instincts. Hunt, eat, sleep, survive.

I look at the puzzle again and find a piece of the pink awning. I place it beside another, and it fits with a tiny click that lets me take a breath. When we first heard Charlotte’s howl, an overwhelming amount of emotions flooded through us. We hadn’t allowed ourselves to feel anything for so long that when it hit us, it was like a tidal wave. All that ran through us was the thought of survival. Don’t let anyone close. Don’t feel. Don’t want. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. We followed the feeling towards the threat, ready to destroy it, but when she came to the cell, it was as if a blanket of peace wrapped around us. We had forgotten what that felt like, and we weren’t sure if we could trust it. We didn’t want to trust it. We didn’t want to trust her.

Trust had been the first thing taken from us, before the food, before the shelter, before our name. Trust was standing in a hall full of people, waiting for one person to reach out to us, only to hear him say the words that cut the bond open. Trust was looking at my parents and waiting for them to step forward, only to have them walk away. Trust was believing an Alpha protected his people,

right up until he let the border guards walk me out with one bag and no way home.

So when Charlotte came close, every part of me screamed against it. Sasha snarled and fought for us, and I felt the rage in her chest

and the terror buried under it. Because peace felt dangerous after so much pain. Kindness felt like a trap with soft edges. A gentle

voice felt like something that would ask us to come closer before it hurt us again.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify