He’d felt battle loss before — men screaming, lines breaking, silence after the smoke. But this was different. This was Alice.

He’d known, somehow. The way a soldier knows when the next volley’s coming even before the cannon fires. She saw no other way, and he hadn’t been fast enough to stop her. A deal with the Volturi: her life for his. He would live. She would vanish.

It should’ve been the other way around.

He’d trained himself to control fear, hunger, rage — but nothing in a century of war or restraint had prepared him for emptiness. The kind that didn’t bleed, didn’t burn, just hollowed.

The Cullens had tried to console him. They meant well, but he could feel the pity before they spoke. Peter and Charlotte stayed longer, until even they saw there wasn’t anything left to reach. He didn’t hate them for leaving. He’d have done the same.

He stopped hunting clean. Stopped pretending he believed in Carlisle’s gospel of mercy. The animal blood turned to ash in his mouth. When the thirst came, he let it. Starved until he couldn’t think. Fed until he couldn’t feel. The cycle kept him moving — if you could call it living.

He told himself he deserved it. He’d failed her.

Months bled into years. Cities changed around him, one nameless place after another. He’d learned how to drown emotion; but one gray morning, it came back.

A pulse — faint, unfamiliar — cutting through the numb static in his chest. Warmth. Life.

He stopped walking before he even realized he’d moved. Somewhere ahead, someone was feeling something real.

And for the first time since Alice’s voice had gone quiet, Jasper Whitlock followed it.