The fight was over. Another victory, they said.

Didn’t feel like one.

The Cullens were back at the house, patchin’ walls and patting themselves on the back, but my head was still in the dirt. Smoke. Screamin’. Bree’s fear crawlin’ under my skin, tryin’ to find a way out.

Alice’s voice kept loopin’ through the noise—overprotective idiot—bright and sharp, meant to lighten the mood. It didn’t. It split somethin’ clean inside me.

That kid’s terror hadn’t faded yet. I’d felt it when the Volturi came. Felt her beg. Then nothin’. The silence after is what kills you.

My body moved before my mind caught up—old habits, older than my second life. Find cover. Report. Regroup.

Except there weren’t no commander left to report to.

Maria’s gone. Alice—hell, she’d made it clear I was a complication she didn’t need right now. But instinct don’t listen to reason. The soldier part of me started marchin’ anyway, followin’ the ghost of orders that don’t exist.

The scent hit next—familiar. Warm. Safe enough my chest seized on it like air after drownin’.

Didn’t think, just climbed through a window like I’d done a thousand times before. My hands remembered before I did. Dark corner. Back to the wall. Eyes on the door. Don’t move till it’s clear.

For a while I thought I was back in Texas. Could smell the tents. Hear the cries. Felt the weight of command, the kind that breaks a man’s bones from the inside.

Then it shifted again. Maria’s camp. The newborns screamin’ in the pit. Her voice tellin’ me to make it quiet. Always make it quiet.

I pressed my palms to my temples, tryin’ to drown her out. Didn’t work. The empath’s curse—feel it all whether you want to or not. My own memories tasted like blood.

I don’t know how long I sat there. Might’ve been minutes, might’ve been hours.

Could hear footsteps somewhere above—soft, careful. The kind that mean no harm.

She was close. I could smell her—steady heartbeat, warm skin. Not Alice. Not Maria. Someone real. Someone here.

Didn’t move. Couldn’t.

Just sat in the dark, a soldier waitin’ for orders that’d never come.

And for the first time in near a century, I didn’t know who I was supposed to be when they didn’t.