We sent Jeffrey off the way he would have wanted quietly, with no fuss, no performance.
He had planned everything himself, right down to where he would rest: not in the Hale family plot with its cold marble and old money weight, but in a valley that felt like something out of a dream. The air was sharp and clean, the kind that fills your lungs and reminds you that you're alive. Wildflowers pushed up through the grass in every direction, stubborn and vivid and beautiful.
There were no speeches prepared, no rows of strangers in expensive suits pretending to grieve. It was just us the inner circle, the ones who had actually known him standing together in the kind of silence that only comes when something real has ended.
Lewis spoke first, his voice low and steady, cutting through the stillness the way Alphas always do not with force, but with certainty.
