Chapter 57: Knox Finally Lets Go

Knox asked to speak with me after the Ascension Trials.

Alone.

Rowan raised an eyebrow.

I raised one back.

He lifted both hands.

"I said nothing."

"Your face did."

"My face is innocent."

"Never."

Knox waited near Hollowcrest's old gaming lounge.

Appropriate.

This was where students played the same competitive werewolf game where he and I had first met online.

He looked uncomfortable.

"Thanks for coming."

"What's up?"

He held out his phone.

His old account.

The original one.

The account he had used when we dated.

"I recovered the archive."

My stomach tightened.

Old messages.

Thousands.

Late-night conversations.

Game victories.

Confessions.

The digital remains of a relationship I had once believed would define my life.

"Why show me?"

"I'm deleting it."

"Okay."

"I thought you should decide if you want copies of your messages first."

That surprised me.

"Why?"

"They're yours too."

I scrolled.

A message from seventeen-year-old me appeared.

[Do you think people can love someone they've never seen?]

His old reply:

[Of course.]

I almost laughed.

Not because it was funny.

Because of how desperately I had believed him.

"I don't want them."

Knox nodded.

"Okay."

He selected delete archive.

His thumb hovered.

Then stopped.

"Nessa."

"What?"

"I think part of me kept hoping if I became good enough, you'd forgive me in the way I wanted."

I stayed quiet.

"I thought maybe Rowan was temporary."

My wolf growled.

Knox smiled sadly.

"Yeah. Stupid."

"Very."

"I kept comparing everything to what we had online."

He looked at the screen.

"But what we had wasn't what I thought either."

"No."

"I liked how you made me feel."

He swallowed.

"I liked your attention. Your voice. The way you always supported me."

"But not me."

"I didn't know you."

That was probably the most accurate thing he had ever said about us.

"And I didn't let you know me either."

He had hidden his real name.

His Pack.

His face.

We had both been afraid.

Mine came from insecurity.

His came from selfishness.

Different reasons.

Same distance.

He deleted the archive.

The screen went blank.

"Done."

"How do you feel?"

"Like an idiot."

"Familiar state?"

He laughed.

"Yeah."

Then Elodie entered the lounge.

She stopped when she saw me.

"Oh."

Knox immediately said, "Nothing romantic."

"I didn't ask."

"You made a face."

"My face is innocent."

I laughed.

Apparently everyone was using Rowan's terrible defense now.

Elodie sat beside him.

Their shoulders almost touched.

Interesting.

She looked at me.

"Are you staying?"

"No."

Knox looked surprised.

"You can."

"I don't want to."

And that was true.

I didn't need to witness what came next.

Outside, Rowan waited with coffee.

"You didn't have to wait."

"I know."

I took the cup.

Raspberry ginger tea.

I stared at it.

He looked worried.

"Wrong order?"

"No."

The first message from his replacement account had been about raspberry ginger tea.

My period.

My stomach.

A tiny act of care from a stranger I didn't know was Rowan.

I smiled.

"Perfect."

We walked across campus.

"Did Knox confess eternal love?"

"No."

"Good."

"He deleted our message archive."

Rowan glanced at me.

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Really?"

I thought about it.

"Mostly."

That old relationship had hurt me.

Deleting messages didn't delete that.

But I didn't want the pain preserved forever either.

"He finally let go," I said.

Rowan nodded.

"Good for him."

"No jealousy?"

"Some."

"How much?"

"Reasonable amount."

"Define reasonable."

"If he tries to kiss you, I throw him into a lake."

"That's not reasonable."

"Small lake."

I laughed.

At the campus gate, we passed a group of freshmen.

One girl recognized me.

"Alpha Nessa!"

I turned.

She whispered something to her friend.

Both looked nervous.

"What?"

"Can we get a picture?"

"Sure."

Afterward, one asked, "Is it true you met Rowan because your ex transferred your account?"

"Yes."

"That's so romantic."

I paused.

"Meeting Rowan was."

She blinked.

"The transfer wasn't."

"Oh."

"Don't confuse a good ending with a good thing."

She nodded.

I hoped she remembered.

Rowan took my hand.

We continued walking.

Behind us, Knox remained in the gaming lounge with Elodie.

Ahead of us, Lunaris work waited.

There was no dramatic final goodbye.

No tears.

No last confession.

Sometimes letting go wasn't a scene.

Sometimes it was simply the moment an old door stopped feeling like an entrance.

For several days after Knox deleted the archive, fragments of old conversations still surfaced in my memory. I let them. I no longer needed to argue with seventeen-year-old Nessa for believing what she had been told. She had been lonely and hopeful, not stupid. That distinction mattered. I could acknowledge that Knox had once made me happy without pretending the relationship had been healthy. I could remember the comfort without reopening the door. Healing, apparently, did not require rewriting the past into something entirely terrible. It only required seeing it clearly enough that I stopped asking it to become my future.

Before the day ended, I wrote the lesson into my private Alpha journal. I had started keeping it because memory changed under pressure, and I wanted a record of what decisions felt like before hindsight made them seem obvious. I wrote down the mistakes as carefully as the victories. Future me deserved the truth, not a polished legend.