Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
Summer woke to sunlight streaming through unfamiliar curtains and the momentary confusion of sleeping somewhere new. Then her memories crashed over her like jumping into cold waves: Rowan’s defeat, the exile, his note promising he wouldn’t drag her down with him.
After finding the note, Summer packed, but had nowhere to go. She set her bags on the porch outside her cabin and dropped into a chair. Curling into a ball, she hugged the note to her chest. Too angry and bereft to cry. That was how Lena found her, dry sobbing and shaking with fury.
Lena insisted she couldn’t stay in the cabin alone—not with Axel consolidating his power and pack loyalties shifting like quicksand.
But charity, however kindly meant, tasted bitter after going from Alpha-mate to refugee overnight.
The guest room at the pack house felt like a mockery of hospitality, and so she’d accepted Lena’s spare room for the night.
Today, she would have to find somewhere else to call home. Somewhere safe and unknown to the supernatural community.
She pulled Rowan’s note from under her pillow, unfolding the creased paper to read his familiar handwriting once more.
I won’t bring more danger to your door. As if the danger wasn’t already here, woven into the fabric of her new life.
As if leaving her alone made her safer rather than more vulnerable.
Summer’s jaw clenched, and she scrunched up the letter once more. If she was on her own… so be it.
Pressing her palm against her sternum, Summer tried to ease the hollow feeling in her chest. The mate bond pulsed weakly.
The thin thread of connection proved he lived but told her nothing else.
Distance stretched between them. The bond wasn’t a location finder, and she could no longer see through his eyes or sense what he was experiencing.
She touched her fingertips to his claiming bite.
It was colder than the surrounding skin, and she bit back the threatening tears as she recalled his amber eyes and how they flashed to gold when she returned his smile.
A soft knock interrupted her brooding. “Summer?” Lena’s voice carried through the door. “I’ve got coffee and beignets if you’re hungry.”
Summer forced herself upright, running fingers through tangled hair as she dragged on yesterday’s clothes. She glanced in the mirror. The woman staring back looked haggard, lost, nothing like the confident doctor who’d chosen love over immortality just days ago.
Lena waited in the kitchen, her graying hair pulled back in a practical bun; flour or powdered sugar dusted her apron.
The sight of her bustling around the familiar space—pouring coffee into mismatched mugs, arranging warm beignets on a chipped plate—felt like stepping back into childhood.
When everything else fell apart, there was still breakfast.
“Sit,” Lena commanded, setting the plate in front of Summer. Her authority usually brooked no argument. “You look like you haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
Summer obediently took a bite of a beignet, the sweetness turning to ash in her mouth. She set it back on the plate. “I’m not really hungry.”
“Doesn’t matter. You need your strength.” Lena settled into the opposite chair with her own mug, studying Summer with sharp eyes. “We need to talk about what comes next.”
“What’s to discuss? I’m excommunicated along with Rowan. Cast out.” The words were as bitter as the coffee. “Unless pack law has some loophole I don’t know about.”
“Pack law can be complicated where mates are concerned.” Lena’s tone grew careful, measured. “Rowan’s exile was absolute—he accepted Axel’s challenge and lost, then he chose excommunication over submission. But you weren’t part of the challenge.”
Summer looked up from her untouched breakfast. “What are you saying? I think I should have been part of the challenge, but someone, I think we both know who, didn’t want me anywhere near the contest.”
“Technically, you could stay. Request sanctuary from the new Alpha. Axel might even grant it, especially if you renounced your bond to Rowan publicly.” Lena’s expression made it clear what she thought. “You’d be under his protection and control. His complete… influence.”
Summer’s skin crawled. She rubbed at the goosebumps rising on her arms. She’d seen how Axel looked at her, the predatory calculation in his eyes whenever Rowan wasn’t watching. “And if I don’t?”
“Then you’re on your own. Officially, pack protection doesn’t extend to excommunicated wolves or their mates.
” Lena reached across the table, covering Summer’s hand with her weathered fingers.
“But officially isn’t the same as personally.
You’ve got friends here who won’t forget what you’ve done for us. ”
Summer squeezed Lena’s hand, grateful for the warmth. “What about Rowan? Any idea where he might have gone?”
“Shreveport, maybe. There’s an independent pack up there. They sometimes take in exiles. Or he could have gone nomad—some wolves prefer the freedom of the nomadic life to pack politics.” Lena’s voice grew gentler. “The bond between you, is it…?”
“Still there. Weak, but there.” Summer pressed her free hand to her neck and the claiming bite, feeling a gossamer thread of connection. “He’s alive, just… distant.”
“That’s something, at least. Mate bonds don’t lie.” Lena stood, efficiently refilling their coffee mugs. “What will you do?”
Summer stared into her cup, watching steam curl upward like smoke signals. “I don’t know. I can’t stay here—not with Axel as Alpha. But I can’t track Rowan through the bond, can’t follow him wherever he’s gone.”
“Is your father’s house still standing empty?”
The suggestion was a revelation. She would never have thought of it Summer’s father had moved to a neat Victorian near the safe house on Magazine Street.
It wasn’t Summer’s childhood home. That was lost courtesy of Katrina; this house was close enough to the hospital for her commute, but far from pack politics.
The house offered neutral ground, where she could think without feeling Axel’s lewd attention like a dagger between her shoulder blades.
“I’d forgotten.” Summer managed her first genuine smile since reading Rowan’s note. “He’s been staying at an assisted living place since his transition. Probably wouldn’t mind if I used the house for a while.”
“Probably be grateful for someone to check on it.” Lena’s answering smile was warm but worried. “Just… be careful, Summer. There’s something happening in the city, something has me and the other elders spooked. These hybrid attacks, the timing with Halloween week—it’s not coincidental.”
Summer thought of the strange patient who’d vanished from the ER, the too-realistic costumes, the escalating violence in the Quarter. “You think someone’s targeting the supernatural community?”
“I think someone’s using the chaos to cover their tracks. And with Rowan gone, with pack leadership changing hands…” Lena shrugged. “You’re more exposed now. More vulnerable.”
The words followed Summer as she returned to the cabin she’d shared with Rowan to gather her last few possessions.
The space felt hollow, echoing with memories of lazy mornings, lovemaking, and whispered conversations.
She packed quickly, taking only essentials and a few items carrying his scent—a worn flannel shirt, the pillow he’d slept on, a coffee mug with his fingerprints still on the handle.
Everything else she left behind. Let Axel deal with the remnants of their life together.
The drive into New Orleans passed in a blur of Spanish moss and urban sprawl, the familiar transition from bayou to city offering comfort despite everything.
Her father’s house stood exactly as she remembered it from when her father first showed his new purchase to her.
A white Victorian with green shutters, a wraparound porch complete with a swing and ceiling fans.
The key was where it had always been, hidden under the third plank from the left.
Inside smelled of lemon oil and her father’s cologne, as if he might return any moment from running errands.
Summer set her bags in the front hall and wandered through the rooms. Briefly, she recalled the old family home filled with decades of memories.
Family photos tracked her growth from gap-toothed child to awkward teenager.
In this house, the photos were newer, reprinted from old negatives or salvaged from their home.
He also had photos of her from school, tracing her journey to the confident woman she was now.
Someone who’d begun medical school far from home.
A different life, when she’d believed in normal things like career advancement and retirement planning.
The kitchen yielded a jug of iced tea from the refrigerator.
She wondered if her father’s housekeeper still came weekly; did she think he was going to return?
Summer took a glass out to the front porch.
The swing creaked under her weight, the sound transported her instantly to childhood afternoons spent reading in the other house while her father worked in his study.
She sipped her tea and watched Magazine Street wake up.
Joggers passed in athletic gear, dog walkers nodded politely, a neighbor emerged to collect his newspaper.
Normal people living normal lives, unaware that monsters walked among them wearing human faces.
From her swing on the porch, she could see a corner of Celeste’s home, hidden behind a wall of live oak trees.
Her palms tingled. The pull to spend time in the old mansion was strong.
It was neutral territory, Rowan had told her when they first met.
Warded. No one could enter without permission, but this little house?
No one knew it existed, let alone its connection to her.
Perhaps that was enough to make it safer than the safe house?