Chapter 18
Leo
I had been running for three days.
Not literally—though I had covered the first fifty miles on four paws, tearing through the Colorado wilderness until I reached a truck stop near the Wyoming border.
There, I had shifted back into human form, stolen a flannel shirt from a clothesline (sorry to whoever owned it), and hitchhiked my way east.
I had no money. No phone. No ID. Just a stolen shirt, a pair of jeans I had found in a donation bin, and a singular, burning purpose that kept me moving when my body screamed for rest.
Boston.
Thorne had said they lost her in Boston. It was a big city. A labyrinth. To a human, finding one girl in a metropolis would be impossible.
But I wasn't human. I was a Wolf who had severed his own soul and was trying to sew it back together.
I could smell her.
It wasn't rational. She was thousands of miles away. But the bond—the biological tether I had created when I knotted her—was pulling me. It was a faint, golden thread in my mind, vibrating with a frequency only I could hear. It was faint, distressed, and terrified.
She's scared. She's alone.
I made it to Boston on the back of a produce truck. The driver, a kindly old man named Frank who smelled of chewing tobacco, dropped me off near Fenway Park at 4:00 AM.
"You look like you're running from something, son," Frank had said as I climbed out. "Or to something."
"To something," I croaked. My voice was wrecked from days of silence and growling. "My family."
I stood on the sidewalk, the city sleeping around me. The air smelled of exhaust, salt water, and old garbage.
I closed my eyes. I reached for the thread.
Where are you?
Silence.
Then... a pulse. Weak. Frightened.
South.
I started walking.
Twelve Hours Later.
I found her scent in a dive bar in South Boston called The Rusty Anchor.
It wasn't fresh—maybe six hours old—but it was her. Vanilla. Honey. And underneath it, the metallic tang of fear and... cheap hair dye?
I pushed through the door. The bartender was wiping glasses. He looked up, eyeing my disheveled appearance.
"Help you?"
"Girl," I rasped. "Small. Brown hair. Cello case. Was she here?"
The bartender hesitated. "Maybe. Lots of girls come through here."
I leaned over the bar. My eyes flashed gold. I was too tired to mask it. "She's pregnant. She's scared. Where did she go?"
The bartender paled, backing up. "Whoa, okay, buddy. Chill. Yeah, she was here. Asked about cheap rooms. I told her about the boarding house on 4th Street. Mrs. Higgins runs it."
"Thank you."
I turned and ran.
The boarding house was a grim, three-story Victorian that looked like it was held together by termites and lead paint.
I stormed up the steps. I didn't knock. I tried the door. Locked.
I sniffed the jamb.
Vanilla. Stronger here.
I pounded on the door. "Maya!"
No answer.
I pounded harder. "Maya! Open the door!"
A window opened on the second floor. An elderly woman stuck her head out. "What in God's name is the racket? I'm calling the police!"
"I'm looking for Maya Sterling!" I shouted up. "Is she here?"
"Ain't no Maya here," the woman spat. "Only a new girl. Jane. Quiet thing. Pays cash."
Jane.
"Tell her it's Leo!" I yelled. "Tell her I'm here!"
The woman scoffed and slammed the window shut.
I backed up to the street, looking at the house. I scanned the windows.
Third floor. The curtains twitched.
I saw a face.
It wasn't Maya. The hair was blonde—bleach blonde, chopped short in a jagged, DIY pixie cut.
But the eyes.
Those brown eyes.
She saw me standing in the street, ragged, bleeding from the fence wire cuts, desperate.
She didn't open the window. She didn't wave.
She closed the curtains.
Rejection. Cold and absolute.
I roared. A sound of pure frustration.
I ran to the drainpipe on the side of the house. I didn't care about the police. I didn't care about the neighbors.
I climbed.
I hauled myself up the side of the building, my claws digging into the brickwork for purchase. I reached the third-floor ledge. I shimmied over to the window.
It was locked.
I punched the glass.
Crash.
My hand went through. I unlocked the latch and shoved the window up.
I tumbled into the room.
It was small. Musty. A single bed. A chair. A cello case in the corner.
Maya stood on the other side of the room, near the door. She was holding a lamp like a weapon. Her blonde hair looked shocking against her pale skin. She was wearing baggy sweatpants and a hoodie that swallowed her frame.
She looked terrified.
"Get out," she whispered. "Get out or I scream."
"Maya," I panted, standing up. I held my hands up—bloody, scarred. "It's me. It's Leo."
"I know who you are," she hissed. "You're the man who told me I was a liability. You're the man who told me to get rid of my baby."
"I lied," I said, stepping forward.
"Stay back!" She swung the lamp. The cord whipped through the air. "Don't you dare come near me. You lost that right."
"I lied to save you!" I shouted, the desperation breaking through. "The Council... they had you. They were going to expel you. They were going to take the baby. The only way to protect you was to leave. To make you hate me so you wouldn't follow me."
"So you saved me by destroying me?" she screamed back. "You think that's noble? You think that's love?"
"I thought it was the only choice!"
"It was the coward's choice!" She threw the lamp.
It hit my shoulder, shattering. I didn't flinch. I barely felt it.
"I know," I said softly. "I know I'm a coward. I know I broke everything. But I'm here now."
"You're too late," she said, her voice trembling. "I'm gone, Leo. Maya Sterling doesn't exist. I'm Jane now. I'm starting over. Without you."
She reached for the door handle.
"I saw the ultrasound," I said.
She froze.
"Thorne gave it to me," I continued, taking a step closer. "Ten weeks. Healthy. A boy."
She didn't turn around. Her shoulders were shaking.
"He tried to use it to hurt me," I said. "To show me what I was missing. But it didn't break me, Maya. It woke me up."
I dropped to my knees. Right there on the dusty floorboards.
"I broke out," I said to her back. "I fought ten guards. I climbed a razor-wire fence. I ran from Colorado to get here. I don't care about the NHL. I don't care about the Council. I don't care about being safe."
"I only care about you."
She slowly turned around. She looked at me—kneeling, bleeding, broken.
"You're crazy," she whispered.
"Yes," I agreed. "Feral, probably. But I'm your feral."
"You hurt me," she sobbed. "You looked me in the eye and told me I was nothing."
"I would have told you I was the devil himself if it kept you safe," I vowed. "But I was wrong. Safety isn't worth silence. Safety isn't worth being apart."
I reached into my pocket. My jeans were torn, filthy. I pulled out the only thing I had kept.
The crumpled piece of paper she had given me in the hospital. The first ultrasound receipt. Not the picture—I had left that in the cell—but the original lab report from the clinic she had handed me when she told me she was keeping it.
I smoothed it out on the floor.
"Plan B," I whispered. "Us."
She stared at the paper. Then at me.
"You kept it?"
"It's the only thing I have," I said. "I have no money. I have no team. I have no home. I am a fugitive. I have nothing to offer you, Maya. Except this."
I put my hand over my heart.
"I offer you the Wolf. I offer you the man. I offer you every single day for the rest of my life to make up for that five minutes in the hospital room."
I looked up at her, tears blurring my vision.
"Please," I begged. "Don't let me be a ghost anymore."
She stared at me for a long, agonizing minute. I could see the war in her eyes. The hurt versus the love. The fear versus the hope.
Then, she dropped the lamp cord.
She took a step toward me. Then another.
She fell to her knees in front of me.
She reached out and touched my face. Her fingers were shaking. She traced the cut on my cheek, the bruise on my jaw.
"You look terrible," she whispered.
"I feel terrible."
"Your hair is a disaster."
"I hitchhiked in a vegetable truck."
She let out a wet, choked laugh. "You're an idiot."
"I'm your idiot."
"Yes," she said, tears spilling over. "You are."
She leaned forward and kissed me.
It wasn't a gentle kiss. It was a collision. It was relief and anger and desperation all mixed together. She tasted like salt tears and cheap coffee, and it was the best thing I had ever tasted.
I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her into me, burying my face in her neck. I inhaled her scent—even under the dye and the fear, it was there. Vanilla. Honey. Home.
"I missed you," I groaned. "God, I missed you."
"Don't ever do that again," she sobbed into my shoulder. "Don't you ever try to save me by leaving me."
"Never," I swore. "I'm glue, remember? I'm sticking."
We held each other on the floor of the boarding house room, rocking back and forth. The sirens outside—police, maybe, or just city noise—didn't matter.
We were together.
"So," she said, pulling back and wiping her face with her sleeve. She looked at my shredded clothes. "You're a fugitive?"
"Yeah. The Council is probably hunting me."
"And you have no money?"
"Zero."
"And no car?"
"Vegetable truck."
She sighed, shaking her head. But she was smiling. A real, genuine smile.
"Well," she said. "I have three hundred dollars in cash, a cello I can't play because the neighbors complain, and a craving for pickles."
"We can work with that," I said.
"What's the plan?"
I looked at her. Blonde hair. Baggy clothes. Fierce eyes.
"We run," I said. "We keep moving. We find a place where the Council can't find us. Where the North Shore pack won't look."
"Is there such a place?"
"Canada," I said. "The Yukon. My grandfather has a cabin up there. Off the grid. No jurisdiction."
"The Yukon?" She blinked. "It's cold there."
"I'll keep you warm," I promised.
"And the baby? Can we raise a baby in the Yukon?"
"Wolves are made for the wild, Maya. He'll love it."
She looked at her stomach. Then at me.
"Okay," she said. "The Yukon."
She stood up and offered me her hand.
"Let's go, Wolf. Before Mrs. Higgins calls the cops about the broken window."
I took her hand. I stood up.
I felt stronger than I had in weeks. The exhaustion was gone. The fear was gone.
I had my Mate. I had a direction.
We packed her bag in three minutes. She grabbed her cello. I grabbed the quilt from the bed.
We climbed out the window—easier going down than up—and dropped into the alleyway.
We ran.
Hand in hand, into the Boston night.
We were outlaws. We were homeless. We were hunted.
But as I looked at Maya running beside me, her blonde hair flying in the wind, I knew one thing.
We were finally free.