Chapter 21
Olivia
Iwas already reaching for my keys before I understood why. That’s how real decisions worked. You’re already moving.
The motel room was still dark. Dawn was just around the corner, with most of the light still coming from the outdoor fixtures. I checked my essentials — quick.
The sluggishness I'd carried since I checked in was nowhere to be found. My body had already decided. Two minutes later, I was out the door.
This time, there was only one thing I wanted to focus on.
I took a sharp breath.
The sun started to creep through the treeline when I exited the motel properly.
It smelled like it had recently rained. Two lanes of wet asphalt going straight through the dark toward a horizon I couldn't see. I thought about every road I’d left.
Every apartment I never stayed in long enough to matter.
I used to tell myself the motion was the point. That the freedom was in the leaving. I believed it for long enough that it became the whole story I had about myself.
Standing in a wet motel parking lot at five in the morning, I was done pretending I believed any of it. Every road I ever went on was to a new destination. I never returned to a place or ever called it home. But this time was different.
I tossed my bags into the car. I set my phone's GPS coordinates.
Without missing a beat, I reversed out of the parking space and went back the way I came.
I was so scared of making choices before that it never occurred to me that every decision leading up to this moment wasn't fate.
I brought myself here of my own volition.
I chose Caleb when I saw him on the wet grass and tried to revive him. I chose Jake, Donovan, and the rest of the Ashwood estate because I wanted to make a difference there. I chose to open myself to Stella as a friend I could rely on.
I chose Caleb in the kitchen the night after the attack — both the truth of his origins and the kiss I gave him. And later on, every evening at the fireplace, and our second kiss on the porch.
Every moment with Caleb was something I wanted for myself, whether I admitted it at the time. Out of curiosity. Out of admiration. I wanted to see him smile, crack whatever he was holding back. I wanted to be with him because it made me happy, and I wanted him to be happy too.
The bond didn't make those choices.
I did.
I let that sit for a moment. Let it be true without qualifying it.
I'd spent a long time being very skilled at finding the asterisk in things — the catch, the reason not to trust what something looked like on the surface.
The bond. The pack. The estate and everyone in it.
I'd held all of it at arm's length and called it discernment.
It wasn't discernment. It was fear wearing sensible shoes.
I gripped the steering wheel tighter and pressed the accelerator harder. The car engine hummed. The wipers pushed a thin sheet of mist off the windshield in metronomic intervals.
I could feel my heart racing. I was scared. I was uncertain.
But for once, I wanted something.
I wasn't going back only because the bond was draining Caleb. And it wasn't simply because Greyhollow and everyone there was in danger, though both of those things were real and they both pressed on me like a hand between the shoulder blades.
I was going back because Greyhollow was what I wanted to call home.
And I was going back because Caleb was the person I wanted to love.
I drove like I had when I left. The only difference was this time I had a mission.
Despite the clouds and the growing dark, I did everything I could to cut my time.
I passed trucks. Took shortcuts. Didn’t slow down. The tires skidded on a wet bend and my stomach pitched sideways and I corrected and kept moving, because stopping was not an option I was entertaining.
Come on, I told myself. You've gotta make it.
The rain was soft but persistent.
I turned from one road to the other whenever the GPS told me to. The signal dropped twice in the mountain passes and I navigated on instinct both times, following the fir and the gradient and the specific weight of the air that had started to feel, uncomfortably, like something I recognized.
I tried not to examine that too closely.
Instead I kept my eyes on the road and my foot on the accelerator and let myself think about what I was actually doing, which was driving back toward the one place I had always reserved the right to leave, and I wasn't leaving.
I was staying. I'd decided. And the decision felt less like a door opening and more like a door that had been open for a while, one I'd been walking circles around for weeks while I pretended to think about it.
Caleb had been there the whole time.
Patient, infuriatingly so, with his pale green eyes and his careful words and never making me feel like I owed him. Which was, I realized now with my knuckles white on the steering wheel, the thing that made it impossible to leave.
A person who demanded nothing was harder to walk away from than a person who demanded everything. I didn't have anywhere to put that thought, so I filed it for later and drove.
The sky turned dark and the moon began to rise.
My heart sank.
If it got too dark, it would slow me down.
I bit my lip.
As I made a turn on the road, I saw something familiar: the fog.
Gray fog, too ominous-looking for its own good, felt like a beacon in the dark. I could see the trees shift into the firs I used to avoid looking at. They were now landing lights.
Just ahead, I saw the mountain rearing above the forest.
The quiet, urgent momentum inside me kicked into high gear.
I pressed the gas harder.
It wasn't long before I saw Greyhollow — small, quiet, unchanged. All the lights were off, but I could make out the different buildings.
The Blackwater Tap, dark and still. The diner with its fogged windows. The hardware store. The main street that looked like it had always been exactly this way and wasn't apologizing for it.
Weeks ago, I thought it was temporary. Just like everything. Just another gap to fill and then move on. I remembered thinking it was too quiet. Too small. Too close to things I didn't want to think about.
I drove through it now and it felt like coming up for air.
I zipped past the main street and found the mountain path.
Almost there.
The Ashwood estate gate was open when I turned off the main road. The iron panels were thrown wide against the stone posts. It was never open on its own.
A wave of panic rolled through me. I drove through and looked forward. That's when I saw them. A cluster of wolves emerging through the trees, slow and deliberate.
I looked toward the manor.
Jake, Donovan, and Stella stood on the front porch in a single, solid line.
I knew them well enough to read it. Jake had his arms loose at his sides, which meant he was bracing for something he didn't want to think about too hard.
Donovan was still in a way that was different from his usual stillness — coiled, not composed.
Stella had her chin up and her jaw set. Her eyes glared at the tree line like she had a personal grievance with it.
A little in front of them was Caleb.
He was moving through the grass and toward them, and everything about the way he moved was wrong. His features were gaunt. His henley seemed to swallow his frame. He had a cane at his side and he was pushing one foot in front of the other.
Caleb lost his footing and stumbled.
"Caleb!" I screamed.
I brought the car to a screeching halt. I swung out the door, ignition still running, and ran.
The gravel hit my shoes, cold and wet. Several times I almost slipped on the mud patches. I didn't let it stop me. The sky darkened and rain started to come down in earnest now, and lightning cut across the mountain above the estate, and I didn't look at any of it.
The only thing that mattered was the man in the grass.
My legs ached. My lungs started to burn from the cold air and the sprint. My heart was so loud I couldn't hear anything else. The clinical part of me fell behind. She was somewhere behind me. I outran her about thirty seconds back.
I wasn't a nurse right now. I was just someone who needed to get to him.
"Caleb!" I yelled again.
I registered the others in my peripheral. Donovan froze mid-motion, whatever he'd been about to do suspended. Jake's eyes widened and then his face broke into a smile so fast it looked involuntary. Stella, who was very good at keeping her reactions close to the chest, gasped.
I crossed the end of the lawn. My knees hit the ground as I dropped beside Caleb.
Water welled in my eyes when I saw him lying there, chest barely moving.
I pushed him carefully onto his back, trying to steady my breathing.
"Caleb," I said. "It's me."
I placed my hand on his chest, blinking back tears.
"I'm here."
The moment my palm rested against him, I felt it.
His heartbeat hit — strong, immediate. A wave of heat and energy rushed from him and through me, up my arm and into my chest, and for a second I couldn't tell which heartbeat was whose.
The color rushed back into his face. I felt his body grow both heavier and tighter with returning strength.
Caleb's eyes shot open. The burning red of his irises cut through the dark.
He stared at me. Brows furrowed. Not sure what he was seeing.
And then his expression turned to something I didn't have a word for. Something past disbelief.
"Olivia…?" he murmured.
I began to cry as I smiled.
"Hey," I said. "I'm back."
I embraced him tightly. Caleb straightened up and pulled me in, every part of him trembling.
"How…" he murmured against my hair. "How are you here…"
"Because I wanted to," I said.
I pulled back far enough to see his face properly. My thumb pressed against his jaw, the way it had in the library that night before everything changed. His hand came up and covered mine. He held it there.
"Because I chose to," I said.
He didn't say anything. He didn't need to.
His hand tightened over mine and he closed his eyes for one long second, like a man setting something down after a very long time carrying it.
I heard a small sound in the distance. Jake was crying. Not subtle.
Donovan, I noticed from the corner of my eye, was looking at the tree line. His version of privacy.
The others drew closer. Jake was first.
"I knew you'd come back," he said, a couple of feet away, careful not to break our moment.
I grinned. "I'm sorry it took this long."
"You had me there for a second," Stella said.
"I'm sorry about that."
Stella shook her head. "We're sorry."
Donovan cleared his throat and pointed ahead. Both Caleb and I looked.
From where we were, we could now clearly make out the Voss pack moving through the tree line — not charging yet, but deliberate.
I counted at least a dozen wolves. Maybe more — the fog kept swallowing the edges of the group and I couldn't get a clean perimeter. They were large. They moved the way the wolves on the forest road had moved the night all of this started, controlled. Unhurried. My stomach dropped.
Then I felt Caleb shift beside me and I looked at him instead.
He looked at me the way he had on the grass that first night — like I was the only solid thing in the landscape, like everything else was peripheral information and I was the only data point that mattered. I watched him draw a slow breath. I watched him choose his words.
I shook my head once.
"I know," I said.
He looked at me for a long moment. Whatever he'd been carrying — however many years of it, however much weight — moved through his face without breaking it. And then it was gone. Not suppressed. Set down.
Done.
Caleb got to his feet.
He turned toward the tree line and his shoulders settled into the set I'd come to know — he was fully ready. When he spoke into the fog, even with his voice low and unhurried, the authority in it was absolute — filling every corner of the space.
I stayed on the wet grass with my palms still warm and watched him walk toward the dark.