27. Looking For Me
Chapter twenty-seven
Looking For Me
Lake Pontchartrain disappeared in my rearview mirror. Purple sky at my back, Magnolia Creek fading into memory.
Time to think without three impossibly beautiful men watching my every breath.
Time to feel like myself again. Just Serena. Alone with the highway and her thoughts.
No pack dynamics. No supernatural revelations still settling into my bones like sediment in disturbed water. No bone-deep awareness of three men who'd somehow become essential to my existence in ways I still couldn't fully articulate.
The morning sun climbed higher as I crossed the Causeway and headed toward the Mississippi. the air through my cracked window thick with mud and magnolia.
I stopped at a gas station just outside Pearl River.
The hand-painted sign read "Thibodaux's: Gas, Gator, Groceries" and featured an alligator wearing what appeared to be a chef's hat.
Someone had added a speech bubble in white paint: Best boudin or your money back, chère!
The parking lot was mostly empty except for a rusted pickup truck and a motorcycle that had seen better decades.
The bell above the door jangled as I entered. An elderly woman behind the counter looked up from her crossword puzzle, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. Her face was deeply lined, dark skin weathered by decades of Louisiana sun, but her eyes were sharp and bright.
"Mornin', chère. You need anything, you just holler."
Back in the car, I ate a beignet before I even started the engine, powdered sugar coating my top.
I pulled back onto the highway, heading east toward Mississippi.
The road stretched ahead, empty and inviting, heat shimmering off the asphalt in waves.
I found a station playing classic rock and turned up the volume until Fleetwood Mac filled the car, Stevie Nicks singing about landslides and getting older.
I sang along, off-key and free. The wind through the window tangled my hair, and I didn't care.
This was what freedom felt like. Not just the absence of Marcus, of fear, of watching every word and measuring every breath. The presence of possibility. The open road. The ability to go anywhere, be anyone, without permission or repercussions.
My phone buzzed. Then again.
I glanced at the screen on my dashboard mount.
Jasper: Just checking in. Hope the drive is going well.
Eli: I'm here if you need to talk. Call any time.
Two different messages, both carrying that same careful weight. Jasper's warmth, his need to connect without controlling. Eli's brevity, trusting me to reach out when I was ready.
I noticed the absence like a missing note in a chord. No message from Callum. He was either too angry to text or too proud to show that he cared.
Or maybe he was showing care in his own way, by giving me the space I'd asked for.
I sent a quick voice message: "I'm fine. Just crossed into Mississippi. Beautiful morning. I'll call tonight."
The replies came immediately.
Jasper:
Eli: We'll be waiting.
Something warm bloomed in my chest. A few months ago, I'd been running from a man who monitored my every move, who demanded to know where I was at all times, who made my independence feel like a crime.
Now, three men who could probably track me across continents were giving me space.
Checking in without checking up. Trusting me to come back to them.
The difference was everything.
I drove through the morning, watching Louisiana give way to Mississippi.
The landscape shifted subtly, cypress swamps transitioning to pine forests, Spanish moss thinning until it disappeared entirely. Red dirt replaced black bayou soil. The billboards changed from crawfish boils to catfish suppers, from zydeco festivals to Baptist revivals.
The Alabama state line appeared in the early afternoon.
I stopped for gas in Tuscaloosa, pulling into a station near the university campus. I filled my tank, paid at the pump, and headed inside for the bathroom. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead as I washed my hands, studying my face in the mirror.
The dark circles under my eyes had faded over the past months. My cheekbones were less sharp, evidence of actual meals eaten at actual tables instead of whatever I could grab between Marcus's moods. My hair needed a trim, but it was healthy, shiny in a way it hadn't been for years.
I looked like someone who might be finding her way back. Someone who might actually be okay.
The bathroom door swung open behind me.
I stepped aside, giving the person room to enter, my eyes still on my reflection.
Except it wasn't a woman.
Callum filled the doorway, his massive frame blocking the exit, his expression tight with something that wasn't anger. Something worse. Fear.
"You’ve been following me?" The words came out sharp, accusation more than a question. Hurt bloomed beneath the anger, that old familiar feeling of being tracked, monitored, controlled.
"Not you." He reached for me and I took a step back, my shoulders hitting the edge of the sink. "Serena, listen to me—"
"No. You don't get to—"
"He's here."
"What?"
"Marcus. He's been tracking you." Callum's head snapped toward the door, nostrils flaring. His eyes flashed gold, and this time I knew it wasn't a trick of the light. "Get behind me. Now."
But I'd already seen him.
In the mirror's reflection, emerging from the stall where he must have been waiting.
Dark hair, square chin, those familiar brown eyes that had once seemed warm and were now flat and predatory.
His cheeks were hollowed, his movements quicker, sharper.
He looked like a man who'd been hungry for a long time.
Hungry for something he thought belonged to him.
Marcus.
My heart stopped. The bathroom tilted. Every nerve screamed—run, run, run—and this time I listened. I grabbed my phone from the counter and hurled it at his face. It caught him on the cheekbone, and he flinched—just a flicker, just enough for me to lunge toward the door—
"Serena." Marcus's voice was soft. Almost tender. The same voice he'd used after the worst nights, when he'd hold me and apologize and promise it would never happen again. "I've missed you."
Callum moved between us, a wall of muscle and barely contained violence. The growl that came from his throat was nothing human, a sound of pure predatory threat.
"You're a dead man," Callum said. "You don't know what you're dealing with."
Marcus smiled. It was the smile I remembered from our first date, charming and warm, except now I could see what lived beneath it. Something cold. Something that had never been human at all.
"Oh, I know exactly what I'm dealing with." He raised his hand, and the air changed.
I felt it before I saw it. A pressure, a wrongness, like the moment before lightning strikes.
The fluorescent lights flickered overhead.
The temperature dropped ten degrees in a heartbeat.
And Marcus's eyes... Marcus's eyes were glowing.
Not gold like the brothers. A sickly gray-green, the color of stagnant water, of rot, of things that grew in darkness.
He spoke words I couldn't understand. They weren't English, weren't any language I recognized. They sounded old, corrupted, wrong in a way that made my teeth ache and my stomach turn.
Sigils appeared in the air around Callum, burning lines of that same gray-green light. They wrapped around him like chains, sinking into his skin. Callum roared, the sound shaking the mirrors, and I saw his body start to shift, muscles rippling, bones cracking, the transformation beginning.
But the sigils held him. Bound him. His half-formed claws scraped against the tile floor as he fought to reach Marcus, every muscle straining against invisible restraints.
"Fascinating creatures, werewolves," Marcus said conversationally, stepping around Callum's struggling form.
"So much power. So little understanding of how to use it.
" He traced a finger along one of the glowing sigils, and Callum's roar became a howl of pain.
"They rely on brute force. Instinct. They've never learned to be subtle. "
“You want to know why I waited?” He straightened his cuffs, unhurried.
“The Thornwood estate has wards older than this country. Old magic, woven into the iron and the land itself. Crossing onto that property would have been… inadvisable. Even for me.” He smiled at Callum’s straining form, tracing another sigil that sent him howling in pain.
“So I watched. Sent messages. Left her little gifts. Let you feel me closing in while I waited for her to leave you. As I knew she would surely do. And here we are.”
"What are you?" The words came out barely a whisper.
"I'm what I've always been, sweetheart." He was close now, too close, that familiar cologne mixing with something else, something that smelled like ozone and decay. "The man who loves you. The man who's going to take you home."
"You're not—you can't be—"
"Human?" He laughed, and the sound was wrong too, layered with harmonics that didn't belong to a human voice.
"I'm more than human. Have been for years.
Did you think it was coincidence that I found you every time you ran?
That I always knew where you were, what you were doing, who you were talking to?
" His hand cupped my cheek, and his touch burned cold.
Behind him, Callum was still fighting the sigils, his partially shifted form twisting against the magical bonds. Blood dripped from where the bindings cut into his flesh. His golden eyes found mine, desperate, furious, helpless in a way I'd never seen him.
Run, those eyes said. Run, Serena.
But I couldn't run. My legs wouldn't move. My whole body felt heavy, distant, like I was watching this happen to someone else.
"More than a survivor," Marcus continued, savoring the words. "I have learned how to thrive in this world. The things I've had to do to get this far, to accumulate this much power..." He shook his head. "You wouldn't believe the sacrifices. But you're going to make it all worth it."
"The Beaumonts," Callum growled through teeth that were too long, too sharp. "are you working with the Beaumonts or just with Glenn."
"Working with is a strong term." Marcus didn't even look at him. His eyes were fixed on me, drinking me in. "We have aligned interests. They don’t want her with you mutts anymore than I do. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement."
His fingers pressed something damp against my face. The smell hit me first, chemical and sweet, cutting through the ozone and decay. My vision blurred. My thoughts scattered.
"No—" I tried to pull away, but my limbs weren't responding. The world was tilting, spinning.
"Shh." Marcus's voice was far away now, fading like a radio losing signal. "That's my girl. You've led me on quite a chase, you know. All the way to Louisiana. Forced me to deal with dogs who think they can have what's mine. There’ll be a price for that."
I was falling. The tile was cold against my cheek. When had I fallen?
Through dimming vision, I saw Callum shatter one of the sigils through sheer force.
He lunged for Marcus, claws extended, a roar tearing from his throat.
But Marcus was already moving, already speaking those corrupted words, and more sigils blazed to life, wrapping around Callum's throat, his chest, his limbs.
"Stay," Marcus said, like he was commanding a dog. "I'll deal with you later. After I've taken what I came for."
The last thing I felt was Marcus lifting me, his arms familiar in a way that made my skin crawl.
The last thing I heard was Callum's howl, anguished and furious, echoing off the bathroom tiles.
I'm sorry. I should have stayed. I should have—
Then the darkness swallowed everything.
Marcus's face swam above me, that familiar smile that had fooled me for so long. The smile he'd worn when we first met, when he'd been charming and attentive and nothing like the monster he became.
"We've got a lot to discuss, you and me." His voice seemed to come from very far away, like a radio fading to static. "A lot to catch up on."
I tried to move. My legs wouldn’t obey.
"You've been keeping interesting company, sweetheart. Real interesting." His hand brushed hair from my face, a mockery of tenderness. "Werewolves. Did you know that's what they were? Did you know what you were getting into?"
I tried to say his name. Callum. Where is Callum? What did you do to him?
But my lips wouldn't form the words.
"Don't worry." Marcus's smile widened, satisfied and cold. "I'm here now. I'll take care of everything."
The world tilted sideways again, drawing me back down into the darkness.
And somewhere far away, I could have sworn I heard howling. Rising and falling through the distance, desperate and searching.
Looking for me.
I surfaced once.
Just for a moment. Just long enough to register darkness, the smell of old wood and something chemical, and Marcus’s voice murmuring words in a language I didn’t recognize. My wrists burned.
The shadows in the corners of the room were moving.
Not the way shadows move when a candle flickers.
This was purposeful. Deliberate. They leaned toward me like living things, and somewhere deep in my chest, beneath the drug haze and the terror, something stirred in answer.
Something ancient. Something that recognized the darkness and wasn’t afraid of it.
Let me out, it whispered. Let me help you.
Then Marcus’s hand was on my face, and the cold pulling started, and the shadows flinched back, and I went under again.
But in the last second before the darkness took me, I felt something else. Faint. Distant. A thread of warmth in the void, reaching for me across miles of highway and forest and night.
Eli.
Not his voice. Not his touch. Just… him. A presence at the edge of my consciousness, steady as a heartbeat, certain as stone.
Hold on, the feeling said. We’re coming.
I held onto that thread with everything I had left.
And somewhere in Magnolia Creek, a wolf howled, and two brothers started running.
***
Bonus Scene – A Grief Older Than Language
The most powerful wolf in the New World has never spoken a word on the page. He's about to break that silence.
A bond he's buried for thirty-one years tears through him without warning. Something has happened to one of his sons. The rational mind says stay hidden, but the wolf is already through the window.
This exclusive bonus scene takes you inside a perspective you've never been allowed to see — and introduces a voice that will change everything you thought you knew about the Thornwood brothers.
This scene never appears in the trilogy. The only way to read it is right here.