Chapter 4 - Skylar
I yank open the dresser drawer so hard it nearly comes off the rails.
Shirts. I need shirts. I grab a handful without looking at which ones and shove them into the duffel bag on my bed.
Underwear from the next drawer down. A pair of jeans that might be too tight, but who cares.
I’m not trying to look good for anyone. The emergency cash I keep hidden inside a hollowed-out book on my shelf—eight hundred dollars that felt like a fortune when I started saving it and now seems pathetically inadequate for starting a new life.
My hands won’t stop shaking.
I tell myself to pause, to breathe, to think about what I’m doing.
But every time I close my eyes, I see Bryan’s face in the torchlight.
I see his name on Elder Amelia’s lips. I hear the roar of the crowd celebrating a match that feels less like fate and more like cosmic punishment for sins I don’t remember committing.
The duffel bag gapes open on my bed, half-full and accusing. This is insane. I’m the senior healer at Silvercreek’s medical center. I have patients who depend on me, staff who look to me for guidance, and a life I’ve spent ten years building from the wreckage Bryan left behind.
And I’m about to throw it all away because I can’t stomach the thought of being bound to him.
I grab my toothbrush from the bathroom and toss it into the bag, followed by some deodorant.
Then I go for the small first-aid kit I keep under the sink because old habits die hard, and you never know when someone might need stitches in the middle of nowhere.
My hands move on autopilot while my brain cycles through the same useless loop of panic and denial.
Bryan is back. Bryan is my match. Bryan is going to be my mate.
No. No, he’s not. Because I’m not going to be here when the sun comes up.
Just a few months ago, I sat in Fern’s living room with a cup of tea going cold in my hands and told her everything would be fine.
She was terrified about being matched with Connor, convinced the lottery had made some kind of mistake.
A human woman paired with a shifter? It didn’t make sense. The magic had to be wrong.
But I told her with absolute certainty that the magic doesn’t make mistakes and that you have to trust it.
I believed every single word.
Now the same magic has chained me to the man who shattered me at twenty years old, and I’m supposed to what? Trust that there’s a reason? Accept that fate has a plan, even when that plan feels like a cruel joke at my expense?
I zip the duffel closed and sling it over my shoulder. The weight settles against my hip, solid and real in a way that helps ground me. This is happening. I’m actually doing this.
The cottage is dark except for the lamp in my bedroom.
I should turn it off and make the place look empty so no one comes checking on me too soon, but I can’t bring myself to walk back to the nightstand.
Every second I spend in this house is another second someone might knock on my door with congratulations and questions about when the ceremony will be.
I ease the front door open and slip outside.
The night air carries the faint scent of pine and distant woodsmoke. Most of Silvercreek is probably still at the Hollow or heading home, gossiping about the latest match and speculating about when Bryan and I will complete the bond.
They have no idea I’m about to become a cautionary tale.
I stick to the shadows as I make my way through the back roads, avoiding the main streets where I might run into someone who recognizes me.
Ruby texted multiple times while I was packing.
Luna called twice. I ignored all of it. Whatever they want to say, whatever comfort or advice they think they can offer, it won’t change anything.
The houses thin out as I reach the edge of the developed area.
I know this route better than I know the lines on my own palms. Years of emergency calls have taken me down this trail at all hours, rushing toward the eastern border to treat patrol wolves who ran into trouble they couldn’t handle alone.
I also know this is the least monitored section of the perimeter.
Dylan focuses most of his security resources on the northern and western approaches, where the real threats have always come from.
The eastern boundary is quiet and peaceful, which is exactly the kind of place where someone could slip across without anyone noticing until morning.
My boots crunch against fallen leaves as I head into the forest. The sounds of Silvercreek fade behind me with each step—no more distant voices, no more dogs barking at shadows, no more reminders of the life I’m walking away from.
Ten years. I’ve spent ten years proving I don’t need Bryan Dinac. Building a career, earning respect, becoming someone the pack depends on. And I did it all without him. Without anyone.
Find someone else, he told me that night under the oak tree. Someone who can actually give you a future.
Well, I did. I found myself.
And now the magic wants to take that away from me. It wants to tie me to a man who looked me in the eye and said whatever existed between us didn’t matter.
My wolf stirs beneath my skin, unhappy. She’s been agitated since the moment Amelia called Bryan’s name, pacing back and forth inside my chest like a caged animal.
The mate bond we’ve both been trying to ignore came roaring back to life the second I saw him standing in the torchlight, and she hasn’t settled since.
He’s our mate, she insists. We can’t leave him.
Watch me.
The boundary marker appears through the trees, a carved stone pillar I’ve passed a hundred times on patrol.
Pack symbols are carved into its weathered face to mark the edge of Silvercreek territory.
Beyond it, the forest continues unchanged, but the feeling is different.
The sense of belonging, of pack, of home… It all stops at that marker.
Once I cross it, I’ll be rogue. Packless.
The thought should terrify me. It doesn’t. Nothing terrifies me more than spending the rest of my life chained to Bryan Dinac, pretending the past doesn’t exist, pretending he didn’t hollow me out and leave me empty.
I’m maybe fifty feet from the marker when a figure steps out from behind a massive oak.
My heart slams against my ribs. I freeze mid-stride with one hand clutched around the strap of my duffel bag while the other drops to the small knife I keep in my jacket pocket. My wolf launches forward with her hackles raised, ready to fight or flee depending on what happens next.
Then the figure moves, and moonlight catches the angles of a face I know better than my own.
Bryan.
Of course, it’s Bryan.
He looks different in the darkness, bigger somehow. More dangerous.
“Going somewhere?” he asks, like he’s inquiring about the weather instead of catching me fleeing in the middle of the night.
“Get out of my way.”
“Can’t do that.”
I take a step forward with my chin lifted, refusing to let him see how fast my heart is racing. “You don’t have any authority over me. We’re not mated yet, and I’m not going to be here long enough for that to change.”
He doesn’t move. He just stands there, blocking the path to the boundary like he has every right to decide where I can and can’t go.
“Nic wouldn’t be happy with me if I just let you go,” he states.
“Nic can mind his own business. So can you.”
Something migrates across his face, but I’m done reading Bryan Dinac’s expressions. Done trying to figure out what’s going on behind those gray eyes. That way lies madness and heartbreak, and I’ve had enough of both to last a lifetime.
“Skylar, just wait—”
“No.” I cut him off before he could finish whatever useless thing he was about to say.
“I’ve waited ten years for an explanation, Bryan.
I’ve spent ten years wondering what I did wrong, what I could have done differently, why you just—” My voice cracks, and I hate myself for it.
I will not cry in front of him. I will not give him that satisfaction. “Move.”
He reaches for my arm, but I jerk backward before his fingers can make contact.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Just listen to me for one minute—”
“I don’t owe you a goddamn second. Not one minute. Not one second. Not one single breath of explanation or patience or grace. You made your choice ten years ago, and now I’m making mine.”
“The cabin Nic gave me is just north of here. I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a run to clear my head.” He gestures vaguely toward the trees behind him. “I picked up unfamiliar scents near the border. Wolf scents, but not from any pack I recognize. I was tracking them when I caught yours instead.”
“How convenient.”
“I’m not lying to you.”
“I don’t care if you’re lying or telling the truth.
I don’t care about strange scents or whatever you think you found on your midnight stroll.
” I step around him, and my shoulder brushes his as I push past. The contact sends a jolt through my entire body, and the mate bond screams in recognition.
I grit my teeth against the sensation. “Go back to your cabin. Pretend you never saw me.”
“I can’t do that.”
I spin to face him, and the fury I’ve been holding back all day finally breaks loose. “Why? Because the lottery says we’re supposed to play happy mates? I don’t care what anyone expects. I don’t care what the magic thinks it knows. I’m leaving, and you can’t stop me.”
Bryan opens his mouth to respond, but something changes in his posture between one heartbeat and the next.
His head snaps to the left, his nostrils flare, and every muscle in his body goes taut.
The arrogance drains from his face, and in its place, something cold takes hold that I’ve never seen before.
“Get behind me.” His voice has changed, too. Suddenly, it’s stripped of everything except command.
“I’m not—”
“Skylar. Now.”
A branch snaps somewhere to my left. Then another, closer this time. The sounds multiply, spreading through the darkness in a pattern that makes my wolf go still beneath my skin.
We’re not alone out here.
More sounds in the trees. Movement through the underbrush, coming from multiple directions at once. The soft pad of paws against dirt. The rustle of bodies pushing through ferns.
Bryan grabs my arm and yanks me behind him before I can react. I stumble and nearly drop the duffel bag, and by the time I regain my balance, they’re already here.
Six wolves emerge from the shadows.
They’re massive—bigger than most Silvercreek wolves, with matted coats and eyes that glint red in the darkness. Something about the way they move sets off every alarm in my head. These aren’t strays who wandered across the border by accident.
One of them has scars running down its face in parallel lines, like someone dragged claws through its muzzle years ago, and the wounds never quite healed.
Another is missing half an ear. A third has patches of fur missing, revealing mottled skin that looks diseased beneath what little moonlight makes its way through the canopy.
My wolf whimpers inside my chest, pressing against my spine. She recognizes what these creatures are even before my conscious mind catches up.
Cheslem wolves. Or what’s left of them.
They fan out around us in a loose semicircle, cutting off any route back toward Silvercreek. The scarred one in front bares its teeth and releases a snarl that sounds through the quiet forest like a promise of violence to come.
Bryan’s hand finds mine and squeezes once, hard enough to hurt.
Then the wolves attack.