Chapter 3

POV: NORA ASH

I woke up to the smell of coffee…..And for three seconds, lying on that hard cabin cot with a folded blanket under my head, I forgot everything. I forgot the Moon Ceremony. I forgot Damon's hand flat against the bark. I forgot the way Sienna's fingers had curled into his shirt like she owned him. I forgot that I had run barefoot across a border in my nightclothes and fallen asleep in a stranger's cabin.

Then I opened my eyes and saw the wooden ceiling, and all of it came back.

I sat up slowly. My feet ached. The gauze had held through the night, and the cuts were already less angry-looking ,I had always healed fast, one of the only wolf-like things my body did without a wolf to explain it.

Cole Vance stood at a small stove in the corner of the cabin. He was wearing a black shirt and the same dark trousers from the night before. His back was turned to me as he poured coffee into a single mug and he did it the way he seemed to do everything ,with no wasted movement and no noise.

"Good morning," I said.

He turned, looked at me once, and set the mug on the table. Then he poured a second one from the same pot and placed it on the table's edge closest to where I was sitting.

"Thank you," I said.

He sat down across from me,then drank his coffee while he looked out the small, dirty window at the grey morning light between the trees.

I wrapped both hands around my mug. The heat moved up through my fingers and settled into my palms. I had not realized how cold I was.

"I need to ask you something," I said.

He waited.

"Why did you bring me here?" I watched his face for the quick answer, the easy one. Most men who helped me with something always followed up by wanting something back. That was just how Silver Creek worked. Everything had a price.

Cole looked at his mug. Then back at the window. "You were on my territory, bleeding and alone, at night. Leaving you there was not something I was going to do."

"That is it?"

"That is it."

It was simple and clean like most things about him seemed to be.

I drank my coffee and tried to figure out what came next. I had no phone ,I had dropped it somewhere in the trees during my run. I had no shoes, no money, nothing but the grey shirt Cole had given me and the thin slip of cotton underneath it. Going back to Silver Creek meant walking back through the territory I had just fled, straight into the packhouse where Damon would be waiting with some version of an explanation.

My stomach turned over.

"Is there a town nearby?" I asked.

"Two miles east. Harlow." He paused. "There is a bus stop that connects to the city."

I had been to Creston once, when I was twelve, for a school trip. It was loud and grey and smelled like exhaust and rain. I had not loved it. But as I thought about it now with something close to hunger.

"I have no money," I said flatly.

Cole set down his mug. He stood up, went to the shelf beside the medical kit, and came back with something folded. He put it on the table. It was cash….it was not a lot ,maybe forty dollars ,but enough for a bus ticket and something to eat.

I looked at it….and then looked at him.

"I will pay you back," I said.

"You do not need to."

"I will anyway."

Something shifted in his expression. Not a smile ,his face was not built for easy smiles. But his eyes changed, just barely, like something had registered behind them and filed itself away.

I took the money,folded it carefully and pressed it into the small pocket of my slip, which was the only thing I had to put it in.

He drove me to Harlow in a dark truck that smelled like pine resin and old leather. He did not make any conversation……neither did I. We sat side by side watching the early morning forest roll past the windows, and the silence was the kind that did not need filling.

The bus stop was a bench and a pole with a peeling timetable nailed to it. The next bus to Creston came in forty minutes. Cole pulled the truck over and left the engine running.

I got out and turned back to the open window.

"Thank you," I said again. "For everything."

He looked at me from behind the wheel. The morning light came over his shoulder and caught the silver in his eyes.

"Be careful in the city," he said. "It is not as safe for our kind."

I nodded and stepped back while he put the truck in drive.He had gone maybe twenty feet when he stopped.

The window rolled down. He did not look back at me, he just called out through the open glass in that same flat, even voice.

"There is a dinner on Fifth and Crane in Creston. The owner is a wolf. Her name is Mae. Tell her I sent you…..She will give you some work to do."

And before I could respond, he drove off.

I stood at the bus stop and watched the truck disappear around the tree line. The morning was cold, pale and very quiet. A single crow sat on top of the timetable pole and looked at me like I was something it had not decided what to do with yet.

I sat down on the bench.

My phone was gone. My pack was behind me. My whole life, everything I had been patient for, everything I had believed in ,Damon, the bond, the future he had painted in words and promises ,was ashes.

But there was forty dollars in my pocket and a name: Mae.

And somewhere inside me, in that quiet place, the thing that had stirred last night stirred again.

This time, it felt less like a whisper.It felt like the very first breath before a roar.

My phone buzzed from somewhere under the bench.I blinked as I reached down, and somehow ,impossibly ,there it was. It must have fallen from my slip pocket when I sat down. The screen was cracked but lit.

Twelve missed calls from Damon.

And one text, sent at 2:17am in the morning:

"Nora. What happened with Sienna doesn't mean what you think. I need you to come home so I can explain. Please. I love you."I read it twice.

Then I looked at the road where Cole Vance's truck had disappeared.I put the phone face-down on the bench and I did not pick it up again.