Chapter 5: Running From Manhattan With His Secret

Leo did not cry like a human baby.

That was the first thing I learned.

Human babies cry when they are hungry, when they are wet, when they are tired.

Leo stared.

He stared at me with those too-dark eyes, and if I didn't move fast enough, the lightbulbs in our apartment flickered.

Mama Rosa said he was "special." The other waitresses said he was "creepy." One girl crossed herself when he looked at her.

He was three months old when he first growled.

I was changing his diaper on the mattress. He was fussy — his gums were swollen. I was humming, exhausted, running on two hours of sleep because I was now working double shifts at the register.

Then he bared his tiny gums.

And growled.

A real, guttural, Lycan growl that vibrated my hand.

I froze.

"Leo?"

He stopped. Looked at me. And smiled, gummy and sweet, like he hadn't just sounded like a wolf pup.

That night, I Googled "human baby growls" on Mama Rosa's old computer. Nothing. I Googled "werewolf baby signs" and deleted my search history immediately, terrified.

My secret was getting bigger. Literally.

By six months, Leo was the size of a one-year-old. He could sit. He could pull himself up on the coffee table. He had a full head of black hair — exactly like his father's — and when he was angry, his eyes flashed amber.

Amber. Like Alexander Thorne.

I knew I couldn't stay in Miami.

It wasn't just that people were starting to stare. It was that I could feel it. The mate bond I thought had been severed five months ago in Thorne Tower — it was humming again. Faint, but alive.

Because of Leo.

A Lycan child carries both parents' blood. Through him, the bond was repairing itself. Which meant — if Alexander was powerful enough — he could track us.

Lycan Kings can track their bloodline across continents.

Mama Rosa found me packing our single suitcase at 2 AM. Leo was asleep on the mattress, one tiny fist clenched, breathing like a little engine.

"You running?" she asked, leaning in the doorway.

I didn't lie to her. She was the only mother I had left.

"His father... his family would take him from me," I whispered. "They would say I'm too weak to raise a King."

Mama Rosa looked at Leo. At his black hair. At the faint scar on his left eyebrow — the same scar Alexander had. He was born with it. A birthmark shaped like a crescent.

"He is a King, isn't he?" she said softly.

I started crying. The first time in months.

"He is everything," I said.

She knelt, despite her bad knees, and put her hands on my belly — which was flat again, but still felt empty.

"Then you don't run like prey, mija. You run like a wolf. You make yourself so strong, when they come, they kneel."

She pressed something into my hand. An envelope. Old, yellowed.

Inside was $2,000 and a business card.

Isabella Romano — Romano Imports — New York.

My blood went cold.

Romano.

My mother's last name before she married my father. The name she told me never to speak because that family disowned her for marrying a human.

"I worked for Isabella thirty years ago," Mama Rosa said. "She is looking for her granddaughter. A girl who disappeared in Manhattan. A girl whose mother said she was a mistake."

The world tilted.

"What?" I breathed.

"Your mother, Lucia Romano Cole, called Isabella three months ago. Crying. Said you ran away. Said you were pregnant. Isabella has been looking for you."

My mother. Who told me I was too human. Who told me never to come back.

She told her mother I was pregnant.

Leo made a small noise in his sleep. His eyes fluttered. For a second, they glowed amber in the dark.

Mama Rosa squeezed my hand.

"Don't run to nowhere, Seraphina. Run to power."

At 4 AM, I bought a bus ticket again. Not to nowhere this time.

To New York.

I held Leo to my chest on that Greyhound. He smelled like milk and snow. Like his father.

I opened my phone for the first time in a year and Googled Alexander Thorne.

The first headline:

BILLIONAIRE LYCAN KING ALEXANDER THORNE RETURNS TO MANHATTAN AFTER 5 YEARS IN ALASKA — ENGAGEMENT TO ELENA STONE OFF, NEW HEIRESS MYSTERY.

There was a photo. Him getting off a private jet at JFK. Older. Harder. Beard. Same cold eyes.

And in the background of the photo — I zoomed in — was a man carrying a little girl's pink backpack.

He had a child? With Elena?

My mate bond — that stupid, humming thread — burned.

I looked down at Leo, who was now awake, staring at the photo over my shoulder, his little nose wrinkling.

He growled at the photo of his father.

"Yeah," I whispered, kissing his black hair. "Me too, baby. Me too."

The bus crossed the state line into New York.

I was no longer running FROM Manhattan with his secret.

I was running TO Manhattan with his heir.