CHAPTER 2 - THE ESCAPE

A low growl echoed in the distance, not thunder, not the storm or something else.

 A power.

 Watching.

 Lila frowned, scanning the dark.  “Did you hear that?”

 I straightened, heart racing.  “Wolves?”

 She shook her head.  “No.  Something else.”

 But before we could move, a car’s headlights flared through the rain, stopping at the corner of the lane.  A tall shadow stepped out, coat blowing in the wind.

 A deep voice called out, “Aurora Hale?”

 My blood turned cold.  “Who are you?”

 He stepped closer to dark hair, amber eyes glowing faintly under the rain.  Not from our pack.  Not even from Crescent land.

 “I was sent to find you,” he said.  “Your real family wants you back.”

 Lila gasped.  “Real family?  What do you mean”

 But before he could answer, another pain ripped through my stomach.  The world turned.

 The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was that stranger’s bright eyes  and the tiny mark on his wrist.

 A royal mark.

 The mark of the Lycan King’s house.

 As the rain took me whole, the stranger caught me before I hit the ground.  His voice was low, filled with a strange respect.

 “She’s the lost heir,” he whispered.  “The Moonstone bloodline lives.”

 And just like that  in the same night I lost everything  fate took me again.

The night I ran from Los Angeles, the city lights looked like dying stars in my rearview mirror.

 Every mile I drove away from him, the pain didn’t fade, it burned hotter.

 I wasn’t running from the rejection anymore.

 I was running from the man I once thought was my fate.

 The highway stretched forever before me, slick with rain.  My hands shook around the driving wheel, knuckles pale.  I didn’t know where I was going, only that I had to disappear before Damon’s men found me.

 Lila’s voice repeated in my head: He’ll send the guards, Rory.  He can’t afford a scandal  not now, not after announcing his engagement.

 My heart twisted.  Engagement.

 The word alone was poison.

 I had once imagined our wedding under a full moon, the pack roaring in joy.

 Now, I was the woman who had been shamed in front of them all  the Luna who never was.

 The radio crackled, pulling me back to the present.  A news anchor’s voice seeped through the fuzz.

 “Breaking story from the Crescent Moon Pack’s Alpha Gala  Alpha Damon Blackwood confirms his engagement to Celeste Valen after officially dissolving his bond with former mate Aurora Hale”

 I slammed the radio off before my heart could break any further.  “Dissolving our bond,” I whispered.  “Like it was a contract.  Like I was nothing.”

 Tears blurred the road.  I gripped the wheel tighter and pushed harder on the gas.

 By the time I reached the harbor, dawn was bleeding into the sky.  The air smelled of salt and gasoline.  Lila’s contact with a thin, wiry man in his fifties  waited by a sea plane, his cap pulled low.

 “You’re Aurora? ” he asked, glancing around nervously.  “Lila said you’d come.”

 I nodded.  “Please, I need to leave before they find me.”

 He gave me a long look at my wet gown, the mud on my legs, the tiredness carved into my face  then pointed toward the plane.  “You’re lucky I owe her.  Where to? ”

 “I don’t care,” I said.  “Anywhere far away.”

 He paused.  “She said Italy.  Milan.”

 “Milan,” I repeated, my voice barely above a whisper.  “Yes.  Take me there.”

 He frowned.  “You have money? ”

 I reached into my torn bag and gave him a velvet pouch.  “Jewelry.  That's all I have.”

 He weighed it, then nodded once.  “Get in.”

 As the plane rose from the water, the roar of the engine filled my chest.  I looked down through the small window and saw the shoreline shrinking  the city where I’d been born, loved, and destroyed disappearing into mist.

 Los Angeles sparkled like a cruel dream beneath the clouds.  Somewhere down there, Damon was probably sleeping in Celeste’s arms, the press still praising his “perfect Luna.”

 My throat tightened.  I pressed a hand against my stomach, remembering the pain, the sickness, the shaking.

 Our child.

 The thought scared me  and yet, it was the only thing keeping me alive.

 I closed my eyes, the hum of the engines lulling me into uncomfortable thoughts.

 Memories flashed behind my eyes, Damon's smell, his kisses, his vows.

 Then his voice from last night, cold and final: You embarrass me.

 My chest ached.  The rejection bond still burned inside me like a curse.  I wanted to rip it out, to hate him totally  but the mate bond doesn’t die that quickly.  It stays, even when love turns to ruin.

 The captain shouted over the noise, “You running from someone, sweetheart? ”

 My heart jumped.  “What? ”

 He shrugged.  “You keep looking back.  Only people running from something do that.”

 I looked out the window again.  “I’m running from the past.”

 He laughed dryly.  “Aren’t we all? ”

 The regular buzz of the plane faded into an eerie echo  and my mind slipped back, unbidden.

 Damon had been different once.  Kind.  Gentle.

 He used to trace my scars and say, You’re my strength, Rory, not my shame.

 But power changes people.  The moment he started attending High Council meetings with the Valen family, something in him changed.  He started pulling away  missing dinners, avoiding eye contact, calling me “Rory” like it was a problem.

 Celeste’s presence had been the darkness that followed him everywhere.

 And now she stood where I should have been  in his heart, beside his chair, under the world’s spotlight.

 I woke up with a start as the plane rocked violently.  The pilot swore.  “Hold on! ”

 The engines sputtered once, twice  then steady again.  My heartbeat thundered in my ears.

 “What happened? ” I gasped.

 “Storm pocket,” he said through clamped teeth.  “We’ll be fine.  Just sit tight.”

 I gripped the seat, eyes wide.

 But deep inside, something told me this storm wasn’t just weather.

 It was fate  and I was being ripped from one life into another.