Chapter three

The apartment I wasn't supposed to know about was in Temescal, third floor of a converted Victorian that had been split into six units sometime in the 1970s. I'd rented it three months ago using my mother's maiden name, Selene Matthew, and paid six months upfront in cash. My father didn't know it existed. Killian didn't know it existed. Even my mother only knew because she'd helped me set it up, her hands shaking the entire time as she counted out bills from her private safe.

"If your father finds out I helped you—" she'd started.

"He won't," I'd promised. "This is just... insurance. In case I ever need to disappear for a few hours."

She'd looked at me with eyes that understood too much. "Your grandmother had a place like this. In Berkeley. She'd go there when your grandfather's political dinners became unbearable." A pause. "She sold it the year before she died. Said she'd waited too long, that by the time she was brave enough to actually leave, she'd forgotten how."

I'd hugged her. We'd never spoken about it again.

Now, at 11:47 PM on the worst night of my life, I stood in the tiny studio apartment and tried to remember how to be a person instead of a performance.

The Dior gown came off first. I left it in a puddle on the floor, midnight blue silk pooling like a bruise. My feet were bleeding from the barefoot run across the parking garage. I washed them in the tiny bathroom sink, watching pink-tinged water circle the drain, and tried not to think about my phone lying shattered on Highway 24, close to my father's mansion.

They'd be looking for me by now. My father would have sent people to my registered apartment in Russian Hill. Killian would probably be calling in favors, using pack networks to track me. But I'd been careful. This place was off-grid. Utilities in a fake name. No trail.

I had maybe forty-eight hours before they found me. Maybe less.

I pulled on jeans and a sweater; cheap clothes, the kind I'd been collecting here for months in preparation for a moment I'd been too afraid to actually trigger. Then I sat on the secondhand futon and let myself shake.

I HUMILIATED HIM. I HUMILIATED FATHER. I BROKE PROTOCOL IN FRONT OF EVERY ALPHA ON THE WEST COAST.

But My wolf was satisfied.

I must have fallen asleep eventually, because I woke to weak winter sunlight streaming through the window and my entire body aching like I'd been hit by a truck. My wolf was restless.

I checked the burner phone I kept in the apartment. No messages. No one had this number except my mother, and she knew better than to use it unless it was an actual emergency.

Tuesday. It was Tuesday. Which meant—

The Greenway Community Center. I was supposed to volunteer tonight. I'd signed up last week using my Selene Matthew identity, had been approved by a tired-looking woman named Mrs. Rodriguez who'd seemed more relieved than suspicious that someone was offering to help.

Every logical bone in my body said to stay hidden. To not leave this apartment until I'd figured out my next move. Going to East Oakland tonight would be reckless, stupid, the exact opposite of lying low.

"They could be tracking me. Father could have people watching—"

So I went.

I arrived at Greenway at 6:30 PM, thirty minutes early, wearing my carefully curated "normal volunteer" outfit: Target jeans, Everlane sweater, hair in a simple bun. I'd left the Tesla in my Russian Hill garage and taken a Lyft using a prepaid card. No trail. No trace.

Mrs. Rodriguez looked up from her desk when I walked in, her face brightening with relief. "Selene! Thank god. I was worried you wouldn't show—we're short-staffed tonight and we've got twelve kids signed up for the science session."

"I'm here," I said, forcing a smile. "Where do you need me?"

"Tutoring room, down the hall. You'll be co-teaching with Silas, he's our regular Tuesday volunteer. He's—" She paused, searching for words. "He's wonderful with the kids, but he can be a little intense. Don't take it personally if he's tough at first. We've had a lot of volunteers who show up once and never come back."

"I understand."

I didn't understand why my hands were shaking as I walked down the hallway.

The tutoring room was small, with mismatched chairs and a whiteboard covered in children's drawings. Shelves lined one wall, packed with worn textbooks and educational games that had definitely seen better days. And standing by the coffee machine, his back to me, was a man who made my wolf go absolutely silent.

He was tall, maybe six-two, with dark hair that needed a cut and shoulders that suggested either manual labor or pro active gym membership. He held a styrofoam cup drumming with his fingers on the counter.

Then he turned around.

And looked directly at me. I held my breath. I had forgotten how to breathe.