CHAPTER 3: THE ONE WHO FOUND ME

“Who is coming, baby?” I asked quietly, my heart pounding.

He turned to me, his brows squinting in confusion. And he suddenly looked very much his age. “I don’t know, Mommy. It’s…”

My instincts immediately took over.

I grabbed the small knife I kept under my pillow and was off the bed before my mind could catch up. It wouldn’t do much against Lycans, but it was something. And something was better than nothing. 

Her heart skipped a beat when footsteps sounded, coming down the hall. 

“Mavy,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Come here.”

He slid off the bed without hesitation, his small hand slipping into mine. There was no fear in his face, only confusion, and that same quiet alertness that had begun to unsettle me more than it reassured me.

One arm around Maverick and the other on the knife, I ran into the bathroom within seconds and quietly pulled the door shut behind us. 

I pressed my back against the wall beside the door, not in front of it, never in front of it, and held Maverick against my side with a grip I forced myself to keep gentle even as everything in me was screaming.

My eyes darted around the small room, taking notice of the single narrow window with frosted glass above the toilet. 

My eyes squinted as I calculated my next move. It was just a little bit wide enough for me to wiggle through if I tried. I could get Marverick through first, drop him onto whatever was below, and go through after.

I looked down at him to tell him to climb up onto the toilet seat and be ready, only to pause.

He was not scared.

When something frightened him, he had shown it the way children do, honestly and immediately. But right now he was standing beside me, looking completely and unnervingly calm.

“Mavy,” I breathed, barely making any sound at all. “I need you to climb up to that window and—”

He shook his head.

I stared at him. “What?”

“They won’t hurt us,” he whispered.

My grip tightened on the knife. “You don’t know that.”

“I do.” He said it the way he said everything he was certain of. As if he was reporting something he had already verified. “They are not here to hurt us, Mommy.”

“Do you know who they are?” I breathed, crouching to meet him.

He tilted his head slightly as if he was listening to something I could not hear. 

For a moment, he was still, his eyes darting along the wall as if he was tracking something through the wall, following it down the corridor.

Then he relaxed. “They are gone,” he said, at full volume, like we were having a normal conversation. “We can come out now.”

I did not move for another full minute. I stood in that bathroom with my knife and my heartbeat and my son, who was somehow more certain about our safety than I was, and I listened. 

The corridor outside was silent. With no footsteps, voices, or anything scraping against the door.

Nothing.

I exhaled through my nose slowly. “Stay here.”

I darted across the room and cracked the door open. I peered into the dim, narrow corridor and saw nothing. Even the room across ours was still locked with the chain still across it.

I went to the grimy window and pulled back the dirty curtains, but the car park had no suspicious vehicles. There was nothing or nobody amiss. 

I stood in the middle of the room and tried to decide if I felt relieved or more frightened than before.

“I told you, mommy,” Maverick said, coming to hug my legs.

“Go back to bed,” I said.

I tucked him back in, and within minutes, he was asleep like nothing had happened. 

I didn’t sleep. 

Every instinct I had was screaming at me to pack the bags and go, get in the car, drive until the tank was empty, and then drive some more. But I had learned something in five years of running: the hours between midnight and dawn were the most dangerous time to move. 

Empty roads meant visible cars. And visible cars meant traceable routes. 

If someone was looking for me, and someone clearly was, leaving now would hand them exactly the thread they needed.

So I pulled a chair and faced the door, clutching my knife tightly. 

I watched the door and the window in rotation, fifteen seconds each, the way I had taught myself in the first year when the fear was so constant it had to be managed in intervals or it would swallow me whole.

My mind drifted back to what my son had said: “They won’t hurt us.”

Not there’s nobody there. He had heard or sensed them… or whatever it was he did that I still had no language for, and he concluded that we weren’t in danger.

And somehow, that frightened me more.

Immediately dawn broke, I got us out. 

The road blurred past in streaks of dim lights and long stretches of darkness as I sped down the highway, my eyes scanning the rearview mirror every few seconds, watching for headlights that stayed too long or patterns that did not belong.

Nothing followed us, but that didn’t mean we were safe. 

It just meant whoever was looking for us was patient… or confident.

Maverick sat quietly in the back seat, his stuffed wolf tucked against his chest, his gaze drifting between the window and me. 

“Are you okay?” I asked after a while, my voice softer now.

He nodded.

I hesitated. “Your eyes yesterday.”

“They do that sometimes,” he said simply.

My grip tightened slightly on the steering wheel. “How long has it been happening?” I asked.

He thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know, mommy.”

I wanted to push, but I let it go for now.

The road curved ahead, leading into a quieter part of the town with few people. The kind of place where no one asked questions as long as you paid in cash and kept to yourself.

Perfect… or at least it would have been three weeks ago.

Now, nowhere felt safe.

I found a café and chose a corner seat with a view of both entrances. Then bought Maverick hot chocolate and myself a coffee while I watched the street outside.

I watched as Maverick drew in his notebook. 

Though he wasn’t good, he always drew wolves. Pages of them, different sizes, different positions. Even when he was younger, the only coloring books he wanted were wolf themed ones. I had never asked him about it, and he had never explained it. It was simply what he drew, with the focused dedication of a child working through something he had not yet found words for.

I watched him draw, thinking about what I was going to do next, when a quiet, crawling awareness slid down my spine. 

We were not alone.

I looked at my son to see that his attention was now focused on the parking lot through the picture windows. His eyes were darting around as if he was tracking something, something I could not see.

“What is it?” I kept my voice low, already calculating the distance to the gate.

His nostrils flared. Actually flared, the way I had seen Ford’s do in moments of heightened awareness, the involuntary animal reflex of a Lycan processing information through scent.

The amber began to creep back into his eyes. 

“Mavy.” I was on my feet, my hand on his shoulder. “Indoor mode. Right now.”

He blinked, and the amber receded. He looked up at me and then looked back across the park, and whatever he had been tracking was apparently still there because his gaze settled on a fixed point near the far gate and stayed there.

I followed his eyeline and saw a man standing there with his hands in the pockets of a dark jacket.

He was looking directly in our direction as if he wanted us to see him. 

He was too far for me to see his face. But his height and the width of those shoulders struck me.

My heart stopped.

It had been years, and I still knew the shape of that man from across a park without needing to see his face. My body knew before my mind did, my heart pounding on a frequency I had spent five years trying to silence.

Ford.

“Mama?”

I blinked and gave my son a reassuring smile. “It’s ok, baby. Stay here,” I said, giving him a stern look. “Don’t follow me.”

He nodded.

I stepped out of the cafe and walked to the parking lot, the hot sun burning my skin as I stopped a few steps away from the car.

“Ford?” I called out, my fist clenched to hide the shaking in my hands. “This petty hide and seek needs to stop.” 

He walked towards me, the sun finally showing me his face clearly. 

I froze, taken aback.

The face was Ford’s. The jaw, the dark hair, the precise, unhurried way he moved. But the hair was longer, and his eyes were deep green instead of Ford’s usual brown. 

My breath came back in a rush. This wasn’t Ford.

He gave me a smirk that was so similar yet so different from my husband’s. “Hi, Keren,” he said, his voice deep and husky. “We finally meet.” 

A mix of confusion and fear slid down my spine. “Fabian?” I whispered, my voice trembling.