Chapter five

The air in the doorway turned thick enough to choke on.

Luca stared at my hand. At the exact place it pressed against my stomach.

He took a step closer. His body blocked the exit, and his eyes were stormy and sharp.

For one terrible second I thought he could hear it. The tiny heartbeat under my palm.

"I'm fine," I said. I pulled my arm out of his grip and backed away. "A headache. It's nothing."

"You were green a second ago."

"Then it's a bad headache."

"Oh, don't be dramatic, Adele." Lyra slid her arm through his and rested her cheek on his shoulder. "You're stressed because you have to move today. Luca, darling, let her go pack. The housekeepers need to sanitize the suite before my luggage comes up."

Luca didn't answer her. He didn't even look at her.

"You haven't been eating," he said to me. His voice dropped to a low rumble that I felt in my chest. "You looked like a ghost at breakfast. Now you look worse."

"My health isn't your concern anymore, Alpha." It came out steadier than I felt.

"You gave up that right when you took my title."

A muscle jumped in his jaw. Through the thin thread between us, I felt his wolf shove against his control. Possessive. Agitated. Confused.

He lifted his hand again.

"Adele--"

"I have packing to finish." I pulled my coat tight around my waist and brushed past him into the hall before he could finish the sentence. I didn't stop walking until the Alpha suite's doors clicked shut behind me. Then my legs gave out. I slid down the dark wood, knees hitting the floor, and the tears I'd held back all day finally broke over my lashes.

That was too close. I pressed my forehead to my knees and made myself breathe. In. Out.

If I stayed another forty-eight hours, Luca's nose or my father's eyes would put it together. The gala at the end of the week was too far away. I had to leave tonight.

My wolf lifted her head. *Yes.*

"Tonight," I whispered and I got up dragging a plain canvas duffel from the closet floor and ignored every silk gown, every jewel, every fur Luca had ever bought me. They'd been costumes. I was done playing the part.

Jeans. Sturdy sweaters. Warm boots. A dark jacket with no pack crest on it. I opened my jewelry box and pressed the hidden catch under the velvet tray. A small envelope slid out. Three years of small allowances, saved a few coins at a time, just in case. I counted. It would last a few months if I was careful.

*Careful,* my wolf agreed. *For the pup.*

"For the pup," I said.

The envelope went into my jacket. The duffel went by the door.

Evening came. Servants walked past the door, then stopped coming. Somewhere downstairs, a dinner I wasn't invited to began and ended. At eleven, I heard Lyra's laugh in the corridor. At eleven-thirty, a door closed, and the suite felt different.

The long awaited midnight came. I quickly threw on a dark pant and dark jacket. Then I put the duffel strap across my chest. Then I set my phone to silent, laid my platinum wedding band on the vanity. It made a small, clean click against the wood.

Then I wrote a letter that consists of just two lines. I had thought of a hundred things to say, and in the end I chose the shortest and set it on the desk beneath the lamp, and I didn't read it again.

"Goodbye," I told the room.

The back corridor was dark and empty. I moved along it quietly. I knew every camera and its blind spot. I had signed the maintenance contract myself.

Fifteen minutes later, I stood in the hospital basement in front of a steel door.

Helen's key card was in my pocket. She'd slipped it there before I left her office, with a squeeze of my hand and no words. I swiped it now. The lock whirred.

Cold air rolled out of the dark.

"Be safe, little one," I whispered, and I stepped inside.

The utility tunnel ran east beneath the perimeter wall. I'd overseen its repair three winters ago. I walked it for almost an hour with the phone's flashlight bobbing on wet concrete.

The air smelled of damp and rust. My footsteps echoed. Every few minutes I stopped and listened, hand on my stomach, for any sound that wasn't mine.

Nothing at all followed me.

With every step, the weight on my chest eased.

At last, the passage rose. I found the emergency gate under its curtain of brambles. The override code was one I'd never written down. I entered it with numb fingers.

The gate swung open.

Pine and snow and wind hit my face. Beyond the fence, the neutral forest spread out under the stars, silver and endless.

No Alpha's law ran there. No one owned it.

I stood on the threshold and looked back once. The Moonlight estate glittered in the distance, towers pale against the dark.

"Goodbye, Luca," I whispered.Then I turned and walked into the trees.

---

Luca hadn't slept.

His wolf had been clawing at his ribs since midnight. A raw, wrong pain, like something tearing him from the inside. The thread to Adele burned. By dawn, he'd bitten through the inside of his own cheek.

He stood outside the Alpha suite with his fist raised.

"Adele. Open the door."

Only silence.

"Adele." Louder now. "We need to talk. Open it."

Nothing. No steps. No breath.

His heart lurched. He slammed his palm to the scanner, and the double doors flew wide.

"Adele!"

The suite was cold and still. The bed was made, untouched. The closet stood open. Her plain things were gone. Only the gowns he'd bought her remained, hanging in rows like ghosts.

On the vanity, a platinum ring glinted in the morning light.

He stared at it.

Then he saw the paper under the lamp.

He tore it open with shaking fingers. Her handwriting. Neat, elegant, steady.

*Do not look for me. The replacement bride has fulfilled her contract.*

A snarl ripped out of him. His power erupted. Every glass object in the room shattered at once, a spray of glittering shards across the carpet. His wolf howled inside him, hurt and furious and terrified.

*Find her. Find her. FIND HER.*

He turned for the door. Garrett. The guard. Every patrol on the border.

His boot struck something under the desk.

A wooden box,it was opened.

He knelt beside the desk. Inside the was a single folded document, heavy cream paper, wax seal broken. He had never seen it before.

He unfolded it.

*Marriage contract between the Houses of Moonlight and Sunfall. The bride to be delivered by her father, Thomas Sinclair, in the place of the firstborn.* He read it twice.

Delivered. Not offered. Not volunteered.

*By her father.*

Below it, in Adele's hand, a single line was pencilled in the margin, so faint he nearly missed it. *Signed under duress. Family held for debt.*

He sat back on his heels.

For three years he had believed she'd wanted this. That she'd schemed her way into Lyra's place. Thomas had said so, across a desk, smiling. *My daughter has always been ambitious.*

Luca's ears rang.

Three years of cold silence. Three years of watching her work herself hollow, and he had called it ambition.

The door burst open.

Helen stood there, chest heaving, hair half out of its bun. Her eyes swept the room, the empty bed, the broken glass.

"Where is she?"

"Gone." His voice scraped. "She left in the night."

Helen's hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes were red-rimmed. She looked like she hadn't slept either.

Luca got to his feet.

"Did she come to you yesterday?"

"She came to the hospital," Helen said carefully. "She had a headache."

"You were with her an hour."

"I'm a nurse, Alpha. That's what I do."

"Helen." His voice dropped. "Look at me."

She did. Her chin lifted. Her face was gray with exhaustion and absolutely, immovably blank.

"Is there anything you need to tell me?"

"No, Alpha."

He studied her for a long moment.

He didn't believe her but couldn't prove it.

"If she contacts you," he said quietly, "you will tell me."

"If she contacts me," Helen said, "I will tell you she is safe."

It wasn't a promise. They both knew it.

He turned back to the window.

Behind him, Helen slipped out, and the door clicked shut.

Luca stared down at the contract in his hand. His wolf had gone quiet, a low, wounded whine.

*She was never the one who ran.*

Down the hall, in the east wing, Lyra sat in front of a gilded mirror in a silk robe, brushing her golden hair. Her phone lit up on the dressing table.

She read the message, and she smiled.

She typed back with one finger.

*Gone. Exactly as you said.*