บททั้งหมดของ I Will Find You: บทที่ 51 - บทที่ 60

HollandTodd and I took the long way around the packhouse—down the back steps, past June’s herb beds, along the path where the cottonwoods throw dappled shade like lace on the grass. It’s our route when we mean to talk and not just sweat. He had a to-go mug that definitely wasn’t coffee (bone broth, the man is an evangelist), and I had water because June can sense dehydration through walls.“I want to ask you something big,” I said, and my voice didn’t wobble, which felt like proof I was leveling up at being myself.Todd angled us toward the bench that faces the river. “Shoot.”“If I… if I said yes to being Luna.” Saying it out loud made the air around the words get more real. “What does that actually mean? Not the fairy-tale version. The true job description, not the small paragraph run down from before. The parts people don’t put in recruitment posters.”He didn’t rush. He took a sip, rolled his shoulders, found the gear he uses when he explains complicated things without making you

HollandWe were sleepy with the kind of happiness that doesn’t perform. After dishes and a last shared lemon bar (we negotiated; he “lost”), we brushed our teeth at the same sink, bumping shoulders, trading the mirror like civilized adults. In bed, we lay facing each other with the blankets tucked up around our chins like kids at a sleepover.“I love you,” I said first, just to hear it land again.“I love you,” he echoed, the words warm enough that the room didn’t need the lamp.We kissed, not to chase heat, just to seal the ordinary miracle we’d made. When I rolled against him, he made that small contented sound that says home, and I tucked my foot between his calves like I’d been doing it my whole life. We let the night be quiet and kind. No tests. No new edges. I fell asleep with his breath in my hair and the bond purring like a cat that had finally found its favorite lap.Morning came politely. For once, my first thought wasn’t fear; it was coffee. My second was him. I reached acr

RemyThe room froze in that particular pack way—stillness that is not surrender but measurement. I set my fork down, not gently. “Not tonight,” I said.She ignored me with weaponized grace. “Remy, darling, even you can’t be surprised. She is human. Your kindness could fill this entire house and still be a chandelier to her—pretty, heavy, and not built for hands like hers.” She buttered bread like a threat. "The weigh of being Luna is heavy. The weight of being a human Luna of a wolf pack is even heavier."She asked me such direct questions about becoming Luna yesterday. What does the ceremony feel like? How loud is the pack? What if Angel was right?Sharlotte’s face did something like a snarl in a mirror. Todd’s jaw jumped. June put her knife down the way you put down a story you’d like to finish differently and didn’t. I heard my own pulse in my ears.“Holland loved this house,” I said, simple, because if I fed the argument it would get ideas. “She loved us. She chose to be here.”“S

HollandThe hand over my mouth tasted like old coins and drugstore cologne. He dragged me backward—not a sprint, a practiced, ugly walk that kept me off-balance and silent. I kicked, remembered Todd’s drill—heel down, elbow back, bite on the web between thumb and finger—but he had the angle, the leverage, the surprise. My phone flew from my hand, a brief flash in the grass, and then the hedge swallowed it.We skirted the drive and slid through the gap in the hedge like two ghosts with very different plans. Down the block. Left. Right. The world bent into smaller streets where porches slouched and mailboxes leaned like old men. He never ran, just hauled me like luggage he was used to carrying, one arm a band around my ribs, one hand locked across my mouth. The mate bond jolted once—an electrical bark under my sternum—and then went quiet, as if it had decided too much noise would get me killed.We reached the house I would learn by smell before sight: mildew and mouse droppings and the

RemyBy noon, the map on my office wall looked like a bad quilt—pins and red thread and arcs of possibility that meant less than the ache in my chest. We’d swept the east bank, the rail cut, the derelict lots behind the cotton gin. Nothing but wind and old metal. Every hour I didn’t find her taught me a new flavor of fury.Pierce paced behind my ribs, a metronome set to go. Again, he said. Again. We missed the trail. Go wider. Go now.We went. Again. Wider. Now. Jacek ran the river loops with two Omegas who could track better than most hounds. Todd started door-to-door with a photo and a script—We’re looking for our friend; have you seen her?—that didn’t insult human sense. Banks called the three corner stores on our perimeter and watched the feeds until her eyes hurt.By two, Angel had drifted through the foyer twice like perfume looking for a room. I didn’t give her one. I didn’t have a single spare thing to give to anything that wasn’t Holland.At two-oh-eight, Sean pinged the link