Semua Bab RECLAIMING THEIR EX-BREEDER : Bab 11 - Bab 20

Calla’s POVThe cab rolled to a stop at the edge of Central Station and I had the door open before the wheels had fully settled.“Thank you,” I told the driver.He didn’t respond. His eyes were already back on the road, his radio already being switched to a different station. Whether that was guilt or indifference, I didn’t have the bandwidth to care.I stepped out into the cold with Adele in my arms and the bag slung across my back and I started walking.Central Station at this hour was not empty. That was the thing about cities … they never truly slept. There were people here, scattered across the wide concrete forecourt like debris after a tide had pulled back. A man in a construction vest eating something wrapped in foil. Two women sharing a cigarette outside the main entrance. A teenager asleep across three chairs with a backpack for a pillow.Normal people living normal lives with nobody hunting them.I kept my head down and moved through them.Adele was heavier than usual. He

Calla’s POVThe safe house was a narrow brownstone on a quiet street that didn’t appear on any map Tyson had ever shown anyone.That was what he told me as he pushed open the front door and stepped aside to let me through. I didn’t ask how he knew that. I didn’t ask much of anything. I was running on the last fumes of whatever had been keeping me upright for the past several hours and the only thing I had the capacity to focus on was the warm weight of Adele in my arms and the grinding, relentless pain in my shoulder.Inside was modest. Clean. A narrow hallway that opened into a sitting room with two mismatched sofas and a lamp that cast a low amber light across the walls. A kitchen just visible through a half open door. Stairs at the end of the hall leading up into darkness.It smelled like nobody lived here.It smelled safe.I stood in the middle of the sitting room and didn’t move for a moment. Adele had fallen back into her medicated half sleep during the drive over, her forehe

Calla’s POV We left before the city woke up. Tyson had the car packed and idling at the snow-capped 4:45. I carried Adele down in her blanket, her rabbit tucked under her arm, her boots left unlaced because she had insisted on wearing them despite the hour and I hadn’t had the energy to argue. She was still warm from sleep, heavy and pliant, her dark hair a wild tangle against my shoulder. I strapped her into the back seat and climbed in beside her. Tyson pulled away from the curb without a word and the safe house disappeared behind us into the dark. The first day of driving was mostly freeway. Los Angeles gave way to its own sprawl in the slow, reluctant way that the city always did… Block after block of strip malls and gas stations and identical intersections that made you feel like you were covering no ground at all, like the city was a treadmill that kept regenerating itself just ahead of the wheels. Then gradually the buildings dropped in height. The gaps between t

Calla’s POV Three months. It had taken three months for the new place to begin feeling like something other than a waiting room.The house Tyson had brought us to sat at the edge of the valley, backed up against the tree line with the river visible from the kitchen window on clear mornings. It was not a grand house. Nothing like the Blackthorn pack house with its imported furniture and crystal chandeliers and endless corridors that always felt like they were watching you. This house had low ceilings and wide windows and wooden floors that creaked in specific, predictable places that I had long since memorized. I knew which step on the stairs announced itself loudly enough to wake Adele. I knew that the kitchen window stuck unless you lifted it slightly before pushing. I knew that the corner of the sitting room caught the last of the evening light in a way that lasted exactly twenty minutes and was worth stopping for. Three months. And I knew the bones of this place the way I

Calla’s POVI was sweaty, sore, and ready to collapse.Training with Tyson was not the kind of thing you walked away from feeling good about yourself. It was the kind of thing you walked away from feeling like your arms had been replaced with wet noodles and someone had quietly removed all the bones from your legs while you weren’t paying attention.I pushed open the door to my room and immediately dropped onto the edge of the bed.Just for a second, I told myself.Just one second.I sat there breathing. My hair was everywhere. There was dirt on my left elbow that I had no memory of and my shoulder, the one that had been wrenched in the alley three months ago, was throbbing slightly but it happened whenever I pushed it too hard.And I had definitely pushed it too hard.Outside the window, the valley was doing its usual beautiful thing , the golden afternoon light sitting on top of the green hills, the river catching it here and there and throwing it back up in bright little flashes.