BOUND BY FLAMES - The Alpha Twin's Obsession

Chapter 3- Running Again

Laura's POV

I didn't wait for morning.

I gathered what little I had — the clothes on my back, a thin blanket I tied around my shoulders like a cloak — and slipped out of the guest room while the house was still dark. Whatever Dylan was capable of, I'd seen and heard enough tonight to know I didn't want to find out the rest firsthand.

The hallway was silent, the staircase waiting at the end of it like a held breath. If I could reach the main door before anyone noticed, I'd be free of this place before the sun came up.

I made it as far as the front hall.

"Where do you think you're going?"

I froze. Ethan stood against the wall, arms crossed, watching me with an expression that wasn't quite surprised.

"I need air," I said, and immediately wanted to disappear. A blanket cloak and bare feet were not the wardrobe of someone going for air.

"With a blanket tied around your shoulders?" He didn't bother hiding his skepticism.

"It gets cold," I said weakly.

Ethan sighed and pushed off the wall, closing down some of the distance between us. "You're a terrible liar, Laura. Go back upstairs before you get yourself in trouble."

"No," I said, and the steadiness in my own voice surprised me more than it seemed to surprise him. "I'm leaving. You can't stop me."

He studied me a long moment — and then, to my shock, stepped aside, nodding toward the door.

"Go, then," he said. "But if the Alpha comes after you, I won't be the one standing between you and his temper."

That was more than enough reason to run.

I didn't wait for him to reconsider. I pulled the door open and ran, the cold night air slapping against my face, and didn't stop until the trees swallowed me whole.

The forest was darker and less familiar than the one I'd grown up in, but fear made an excellent guide. I ran until my lungs burned and dawn broke pale gray through the branches, and somewhere in that gray light, the outline of my old pack's border came into view. Relief nearly buckled my legs out from under me.

"Where the hell have you been?" Stacy's voice cracked across the yard before I'd even reached the door.

"I got lost. Rogues took me, but I got away," I lied, the words tumbling out clumsy with exhaustion.

Her eyes narrowed. "Rogues? You don't have a scratch on you."

"I hid," I said, lowering my gaze the way four years had trained me to. "It was the only way I could survive."

Her hand caught me across the face before I saw it coming. I hit the ground, the sting blooming hot against my cheek.

"Maybe you should've stayed with them," she hissed. "You're useless here as it is, and thanks to your carelessness, a patient nearly died in my hands while you were off playing lost."

I said nothing. There was nothing to say that wouldn't earn me a second strike. This was the version of me Stacy had built over four years, brick by brick — silent, small, compliant — and I hated how easily I slipped back into her the moment I crossed onto her land. It wasn't that I'd forgotten how to fight. It was that here, unlike in Dylan's house, there was no bond, no leverage, nothing at all standing between her hand and my face. Fighting Stacy had only ever meant losing worse.

"Go to your room," she snapped. "You'll work twice as hard to make up for this."

I went. The walls of my old room felt smaller than I remembered, the air thinner. A few hours in a stranger's house had shown me, more clearly than four years ever had, just how small my life here actually was.

Sleep didn't come easy. When it finally did, it was full of dark eyes and roads and headlights.

Morning arrived with Stacy's fist against my door. "Up. I need more herbs, and don't come back empty-handed this time."

I dressed and went, grateful, at least, for the excuse to be outside her walls. I found the herbs quickly, my hands moving on an old habit, and started back toward the house.

I was crossing the road when my satchel slipped and spilled onto the dirt. I bent to gather it — and the roar of an engine ripped through the quiet.

I barely threw myself clear as a sleek black car screeched to a stop where I'd been standing.

"What the hell?" I shouted, scrambling up, ready to give whoever was behind that tinted glass a piece of my mind I hadn't had the chance to give Stacy in years.

The door opened. My voice died in my throat.

Dylan.

"You've got to be kidding me," I breathed.

He looked just as thrown as I felt, his dark eyes catching mine — except something about them was different. Less flint. More concern than I'd seen in him even once in his own house.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, and there was no command in it at all, just worry, plain and immediate.

I stared. Why would he be gentle now, after everything?

"No," I said, stepping back anyway. Whatever was happening, I wasn't falling for it.

"Is there a healer nearby I can take you to? You look shaken."

"I know what you're doing," I said, gathering what was left of my nerve. "You won't get me back. I'm not going back to your pack. You're a monster, and I want nothing to do with you."

I turned and ran before he could answer, expecting at any second to hear him following. He didn't. But something about the way he'd said, "Are you hurt?" like it was the only thing in the world that mattered at that moment followed me the whole way home anyway, snagging at the edges of my certainty.