His Rejected Mate, His Hidden Heir

Chapter 6 — The Escape

The new moon rose like a wound in the sky — dark, silent, offering nothing but the absence of light.

Exactly what I needed.

I'd counted every one of the eighteen days. Marked them off in the notebook with a pencil stub so short I had to hold it between my knuckles. Each day brought more money and more sickness and more of Miranda's sharp eyes following me through the kitchen like a hawk tracking a limping rabbit.

But she hadn't found me out. Not yet. And now "not yet" had become "too late."

The rain started at nine PM — a cold, steady downpour that turned the courtyard to mud and drove the night patrol toward the shelter of the watchtower. I watched from my window as two wolves in human form jogged past, shoulders hunched against the rain, and disappeared through the east gate.

Now.

I pulled the backpack from under my mattress. It was small — a faded green thing I'd found in the lost-and-found bin behind the laundry room, too worn for anyone to miss. Inside: two changes of clothes, a bag of trail mix from the kitchen, a water bottle, the stolen bus route map, and $127 in crumpled bills. Not five hundred. Not even close. But the new moon wouldn't wait, and neither would my body — the morning sickness was getting worse, and soon it wouldn't be morning sickness at all. Soon it would be obvious.

I zipped the bag, pulled my hood up, and opened the door.

The corridor was empty. The boarding house was quiet — most of the pack members who lived here were either on duty or asleep. I moved on silent feet, the way I'd learned to move in seventeen years of being invisible. Past the communal bathroom. Past the stairs. Past Elara's door, where a thin line of light showed under the frame — still awake, probably reading.

I didn't stop. I couldn't. If I stopped, I'd think. If I thought, I'd doubt. And doubt would kill me faster than any wolf.

The kitchen entrance was at the back of the building, through a hallway I'd walked a thousand times. The door stuck in summer and froze shut in winter and always, *always* creaked when you pushed it open. I'd oiled the hinges three days ago, telling Marta I was doing maintenance. She'd looked at me like I'd grown a second head — hybrids didn't volunteer for extra work — but she hadn't questioned it.

The door opened without a sound.

The rain hit me like a wall. Cold, heavy, immediate — it soaked through my thin jacket in seconds, plastering my hair to my skull, running down my neck and under my collar, over the mark. The mark hissed against the rainwater, a brief flash of sensation — not pain, just awareness — and then went quiet.

I stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind me.

No going back now.

* * *

The forest was a wall of black.

On a normal night, even a half-moon would have given me enough light to see the trail. But tonight there was nothing — just the rain drumming on leaves, the mud sucking at my shoes, and the distant pulse of the mark on my neck, steady as a heartbeat I didn't want.

I didn't need to see. I knew this forest the way I knew the kitchen — every path, every root, every stream. I'd been running these trails since I was old enough to walk, always at the edges, always alone, always the hybrid girl who couldn't keep up with the full-blooded pups but could outrun any human.

My hybrid blood gave me just enough. Not the raw power of a full-blooded wolf, not the speed or the senses, but something in between — endurance, mostly. The ability to keep going when my body screamed to stop. The stubborn, quiet strength of someone who had never been given anything and had learned to make do with scraps.

I ran.

The rain was both enemy and ally. It masked my scent — the most important thing, because even on a new moon, a wolf's nose was sharper than any human's. If I could keep the rain between me and the patrols, I had a chance. But it also made the ground treacherous — roots slick with water, mud that grabbed at my ankles, streams swollen to twice their normal width.

I crossed the first stream at a run, the cold water splashing up to my knees. My shoes were soaked through. My socks squelched. The baby didn't like the jarring — a wave of nausea rolled through me, and I stumbled, caught myself on a tree trunk, and kept going.

Don't throw up. Don't throw up. Not now.

I didn't. Barely.

The second stream was wider. Too wide to jump, too deep to wade without soaking everything above my waist. I looked left, right — no fallen logs, no stepping stones. The rain was getting heavier, and I could hear something behind me. Not footsteps. Not exactly. Just a... presence. The feeling of being watched.

The patrol.

I didn't think. I stepped into the stream.

The cold was a shock that went all the way through me, from my feet to my chest to the mark on my neck. The current was stronger than I'd expected — it pulled at my legs, tried to sweep me downstream. I planted my feet on the rocky bottom, wrapped my arms around my stomach, and pushed forward.

Protect the baby. That's all that matters. Protect the baby.

The water reached my waist. My teeth were chattering so hard my jaw ached. On the other side, I pulled myself up the muddy bank, collapsing onto wet leaves and pine needles, gasping.

The presence behind me faded. The patrol had passed — or whatever I'd heard had moved on. Either way, I was still alone.

I lay there for thirty seconds, letting the rain wash over me, letting my heartbeat slow. Then I got up and ran.

* * *

The boundary line was three miles past the second stream.

I knew when I was close because the forest changed. The trees thinned. The undergrowth became scrubby and sparse. The air smelled different — less pine, more open sky, more road.

I also knew because the mark on my neck started to hurt.

Not the warm pulse I'd grown used to. This was different — a pulling sensation, like something hooked behind my sternum and was trying to drag me back. The farther I walked, the harder it pulled.

The bond,* I realized. *It knows I'm leaving.

I pressed my hand over the mark and pushed forward. The bond yanked — hard enough that I staggered, hard enough that a sound escaped my throat, something between a gasp and a whine. I clamped my jaw shut and kept walking.

You don't control me. You don't own me. I am not yours.

The pulling intensified. My chest ached. My legs were shaking — from the cold, from the running, from the two hours of terror and adrenaline that had replaced the last eighteen days of planning. I was soaked to the bone, shivering so hard my vision blurred, and the mark was *screaming* at me to turn back.

I didn't turn back.

I walked. One foot, then the other. Through the last line of trees, across a dirt road that led to the highway, past a rusted fence that had been here so long the forest had almost swallowed it. The rain was letting up — a bad sign, because it meant my scent would start to carry again. I needed to keep moving.

And then, somewhere between one step and the next, the pulling stopped.

Just — stopped. Like a thread that had been stretched to its breaking point and simply... released. The mark went quiet. The ache in my chest faded to a dull throb. And I was standing in the middle of nowhere, soaked and shaking and completely alone, with nothing behind me but darkness and nothing ahead but a road I'd never walked.

The boundary line was invisible, just an unmarked spot in the forest, but crossing it felt like stepping off a cliff. I had no pack. No protection. Just the tiny life growing inside me and a desperate, burning will to survive.

I didn't look back.

I turned east, toward the highway, and started walking toward a town I'd never heard of, with a name I'd only seen on a stolen bus map — Maplewood. Three hundred miles away. A world away.

Three hundred miles,* I told myself, wrapping my arms around my stomach. *That's all. Just three hundred miles.

It was the longest three hundred miles anyone had ever walked.

But I was walking them.

* * *

The boundary line was invisible, just an unmarked spot in the forest, but crossing it felt like stepping off a cliff. I had no pack. No protection. Just the tiny life growing inside me and a desperate, burning will to survive. And somewhere behind me — three hundred miles, two streams, and one broken bond away — an Alpha who didn't know what he'd lost was sleeping through the new moon, unaware that the most dangerous person in his territory had just become the most dangerous person outside it.