Page 3 of Warded By His Wolf

“You can’t stay here,” he said. “The timeline makes this apartment dangerous before morning.”

I should have argued. Demanded proof. Called someone to verify. That’s what reasonable people did when a stranger filled their doorway and told them to leave their lives behind.

I didn’t feel reasonable. I felt seen. For the first time in three years, someone had listened to what I said and written it down without deciding how much of it to believe.

I was standing two feet from Maddox Reed and I was aware of him the way you’re aware of a fire, with your skin, before your brain.

“How long do I have?”

“An hour.” His eyes moved to the hallway, already calculating. “Pack light. The safehouse has what you’ll need.”

“And if I have questions on the way?”

“Ask them. I’ll answer the ones I can and tell you plainly when I can’t.” His gaze held mine a beat longer than the logistics required. “I don’t do the other kind of answer.”

I moved toward my bedroom. His voice stopped me.

“Ms. Bennett.”

I turned back. He stood exactly where I’d left him, hands in his pockets, that impossible stillness holding him in place. Watching me like the answer mattered more than it should have.

“Will I be coming back?”

His pause was a single breath.

“That depends on what we find.” A beat. “But I’m not leaving without you either way.”

“That’s not the same as yes.”

“No,” he said. “It isn’t. I don’t make you promises I can’t keep the arithmetic on.”

“Is that a policy or a personality trait?”

“Both,” he said, and something in his voice suggested it cost him nothing to admit it.

I went to pack.

My bedroom was a map of the person I was about to stop being.

Bag from the closet. Two sweaters. The vision journal, three years of softened warnings I suddenly needed to keep, evidence of every time I’d been right and managed back into doubt. Charger. Socks. The small things that make a life portable.

My hands were steady. Steadier than they’d been in weeks, actually, which was information I didn’t know what to do with yet.

“You’re doing fine,” Maddox called from the front room, not loud, just enough to carry. “Take the two minutes you need. I’d rather you pack right than pack fast.”

“You can hear me deciding whether to bring the second pair of boots?”

“I can hear you breathing differently when you’re deciding something.” A pause. “Bring the boots.”

From the front room: the quiet sounds of Maddox checking my locks one more time. Not because he doubted himself. Because he was the kind of man who checked anyway.

The plants on my windowsill caught the streetlight. The throw blanket my grandmother made before she died. The books I’d bought and hadn’t read. I wasn’t coming back. I knew it the way I knew the visions were real. Whatever life existed on the other side of this night, it wasn’t going to fit inside these walls anymore.

I zipped the bag. Straightened.

My phone lit up on the nightstand.

Unknown number. No area code I recognized.