Page 56 of Yours to Break

“Can’t you check them faster? Come on,” I snarled, hating howuncomfortableI was. Fucking feelings. Who knew?

“Give me a fucking minute, be grateful I haven’t found him yet. I started at the time he would—” Hayes’s eyes narrowed at the small screen.

“What? Find him?” I ripped the phone out of his hand, scanning the frame until I locked onto fluffy brown hair.

Bolting across the backyard, with a slight limp in his gait, Oliver slipped through the gap in the treeline like a shadow in flight. I was both relieved and angered. Relieved that he hadn’t gone to the road at the front of the property, but also angered that he hadn’t. Why had he chosen to run into the fucking forest and not to the road to either get picked up or walk in the general direction of civilization? But no, our tiny, five-foot-four escapee had ventured into the woods of Washington. Either he hadn’t been thinking clearly, or he had experience with the outdoors that we didn’t know about.

“That was just a little over ten minutes ago,” I said, a rush of relief flowing through me as I looked at the timestamp.

Hayes and I didn’t speak as we bounded down the stairs, running to the back of the house, and shoving the door open. The cold early morning air all about slapped my face, but I didn’t feel it. Adrenaline smothered everything. I could hear the forest breathing in front of us—branches shaking, leaves stirring. He was so close.

Hopefully, he was prepared to be hunted.

We gave chase.

The woods weren’t tame. They were wild, raw, thorn-laced. I pushed through without hesitation, ducking under branches, boots tearing into soft soil. Hayes stayed at my side, matching pace like he always did, eyes sparkling at the trail of broken ferns and snapped twigs before us.

The air was sharp with pine and panic, the sun not yet risen. He’d gone in without light. No supplies. No plan. No shoes.

He didn’t have a chance.

“Where do you think you’re going, pet?” Hayes muttered low beside me, not expecting an answer. He was smiling—barely. The kind that came with fangs.

I should’ve been furious still at his escape. Maybe that was what Oliver was expecting—it did make logical sense; running away from your captors would make them mad. Usually.

What Oliver hadn’t known was how much we fucking loved primal play.

“Did he think we’d just let him go?” I asked, not even to Hayes, maybe just to the trees.

We found a spot where it looked like he’d slipped—a patch of churned earth where he must’ve lost his footing. Hayes crouched and brushed his fingers through the disturbed dirt, then nodded forward. “Come on, obviously he got up. Let’s find him before he manages to hurt himself any more than he already has.”

My chest ached, and not from the brisk air scraping my lungs. I didn’t get it. Well, not completely. We hadn’t hurt him—notreally. We’d held back, hadn’t we? And the little brat liked pain anyway.

I dodged a low-hanging branch and gritted my teeth. Something inside me pulsed louder than the sound of my footsteps—something like frustration, or maybe guilt, though I hated that word. I wasn’t built for shame.

But I was starting to realize Oliver couldmakeme feel it.

Why the fuck did he run? We’d given him space, hadn’t we? We tried to be patient and care in the only way we knew how. We didn’t punish him when he pulled away. We backed off. That counted for something. That was restraint.

And yet he still had jumped off a roof to get away from us. What did he think of us as? Monsters?

Maybe we were, but he didn’t have to run. He could’ve talked to us and told us what was wrong. If he had just said it—whatever it was—we would’ve fixed it. We were new with feelings, but we’d figure it all out for him.

I wanted to scream. Not at Oliver, but at the fact that something in us kept breaking around him. Every word he said had weight. Every silence even heavier.

He made uscare. And now he was out here, alone, terrified, hurt, probably freezing—and it was our fault, even if I didn’t know how or why.

But we’d find him, save him. And when we did, he was going to talk. He was going to look me in the eye and tell me why he ran—why he didn’t trust us. And then, no matter how broken or dumb the reasons were, we’d find a way to fix it.

Because letting him go wasn’t an option. It never had been.

Hayes stopped so suddenly that I nearly collided with him.

He knelt again, brushing aside a patch of brittle leaves with the back of his hand. “There.” He pointed to a strip of fabric snagged on a thorny bush. A thread clung to the branch like it didn’t want to let go.

I grabbed the branch and snapped it clean off. “He’s bleeding,” I muttered, seeing the faint rust color on the thorns. Hayes’s jaw tightened beside me. We didn’t say it, but the same thought was eating both of us.

He was hurt. Again. Without us there to make it better. Hadn’t he listened all those times we’d told him that he couldn’t survive without us? That he needed us to take care of him and keep him safe?

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