Page 113 of Broken Wolf Heart
I look at him. “You should.”
A muscle in his jaw twitches. “I don’t even know what that kind of life looks like.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” I say. “You get to find out.”
He doesn’t say anything to that, and the silence lasts for a long while after that.
At the end of it, we don’t hug. Don’t do some dramatic goodbye. Crow just stands up, shifts again, and disappears into the trees like he never stopped running.
I wait a minute.
Then I pull out my phone and type a message.
Need your help. Just you and Mac. Location incoming. —G
Then I head for the safe house. Home.
The sun is nearly gone when I get there. Dusk casts long shadows across the front porch, the whole place soaked in stillness.
But it’s not as still as it should be.
I’m not alone here either.
I slip into the backyard and let myself in through the door off the master bedroom. Silently, I snag a pair of shorts and pull them on. My wolf paces under my skin, not with rage this time but something heavier. Anticipation. Exhaustion. Dread.
I step through the bedroom door, expecting some assassin from my father’s pack.
Instead, I freeze at the sight of my mother.
Serena Diavolo stands at the stove, stirring a pot like she’s lived here for years, though her hand trembles as she sets the spoon on the counter. Her hair is down. She’s wearing one ofLexi’s old hoodies. She looks… softer. Less like the regal, put-together woman I know and more like some girlish version of herself I’ve never met.
She turns, though I’ve made no sound. Her eyes meet mine, and in them live all the memories of my failures.
I can’t move. I’m not sure I’m breathing. What’s she doing here? How did she find it? Not that I don’t want her here, but her presence means this place is no longer safe. When she returns to my father, we risk?—
“Hi, Grey,” she says softly.
“What—how are you here?”
She steps toward me slowly, as if she thinks I might bolt. “Lexi slipped me a note at the funeral.”
She holds out a scrap of paper. I take it and read Lexi’s handwritten words:If you want out, come.Underneath it are coordinates to the house.
And then I realize: the quick greeting we gave her at Franco’s funeral. Lexi’s hand in my mother’s, squeezing. Slipping her a note, apparently.
My mate did this.
In the middle of her grief, amid fighting a war with my father, under the weight of leading a pack that didn’t ask for her—she still thought of my mother. Of me.
A knot forms in my chest. Not just for my mom, who made it out, but for Lexi, who made it happen.
“I didn’t know,” I whisper. “She didn’t tell me.”
“She said you wouldn’t let yourself hope if you knew. Said you’d try to talk her out of such a risk.”
“Wait. When did she say all that?”
“She told Razor to come find me after the funeral. He helped me unbind myself, and then he drove me here. I didn’t even go home to pack a bag.”
