Rowan's POV
The pillow was wet but she wasn't making any sound.
Rowan lay on her narrow bed in her small room on pack grounds and cried like she'd learned to cry a long time ago. Silent. No sobs. No gasps for air. Just tears that ran down her face and soaked into the white pillowcase while the rest of her body stayed completely still.
She'd learned this in foster care. Learned that if you cried quietly, if you didn't make a scene, sometimes people would just leave you alone. Sometimes they wouldn't get angry at you for taking up space and feeling things you weren't supposed to feel.
The mate bond was still on fire.
Every time she thought it might fade, every time she hoped the pain would dull, it would flare back up again. She could feel Cade moving through the pack house. Could feel him with Victoria. Could sense the way he was performing the role of a content mate even though every part of him was screaming in agony.
The worst part was that she could feel his regret. His absolute certainty that he'd made a horrible mistake. His desperate wish that he could go back three hours and make a different choice. But he couldn't go back. Nobody could go back. What was done was done and the bond between them had turned into a punishment for them both.
Around ten o'clock, Harper knocked on her door.
"Go away," Rowan called quietly.
Harper opened it anyway. She was carrying a tray with soup and bread. "You need to eat something."
Rowan didn't answer. She just stared at the wall and pretended her friend wasn't there. Harper set the tray down on the small desk and sat on the edge of the bed. She didn't touch Rowan or try to comfort her. She just sat there for a long time in the dark.
"I'm leaving," Rowan said finally.
Harper didn't seem surprised. "When?"
"Tonight. I'm packing my stuff and I'm going to walk out of here and I'm never coming back."
"He'll find you," Harper said quietly. "The bond will lead him right to you."
"Then I'll go somewhere far enough away that the bond breaks." Rowan sat up and wiped her face with her sleeve. "Or it won't break and I'll suffer for the rest of my life. Either way, I can't stay here."
Harper looked at her for a long moment. Then she nodded. "Do you need help?"
"No." Rowan got off the bed and moved to her small closet. There wasn't much in there. Two pairs of pants. Three shirts. A thin jacket. A pair of shoes that had a hole in the sole. Everything she owned fit into a single backpack. "I need to do this alone."
Harper stood up. "Okay. But take this." She pressed some money into Rowan's hand. Bills. More money than Rowan had ever held at one time.
"I can't take your money."
"Yes you can. And you will." Harper's voice left no room for argument. "You're going to need it. You're going to need it more than I do."
Rowan wanted to refuse. Wanted to do this the way she'd done everything else in her life. Alone. With nothing. Surviving on scraps and determination. But she was tired of surviving. She was tired of pretending like her life didn't matter.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Harper left and closed the door behind her. Rowan waited for an hour, listening to the pack house settle down. The celebration was still happening somewhere upstairs but it felt distant now. Like it was happening in a different world that she didn't belong to anymore.
Around midnight, she packed her backpack.
Her clothes went in first. Then the few personal things she had. A picture from one of her foster homes where she was smiling even though she was miserable. A journal that she'd kept since she was sixteen. A small carved wolf that a pack member had given her as a gift when she first arrived.
She pulled out a piece of paper and a pen. She thought about what to write. Thought about all the words she could use to explain why she was leaving. All the ways she could make it hurt less.
In the end, she just wrote one line: I hope she was worth it.
She placed the note on her pillow where he would see it when he finally came looking for her.
The hundred dollars that she'd saved from her healing center wages went into her backpack pocket. Along with Harper's money, she had enough to survive for a few weeks if she was careful. Long enough to figure out what came next. Long enough to figure out how to live without the bond pulling at her chest like an anchor tied to a sinking ship.
Rowan took one last look around her room. The narrow bed with its thin mattress. The small desk where she did her healing studies. The window that looked out over the pack grounds. This room had been the first real place she'd ever belonged. She'd felt safe here. She'd felt wanted here.
Cade had made her feel like she mattered.
And then he'd torn that feeling to shreds.
She slung the backpack over her shoulder and moved to the door. Her hands were shaking as she turned the handle. Part of her was hoping that Harper or someone would stop her. That someone would say wait, don't go, you matter too much to lose. But nobody came. Nobody tried to stop her. She was invisible again. Just the way she'd always been.
The hallways were dark. Most of the pack was asleep or still celebrating upstairs. Rowan moved through the shadows like she'd been doing it her whole life. Like disappearing was something carved into her DNA.
She made it outside without running into anyone. The pack grounds were quiet. The main house was lit up with celebration lights but out here it was just darkness and silence and the vast empty sky.
Rowan started walking toward the gates. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it might break right through her ribs. The mate bond was still burning but she tried to ignore it. Tried to imagine it as something separate from her. Something that belonged to Cade but not to her anymore.
She was almost to the gates when she felt it.
His presence through the bond.
Cade had realized she was gone. He was searching the pack house frantically. His panic was so intense that it made her stumble. She could feel him moving room to room, looking for her. Could feel him calling her name even though she couldn't hear him physically. Could feel his wolf clawing at him, desperate to find her and force her to come back.
Rowan didn't stop walking. She pushed harder. Faster. The pack house was a mile behind her now but the bond was still connecting them. It pulled like something alive and wounded.
She felt him reach her room. Felt him find the note. Felt the moment he understood that she was really gone.
His scream was silent but it echoed through the bond anyway. A sound of pure anguish. A sound of someone watching their entire world fall apart.
Rowan wanted to run back. Wanted to tell him that she forgave him. Wanted to believe that maybe everything could still work out somehow.
But she didn't stop walking.
She made it to the main road and stuck her thumb out. A truck pulled over after ten minutes. The driver was an older man with kind eyes who didn't ask where she was going or why she was walking alone at midnight.
As the truck pulled away from the pack grounds, as the gates disappeared behind her, Rowan felt something shift through the bond.
Cade was moving.
He was coming after her. He was running. His wolf was taking over and driving him toward the road where her scent would be fresh. He was going to track her. He was going to find her. He was going to try to drag her back to the pack house and make her understand that he never meant to hurt her.
But the truck was already doing sixty miles per hour on the highway.
And Rowan was already gone.
The mate bond stretched between them like a rubber band being pulled tighter and tighter. It should have broken. It should have snapped under the distance and the force of their separation. But it didn't break. It just kept burning. A constant reminder that even though she was running, even though she was leaving him behind, some part of her was still tied to Cade Stone forever.
She closed her eyes and tried to accept that truth.
And somewhere behind her, miles away but getting closer, she felt Cade's wolf howl.