"Carla," I said, "did the hospital administrator issue that order, or did Sergeant Mercer?"

Her face changed.

"I was told police requested notification."

"The same police currently explaining why they pointed guns at an empty ambulance."

Ronan lifted his laundry bag. "The coffeepot survived. Thank you for asking."

Carla looked toward the camera in the corridor. Then she removed her access card and held it against the freight-elevator panel.

"The dock camera has been broken since Tuesday," she said. "Maintenance is very slow."

The elevator opened.

"Thank you," I whispered.

"I didn't see you."

"Neither did the camera," Ronan said. "Tragic system failure."

The loading dock waited one floor below.

Rain swept beneath the metal awning. A white linen truck idled beside stacked carts. Beyond it, Bishop sat in a florist van decorated with enormous pink peonies. No motorcycles. No leather. Nothing Grant expected.

Maeve rolled Sophie's cart toward the van.

The dock door banged open behind us.

The fake transport worker from upstairs had not been alone.

A man in a security jacket ran through the doorway, phone raised. He did not try to stop us. He only needed a picture.

"There!"

Ronan dropped the laundry bag across his path. The man stumbled but stayed upright.

Silas moved.

He reached the stranger before the phone camera could focus, caught his wrist, and turned him against the brick wall. The phone hit the concrete.

"Delete it," Silas said.

"Already uploaded."

An engine revved beyond the dock.

A black sedan waited at the alley mouth.

Grant's next set of eyes.

"Go!" Silas ordered.

Maeve pulled Sophie from the cart and ran for the florist van. Bishop opened the side door. I took one step and pain folded me.

My knees struck wet concrete.

Silas released the stranger.

He was beside me before I could breathe, hands hovering near my shoulders.

"Evelyn. Tell me where."

"Stitches. I moved wrong."

The sedan began rolling toward us.

"Can I lift you?"

Every instinct shaped by Grant screamed that being carried meant losing control.

Another instinct—new, reckless, and entirely mine—wanted Silas's arms around me so badly it hurt more than the stitches.

"Yes."

He lifted me against his chest.

His breath broke.

The sound was not effort. It was hunger.

His wolf rose beneath his skin, a hot, powerful presence that seemed to recognize my weight, my blood, my breath. His arms tightened once as if he meant to pull me inside his ribs and keep me there.

Then he forced them loose enough that I could move.

"Too tight?"

"No."

I wrapped both arms around his neck.

This time I chose the grip.

Silas went utterly still.

"Hold me," I said.

His control broke only in the way he exhaled my name.

Then he held me.

Not like cargo. Not like evidence. Like something precious he desperately wanted and did not believe he was allowed to keep.

Ronan opened the florist van door. "I hate to interrupt the emotional breakthrough, but we're being followed by a sedan full of poor decisions."

Silas carried me inside.

Sophie climbed beside us and pressed her rabbit drawing against my armored vest. The van accelerated as the black sedan entered the loading dock.

Bishop drove through the bakery district instead of taking the highway. The florist van leaned around corners, paper peonies trembling above the dashboard. The sedan stayed behind us.

"They saw the van," Maeve said.

"Let them," Bishop answered.

At the next light, a second florist van pulled out from an alley.

Then a third.

All three were white. All three carried the same pink flowers, borrowed from Elsie's wedding-delivery contractor. At the intersection, one turned east, one continued north, and ours entered the underground loading bay of a grocery store.

The black sedan hesitated.

It chose north.

Ronan's voice came through Bishop's radio. "Your admirers are following van two. Mr. Peonies is offended but committed to the role."

"Who is driving it?" I asked.

"Elsie."

I tried to sit up. "The seventy-three-year-old diner owner?"

"She threatened to poison anyone who told her no."

Silas's arm remained around my back, holding me steady without pinning me.

"She has done worse for less," he said.

The grocery bay door closed behind us. For ten quiet seconds, I listened to his heartbeat beneath my ear.

His chest rose too carefully, as if even breathing might take more of me than I had offered.

I shifted closer.

His heartbeat stumbled.

The reaction sent an unexpected warmth through me—part fear, part power, part awareness that this dangerous man wanted something from me and was waiting to be given it.

I did not move away.

Through the rear window, I saw the security man pointing after us.

We had escaped the hospital.

We had not escaped the hunt.