POV: Silas

Evelyn's scent remained on Silas's shirt after the florist van carried her away.

Rain, hospital soap, warm skin, and the faint iron edge of healing blood.

His mate.

His wolf pressed against his ribs, demanding that he follow the van, climb inside, and put Evelyn back where she had been—against his chest, arms around his neck, trusting him with her full weight.

Hold me.

The two words had become claws.

Silas stood beneath the hospital loading dock while the black sedan reversed out of the alley. Every part of him wanted to chase Evelyn instead.

He stayed.

Protection was not always proximity. Sometimes it was letting the person he wanted most disappear without him because his presence was the trail enemies followed.

Ronan picked up the broken phone left by the fake security guard. "Vehicle plate is fake. Driver is wearing a municipal jacket."

"Let them see me here."

"You want them to think Evelyn stayed behind?"

"I want them uncertain which target matters."

The florist van had taken Evelyn and Sophie to a temporary room above Elsie's bakery. Maeve went with them. Bishop drove. No one used the club radio.

Silas had not been told the exact room.

Evelyn's condition.

Her rule.

His wolf despised it.

His phone held one message from her, recorded while the florist van was still moving.

He played it again.

"We're safe. Sophie says the flowers look like giant pink cabbages. I'm still wearing your sweatshirt. I hope that's all right."

A pause followed, filled by road noise and Sophie's voice arguing that cabbages could be romantic.

Then Evelyn spoke more quietly.

"Thank you for asking before you picked me up. And for holding me after I said yes."

The message ended.

Silas brought the phone close enough that her scentless voice filled the space beneath his helmet. His wolf wanted to answer with a howl. His body answered in a different, equally inconvenient way.

He remembered her legs against his arm. Her breasts pressed to his chest. The soft exhale at his throat when she realized he would not drop her.

Wanting her was no longer an abstract bond. It had weight. Heat. The shape of her arms locked behind his neck.

He recorded a reply.

"You can keep the sweatshirt."

Deleted it.

It sounded as though he were giving permission for something already hers to choose.

He tried again.

"I'm glad you're safe."

Deleted that too. Too small.

Ronan watched him fail a third time. "Thirty-five years old, controls an armed club, defeated by voicemail."

"Drive."

"Romantic. Send that."

Silas put the phone away without answering.

Ronan sniffed the air near him. "You look like you're arguing with yourself."

"I am."

"Winning?"

"No."

"Good. I hate one-sided fights."

Briar emerged from the loading dock carrying a pharmacy manifest. "The stolen patient list included Evelyn's medication schedule. Whoever follows her doesn't need the van. They can follow the medicine."

Silas looked at the printed route. A contracted pharmacy delivered antibiotics and pain medication to protected patients twice a day. The afternoon van would leave in forty minutes.

"Grant knows she can't miss the antibiotic," Briar said.

"Then we let him follow it."

Ronan smiled. "Can I be the patient again?"

"No."

"You fear my range."

The trap took thirty-two minutes.

Miriam obtained written permission from the pharmacy. Briar placed two sealed evidence trackers in the delivery crate. Bishop changed the route in the driver's tablet so the van ended at an abandoned urgent-care clinic outside town. Four helmet cameras covered the parking lot. County investigators waited inside behind dusty blinds.

The real medicine left by motorcycle in Maeve's locked field kit.

Silas watched her ride away.

Evelyn was somewhere at the end of that route.

His wolf lunged after the bike so hard his teeth ached.

Mine.

She is not a possession.

Mate.

She chose distance.

The animal did not understand why choice should matter more than instinct.

Silas understood because Evelyn had already lived with a man who called possession love.

He would cut off his own hands before offering her the same cage with warmer walls.

"Your eyes are gold," Briar said.

Ronan stepped between them too quickly. "Lighting."

They were standing in a parking garage.

Briar looked at the gray concrete ceiling. "Of course. Sunlight."

"Rare indoor variety."

Her gaze moved from Ronan to Silas and back. She knew they were lying. She also knew this was not the moment to force the truth.