He gave her the truth she could safely carry.

"If I look at you right now, we will miss the convoy."

Her breath warmed the back of his neck.

"Then keep looking forward."

But she held him tighter.

The lead riders moved.

The convoy split at the first intersection into six streams, each containing riders of similar size in identical black jackets. Maeve and Sophie disappeared inside the western group. Silas and Evelyn took the northern road with forty bikes surrounding them.

The first turn came too quickly.

Evelyn's body stayed upright while the motorcycle leaned. Her grip jerked tight around Silas's stomach.

"With me," he said through the helmet connection. "Don't fight the turn."

"The road is moving."

"Technically, we are."

"Not helpful."

Her fear sharpened her scent. Silas's wolf reacted instantly, urging him to stop, lift her off the motorcycle, and carry her somewhere solid.

Instead, he slowed without breaking formation.

"Look over my shoulder toward the exit of the turn. Let your knees follow my hips."

"Your hips?"

The word traveled through the helmet in a way that made his body painfully aware of every place they touched.

"For steering purposes," he said.

"Obviously."

The next curve opened ahead. Evelyn leaned when he leaned. Her thighs tightened around him. They came upright together.

Her laugh filled his helmet.

It was breathless and surprised, nothing like the careful sound in the hospital. Silas wanted to keep turning forever if every curve gave him that laugh.

"Again," she said.

His wolf approved.

They took the next bend faster.

Evelyn moved with him this time, no hesitation. The motorcycle became a shared rhythm—his hands, her knees, the road answering beneath them. Each time she trusted his body with the turn, the bond warmed.

At the straightaway, she loosened one arm long enough to wave at Sophie in the western group crossing an overpass above them. Purple goggles flashed beneath Maeve's raised hand.

Sophie bounced in the sidecar harness.

"She's smiling," Evelyn said.

"So are you."

"You can't see me."

"I can smell it."

There was a pause.

"That's disturbing."

"It gets worse."

"Is that a warning?"

"A confession."

Her arms returned around him, more deliberately than before.

Two patrol cars waited near the town limit.

Their lights came on.

None of the motorcycles accelerated. None stopped. They traveled exactly at the speed limit while spectators streamed the procession from both sidewalks.

An officer stepped into the road, then retreated when forty legal motorcycles approached in disciplined formation.

Ronan's voice entered the helmet channel. "North group clear. East group has acquired three enthusiastic state troopers and one grandmother on a trike."

"Is she ours?" Bishop asked.

"No one knows."

"I like her," Evelyn said against Silas's back.

His wolf approved of everything she liked.

At the county line, the patrol cars turned away.

The northern group scattered in pairs onto forest roads. Ten miles later, only Silas and Evelyn remained. The mountains opened ahead, dark pine beneath a clean sky.

The quiet should have eased him.

Instead it stripped away the noise that had helped him resist her.

He could feel the exact shape of her palms through his shirt. Every breath pressed her more firmly along his spine. Her knees rested against his thighs; her scent gathered inside his helmet despite the wind.

His wolf built a home from those details.

A room with no locked doors. Evelyn asleep against him. Sophie laughing somewhere down the hall. His scent on both of them, not as a warning to ownership but as proof that someone dangerous stood between them and the world.

The vision hurt.

Silas had spent years believing wanting nothing was the same as being free. Now one woman held his waist and made every empty year feel like exile.

He did not know whether the bond was showing him a future or inventing one to torment him.

He knew only that if Evelyn removed her arms, he would feel the loss everywhere.

Her arms never left his waist.

At a red light in the next town, she loosened one hand.

Silas immediately missed it.

Then she slid her palm beneath the open edge of his vest and rested it over his heart.

The bond inside him flared.

For one impossible second, he felt not only her touch but her exhaustion, fear, and a thin bright thread of wanting that matched his own.

Evelyn inhaled sharply.

"Silas."

She had felt something too.

The light turned green.

Behind them, a black SUV rolled through the intersection after the red.

The motorcycle's mirror caught the driver's face.

Dr. Nolan Keene.