POV: Evelyn

The doctor who had diagnosed me without meeting me was following us through a red light.

"Nolan Keene," I said into Silas's helmet.

His body changed beneath my arms.

Not visibly. His hands remained steady on the handlebars, and the motorcycle held its line. But the warmth between my palms became tension—muscle, breath, and something larger pressing beneath his skin.

"Are you certain?"

"I saw his photograph on the clinic website."

Silas checked the mirror. The black SUV stayed two vehicles behind.

"Hold on."

I was already holding him.

I tightened my arms anyway.

The Harley accelerated through the next curve. Nolan followed. He had abandoned any attempt to hide now, crossing the center line to keep us in view.

"Where are we going?"

"Somewhere with cameras."

Silas turned off the mountain road toward a twenty-four-hour truck stop. Six fuel pumps stood beneath bright white lights. Families moved between parked cars. A state trooper drank coffee beside the entrance.

Public. Recorded. Difficult to quietly rewrite.

Silas parked directly beneath Camera Four.

The SUV stopped across two spaces.

"Stay on the motorcycle," he said.

I removed my helmet.

"No."

His golden eyes found mine.

"Evelyn—"

"He built the cage Grant used. I want to hear him explain it."

Silas's wolf wanted to refuse. I could feel that now—not words, exactly, but a violent pull toward shelter. His hands almost reached for my waist before he locked them around the helmet instead.

"Then I stand beside you."

"Beside."

"Not in front."

The fact that he understood the distinction made courage easier.

Nolan stepped from the SUV wearing a charcoal coat over a white shirt. He was younger than I expected, perhaps forty, with silver beginning at his temples and the composed face of a man who charged by the hour to tell other people what their own minds meant.

He smiled at me.

"Mrs. Quinn."

Silas went still.

My legal name sounded different in Nolan's mouth. Not an identity. An address to Grant's property.

"You've been difficult to reach," Nolan continued.

"We've never spoken."

"Your husband consulted me extensively about your condition."

Silas removed his gloves one finger at a time.

The movement looked calm unless someone noticed the leather tearing near his thumb.

Nolan noticed.

"Mr. Blackwood," he said. "Your presence is worsening her paranoia."

"Her husband drove her off a mountain."

"That is what she currently believes."

My fear turned into something cleaner.

"Currently? You wrote that I suffered persecutory delusions eighteen months ago. What did I believe then?"

Nolan's smile remained. "This is not an appropriate setting for treatment."

"There was never treatment. I did not attend the appointments you billed."

He glanced toward the truck-stop windows. People were beginning to watch.

Silas set my helmet on the motorcycle seat. His phone rested beside it with the camera facing outward.

Recording.

Nolan lowered his voice. "You have endured a traumatic event. Your medication disruption is causing heightened aggression."

"Which medication?"

"Evelyn—"

"Name it."

He made the mistake because he wanted to prove authority.

"Your nightly forty-milligram dose of Paroxetine cannot be stopped abruptly. Neither can the clonazepam Grant reported you refusing."

I had never been prescribed Paroxetine.

Grant had crushed white tablets into my wine.

The truck stop tilted.

Silas's hand hovered near my back.

"Don't," I whispered.

He stopped before touching.

Nolan mistook the moment for victory. "The dizziness is withdrawal. You need to come with me before you hurt yourself or your child."

I looked at the physician who had just named the pills used to drug me.

"My hospital toxicology report found both medications in my blood," I said. "Neither appears in my pharmacy record. How did you know the dose?"

His face changed.

Only for a second.

Enough.

The state trooper near the entrance lowered his coffee.

Nolan recovered. "Your husband provided a medication list."

"Before or after the crash?"

"Patient confidentiality prevents me—"

"I'm the patient."

Ronan's voice came through Silas's helmet, still hanging from the handlebars. "Someone should print that on a label for him."

Nolan looked toward the sound.

"You're transmitting this?"

"Preserving it," Silas said.

"You have no idea what she is."

The sentence struck differently from the others.

Silas heard it too.

"What is she?" he asked.

Nolan's gaze moved to Silas's eyes.

"Not yours."

Silas's wolf hit the surface.

Gold flooded his irises. His teeth sharpened behind closed lips. The need that moved through the bond was immediate and brutal: take me behind him, pull me against his chest, remove the man who still called me Mrs. Quinn.

Silas did none of it.

He stood beside me exactly as promised.

"You followed a protected patient across county lines," he said. "You knew medication details absent from her chart. And now you're discussing ownership. Keep talking."