The room was too quiet when I woke the next morning.

I remained there for a while without raising my eyes.

I was still under the blanket.

My mind was still woozy and half strangling from last night's fog.

The room smelt of him-Damien.

But the bed was empty when I eventually rolled over.

"Damien?" I called out, my heart racing.

Maybe he was in the bathroom?

But the hotel room was neat.

It dawned on me that all of his stuff from last night had been moved out.

There was no note on the pillow and no number on my phone that was left lying on the bedside table.

Infact, there was nothing that would suggest that he had ever been here or that he would even return.

I was shocked by my grief because I hardly knew him anyway.

He was a one night stand.

I simply sat there with sunlight seeping across the room from the drawn curtains.

I wondered if the carpet had been pulled from beneath my feet.

I huddled under the sheet.

I lay there for hours staring at the door as though I could manage to will him back into it.

But he didn't.

By evening, I realized I had to leave.

Damien wasn't coming back.

But I couldn't bring myself to.

At least until the phone rang.

"Hello!" Iris voice came through the moment I took the call. "Where the fuck are you?!"

I sat up in bed.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Wherever you are, get down here," she all but screamed at me. "They've found you."

I felt a pang in my chest.

"Who? Who found me?" I asked as I was instantly overcome by fear.

"Just com back ho—"

The line broke.

"Hello? Hello?" I called.

The line went flat.

My heart was thumping as I climbed out of bed and hurried into the clothes I could find.

Mine has been torn beyond salvaging but there was a white shirt on the bed.

It smelt like Damien.

He must have left it behind.

My jean skirt was alright though my entire underwear was not at this point.

My things survived though.

I didn't realize what was curling in my stomach had become something much more poisonous.

I didn't realize any of it until I was getting dressed to actually leave the hotel premises.

It burnt through me, that shame and that rage at being abandoned in a hotel room.

Was this why Iris said to avoid men?

I forced myself to believe that I didn't care about Damien's disapperance.

But the flames that kept burning in my chest betrayed me.

I drove home with the windows rolled down.

I was inevitably trying to get the cold air to shock my brain back into place.

But it didn't work.

When I arrived home, I sat outside in the car, crying like a child who lost her candy at daycare.

Anpd thirty minutes later when I felt better, I stepped out of the car and headed in.

I had just planted my feet on the porch of the small house that I shared with Iris when her voice floated out the open kitchen window.

It was soft and strained as if she did not wish to be heard.

"She can't stay here," Iris was saying.

My ears pricked.

"If the Alpha discovers her too soon, then each and every one of us would be in danger."

I paused to listen.

"I will get her to leave."

My eyes widened.

Leave to where?

I threw the door wide.

"What was that?"

Iris spun around so fast that the phone nearly dropped from her hand.

"Selena!"

She looked stunned.

"Who is in danger?" I demanded. "And who on earth are you getting to leave? Me?"

My brows rose high.

Iris went pale.

"You, you weren't supposed to hear that."

"What Alpha?" I snapped. "What were you saying? Who in earth is looking for me?"

She tried to say something but it came out as an incoherent stammer instead.

"Hello?" A voice called from the speakers.

She turned away from me.

"Hang up the telephone," she said quickly into the receiver. "I'll call you right back."

After she hung up, she turned to me.

She swallowed, rubbing her hands together.

"Iris," I began, "get on with it this minute."

My voice was shaking, not just from anger, but from a fear that I didn't want to admit to.

Her lips were pursed as though she were keeping something in.

"I can not tell you everything," she said at last.

"Can't tell me?" I asked her with scorn.

My voice was bitter.

"Seriously? I come home to find out that you're here discussing some Alpha finding out about me and you say you won't explain?"

She sighed softly.

"Selena, you are in danger. You have to leave this pack this instant," she begged.

I scoffed in disbelief.

"You think I'm just going to pack a bag and leave the pack hust because you said so?"

She closed her eyes and inhaled.

Then she opened them as she exhaled.

"Selena, please. It's for your protection.".

I crossed my arms, my heart racing.

"Then tell me. Because the only thing I do know is that last night I made the biggest error of my life and today you are asking me to flee."

She stepped forward to touch me, placing her hands gently on my shoulders.

"If you trust me, you'll go now. I have already prepared a bag for you."

I was immediately taken aback.

My eyes went wide.

"You've packed a bag? For me?"

"I said it would happen sometime."

Her voice shook.

She shook too, with fright.

"Selena, there are others who will hurt you if you stay. They are searching for you already."

I opened my mouth to counter her.

But before I could even say something in response, the front window cracked.

I leaped aside as window burst inwards and shards of glass shattered on the floor.

The front door came flying open and two huge wolves, not ordinary wolves, tumbled in.

I gasped and so did Iris.

But that wasn't enough as another ferocious black wolf came in through the broken window.

"Run!"

Iris screamed as she placed the bag into me hands and pushed me toward the back door.

I hadn't even seen the back before this moment. "Don't look back, don't delay!"

"I'm not leaving you!" I shouted.

But she was already off, already burning with magic that I had never seen her employ.

"You can't save me," she growled. "Run!"

The black wolf struck first probably because it was the closest to her.

She blocked it with bursts of fire from her fingers as she recited spells.

The wolf went up in flames.

The air filled with burning fur and the sound of sharp claws scraping against the wooden floor.

I lingered long enough to see her bounce the other wolf across the room in a flash of light.

Then the second one leaped at her and she turned to meet its leap.

She had a calm face.

She was focused.

She could take care of herself.

She always could.

So I ran.

I ripped the back door loose with the packed bag thudding against my hips.

I sprinted out of the yard.

I was panting by the time I hit the street.

But I did not stop.

Then, I heard the sound of heavy footsteps as they came up behind me.

And I realized as I ran that I was not alone.

I did not want to turn.

But I did.

And I found two men, not wolves but men, as they were coming up on me.

They were not men actually too.

Their eyes shone a pale gold and their teeth were ever so slightly too sharp.

I kept running faster.

My legs were burning with pain and my body was screaming in exhaustion.

But I couldn't stop.

They would kill me.

My heart was thumping as if it wanted to burst right out of my ribcage.

I ran towards the town center which I knew would be crowded with humans.

They couldn't attack me there.

I noticed a bus paused at the stand with the doors about to shut just in time.

"Wait!" I shouted, waving frantically.

The driver stared at me like I had lost my mind, but he opened the door.

I clambered aboard, instantly falling onto my knees as the door closes behind me.

"Are you alright, miss?" he asked.

"Leave me alone," I screamed.

I stood to my feet in trembling legs and looked outside the bus to see the men coming up.

"Go, go, go!" I screamed at the driver in panic.

He cocked an eyebrow at me.

But he ignited the bus and started to move.

Then, I breathed easy.

I turned to see the men as they slowed down along the roadside.

Their angry scowls met my gaze as they came up behind the bus.

I watched them until they vanished into the trees.

I didn't breathe again until we went past the turn the bus had taken.

My hands shook so violently that I almost let go of the bag that Iris had given me.

I rested my head against the icy glass and cried quietly as the city rushed past.

If I had listened to Iris and gone back home last night, maybe all this would not have occurred.

Mayhap I wouldn't be fighting to live.

I wouldn't be feeling this hollowness and this ringing pain because of Damien.

I arrived a different city, miles away after about five hours of travelling.

After jumping eleven buses and masking my scent like Iris had thought me to with the scent maskers in the packed bag.

There was a house waiting for me in the outskirts she had sent me to.

I hadn't been more thankful to have Iris and I knew that she was going to be alright.

And when I found out I was pregnant six weeks later, I felt cocooned by doom.

I resented Damien for abandoning me.

I resented myself for loving him after only just once.

I gazed at the test in my tiny bathroom of the new apartment with my new name.

It wasn't supposed to have happened.

I should have taken the pill.

I should have been careful.

My stomach dropped and my hands curled around the counter until they were white.

Iris wasn't there to guide me.

She didn't even know that I was pregnant.

I hadn't had a chance to call her since the night that I had nearly died.

When I finally lost my cool and cried to the nurse at the clinic to remove it, she gazed at me with a great deal of sympathy.

She informed me that I was too far along for the path of least resistance.

So I gave birth.

I lived in fear daily.

But so did something else—betrayal, resentment and bitterness for Damien.

I had opened my heart to a man who had given me nothing and now I was pregnant.

I legally changed my name, moved again, and even tried to disappear.

But by night when my palms pressed my not so flat stomach, I couldn't help but hear that voice at the back of my head.

What if those Damien discovers about it before those evil people find me?

And even worse, what if he never does?