Morgan's POV
My fingers grip the cold window latch, and I yank the glass wide before I can talk myself out of this insanity.
Pre-dawn air hits my face with a slap of pine and frost, and my packed bag goes sailing into darkness below before my brain catches up with my hands.
'Excellent arm,' my wolf observes dryly. 'Now follow it before Sarah breaks down that door.'
I swing one leg over the sill, and my foot finds the narrow ledge beneath. My weight shifts forward, ready to drop, when the memory crashes through my panic with perfect terrible timing.
The folder beneath my mattress.
'Absolutely not,' my wolf snarls immediately. 'We are leaving this building in the next thirty seconds, and that folder is not coming with us.'
"That folder is the only proof I didn't kill my mother," I hissed back, already pulling my leg inside. "Without it, I'm a murderer for the rest of my life."
'You're going to be a corpse for the rest of your very short life if you don't keep moving right now.'
My feet hit the floor, and I cross to the bed in three strides.
Lifting the mattress one-handed proves difficult when my body refuses to bend the way thinner frames do, so I drop to my knees and shove upward with both arms until the manila folder comes into view—pressed flat against wooden slats where I've hidden it since Elena helped me gather the evidence.
'Morgan, I swear on every ancestor we share, if you die retrieving paperwork—'
"Then haunt me about it later," I snap, snatching the folder and shoving it into the waistband of my pants.
The door behind me swings open with a crash that rattles my bones.
Sarah stands in the threshold, silk robe hanging loose over her nightgown, blonde hair tangled from sleep. Her eyes lock onto me with the predatory focus I've learned to fear over eleven years of torment.
I drop the mattress and bolt toward the window, my body making the decision my frozen mind cannot process. My palms slam against the sill, and I vault half through the frame before Sarah's voice stops me cold.
"I knew you'd try this eventually." Sarah's voice carries that familiar edge of cruel amusement that's haunted me for years.
She stops mid-step, and her nostrils flare wide as she draws a long breath through her nose. The shift in her expression happens so fast I almost miss it—rage dissolving into recognition.
She's scented the pregnancy. She knows about the baby.
'Jump,' my wolf commands. 'Jump now before she opens her mouth.'
I don't wait to hear what Sarah will say about the child growing inside me.
My body drops from the second-story ledge, and the ground rushes up with brutal speed. I land hard on both feet in damp soil, the impact jarring through my ankles and knees with a shock that steals my breath entirely.
'Bag,' my wolf snaps. 'Grab the bag and run.'
My fingers close around the worn strap, and I haul the weight onto my shoulder while my legs pump toward the tree line. Behind me, Sarah's voice tears through pre-dawn silence like a blade.
"Morgan!"
The scream follows me across the grounds, my name twisted into accusation and fury. But I'm already running, my boots pounding against dew-slick grass as darkness swallows me whole.
'Left,' my wolf directs, mapping the shadows with a clarity that still feels borrowed. 'Eastern patrol route passes twenty yards ahead in four minutes.'
"How do you know that?" I gasp, veering left through a gap in the hedgerow.
'Because unlike you, I actually paid attention when Zane showed us the security rotations during those early walks you pretended were exercise.'
My lungs burn as I circle wide around the path I now remember from stolen hours with Paul's brother. The route carved through my muscle memory without conscious knowledge, guided by a wolf who absorbed everything I tried to ignore.
'Faster,' she urges. 'We need to hit the tree line before the patrol doubles back.'
The pines loom ahead like sentinels, dark branches reaching toward a sky beginning to lighten along the eastern ridge.
I push harder, legs screaming protest, until the forest canopy closes overhead and the packhouse lights disappear behind layers of needles and shadow.
Only then do I let myself breathe.
'Keep moving,' my wolf insists, but her voice carries less edge now. 'Distance matters more than rest.'
I stumble forward through the underbrush, one hand pressed against the stitch forming in my side while the other clutches my bag strap with white-knuckled desperation.
"I need to call Ricky," I manage between gasps. "She's the only one who can help us."
'I'm aware of the plan, thank you for the recap.'
"Your sarcasm is really not helpful at this particular moment."
'Neither is stopping to argue with me, and yet here we both are.'
I fish Ricky's phone from the front pocket of my bag—the one I've used exclusively since the day she pressed it into my palm, Elena's phone left behind in my nightstand drawer where it can't betray my location.
The screen glows harshly in darkness as I thumb her contact. The rings stretch eternal while my wolf paces restless circles through my nervous system.
"Morgan?" Ricky's voice comes thick with sleep, then sharpens immediately into alarm. "It's five in the morning—"
"I know." My words come out flat and steady, borrowed calm from a place I didn't know existed. "I need you to stay awake and I need you to not ask me anything yet. I'm coming to you."
Silence stretches across the connection, and I picture Ricky sitting upright in bed, reading everything I'm not saying between my carefully chosen sentences.
"Are you hurt?" The question carries no judgment, only concern.
"No." I glance back toward where the packhouse would be visible if trees weren't blocking my view. "But I will be if I don't move. I'll explain when I get there."
"Morgan—"
I end the call before she can say more, before concern transforms into questions I can't answer while standing in enemy territory with Sarah's scream ringing in my skull.
'That was rude,' my wolf observes mildly.
"Survival often is," I reply, shoving the phone back into my bag and starting toward the distant glow of city lights beyond the forest.
'You know I'm going to have opinions about every decision you make for the foreseeable future.'
"And you know I'm going to learn how to shut you off eventually."
'Bold claim from someone who needed my help navigating through basic darkness.'
My feet carry me forward through the pre-dawn forest, each step putting distance between me and everything I thought I knew.
The mountains rise purple against the lightening sky, indifferent to the girl running through their shadows with stolen evidence and a secret growing beneath her skin.
'Where exactly are we going after Ricky's place?' my wolf asks quietly.
"Somewhere they can't find us," I answer, and the promise tastes like freedom and terror in equal measure.
________________