The safe house smelled like nothing.
That was the first thing I noticed when Damon pulled the SUV into the garage and killed the engine. No pack scent. No territorial markers. Just clean air and the faint smell of laundry detergent from the blankets he'd stacked on the back seat.
My daughter was still asleep against my chest. She'd been quiet the entire drive, which I knew wasn't normal but couldn't bring myself to worry about yet. I had a list of things I was allowed to worry about, and it was very short. Breathing. Feeding her. Not bleeding through the hospital scrubs I was still wearing.
Everything else could wait.
"Can you walk?" Damon asked.
I nodded.
He didn't believe me, but he got out and came around to my side anyway, opened the door, and waited. He didn't offer his hand. He just stood there, close enough that if I fell he could catch me, far enough that I didn't feel crowded.
I stood up.
The world tilted. I breathed through it, one hand on the car door, the other supporting my daughter's weight. When it steadied, I took a step. Then another.
Damon walked beside me. Not ahead. Not guiding. Just there.
The safe house was small. One level, two bedrooms, a kitchen that opened into a living room with a couch and a single armchair. The windows had blackout curtains already drawn. There were no photos on the walls, no pack banners, nothing that said anyone lived here. It looked like a place you stayed in between other places.
I liked it immediately.
"Bedroom's on the left," Damon said. "I put the crib together this afternoon. Formula's in the kitchen, already measured into bottles. Wolfsbane kit's under the sink."
I stared at him.
He shrugged. "I've been ready for this call for six months."
I didn't know what to say to that. I walked toward the bedroom instead.
The crib was white and plain and positioned against the far wall, away from the window. The mattress had a fitted sheet, pale green, and there was a mobile hanging above it—wooden shapes, moons and stars, nothing electronic. Beside the crib was a changing table stocked with diapers, wipes, and a stack of onesies still in their packaging.
I stood in the doorway and looked at all of it.
"Aileen," Damon said quietly.
I turned.
He was watching me with the particular stillness he had—the warrior's assessment, the brother's concern, both happening at the same time. He didn't ask if I was okay. He knew better.
"The door doesn't lock," he said.
I blinked.
"None of them do," he continued. "I removed the locks yesterday. If you need to leave a room, you can leave. No keys, no latches, nothing you have to open from the inside."
I pressed my thumb against the bare skin of my neck. The habit had started sometime in the last three days. I didn't remember deciding to do it. My hand just went there, over and over, like it was checking for something that used to be.
Damon noticed. I knew he noticed. He said nothing.
"Thank you," I managed.
He nodded once and left the room.
I stood there for another minute, holding my daughter, listening to the sound of him moving around in the kitchen. Cabinets opening. Water running. The quiet domestic sounds of someone making space for another person.
I laid my daughter in the crib.
She stirred, made a small sound, and settled again. I watched her chest rise and fall. I counted the breaths. When I got to twenty, I sat down on the floor beside the crib and let my head rest against the wall.
I was so tired.
Not sleepy. Tired in a way that went deeper than my body, into the place where my wolf used to be. The silence there was complete. No stirring, no presence, no second voice in my head. Just me, alone inside my own skull, listening to my daughter breathe.
I didn't cry.
I kept not crying.
Damon came back an hour later with a bottle of formula and a plate of toast. He set them both on the floor beside me without comment. I fed my daughter first. Then I ate the toast in four bites, mechanical, because Damon was watching and I knew he wouldn't leave until I did.
"I'm going to make some calls," he said. "I'll be in the other room. If you need anything—"
"I know."
He left.
I stayed on the floor.
Sometime around dawn, I heard him on the phone. His voice was low, but the safe house was small and the walls were thin. I caught pieces.
"—fertility assessments, dated three weeks before the ceremony—"
"—healer records, signed by Wesley himself—"
"—not just rejection. Premeditated from the start."
I stopped listening.
I looked at my daughter instead. She was awake now, staring at nothing in particular, her eyes unfocused in that newborn way. I reached through the crib slats and touched her hand. Her fingers curled around my thumb immediately, instinctive, trusting.
She didn't know yet. She didn't know her father had walked out, that her mother's wolf was gone, that the pack we'd belonged to had already moved on to white roses and a Luna ceremony for someone else.
She just knew my hand was warm.
I held on.
When Damon came back into the room, I didn't look up. I heard him sit down in the armchair by the window. He didn't say anything. He just sat there, keeping watch, the way he'd been doing since the moment I called.
Outside, the sun was rising.
Inside, I pressed my thumb against my neck one more time, felt the empty skin, and started counting my daughter's breaths again.
One.
Two.
Three.
I could do this. I could keep counting.
