Or maybe it means I finally understand what Cooper has been trying to show me from the beginning.
He’ll do anything for me.Anything.
I press my trembling fingers to my mouth, careful of my split lip.My cheek throbs.My wrists burn.My shoulder aches from where I hit the van door, but I’m here.I’m alive.
Cooper came for me.I knew he would.Even when the van door slammed shut and darkness swallowed me, I knew.I held onto the thought of him the way someone drowning holds onto a rope.
Cooper will come.
And he did.
The tears start again before I can stop them.
Russo shifts closer.“Landry?”
I rock back and forth, my hands wrapped around my middle.What should I do?I don’t think I can stay here.It’s too much for me.I need to leave, to go to Cooper’s house.Our house.
The thought lands with surprising certainty.
I want to go home.Not to the guest room.Not the place I’m staying while I figure things out.Not a temporary shelter from the cult or the world or my own fear.
Home.
That’s where I want to be when he comes back.
“I’m going back,” I say, taking a step toward home.
“Wait, Cooper told you to stay here.”
“You should go help them,” I tell him.
Russo studies me for a second, then sighs.“He’s going to lose his mind if you’re not where he left you.”
“He already lost his mind.”
“Fair,” he grunts
“I’m not running away.But I can’t stand here listening to this.”
Another roar tears through the forest, low and furious and inhuman.My chest clenches.
“Go.”
Russo nods and gives me one last look before he turns and shifts.I watch as he takes off, sprinting toward the screams.
I walk the other way.I don’t look back.I can’t.If I do, I might see something I’ll never be able to forget.
The walk feels both too long and too short.My body aches with every step, but moving helps.It gives me something to focus on besides the sounds fading behind me.Besides the memory of hands on me.Besides the way Cooper looked when he told me he was going to kill everyone involved in taking me.
I should be scared of him.Maybe a smarter woman would be, but I’m not.
Cooper is dangerous.I knew that from the beginning, even before I understood what being his mate meant.He’s a wolf.A predator.A man raised in a world where protecting what belongs to you isn’t just a promise.It’s instinct.
And I belong to him.
He belongs to me too.
I love him.
