Chapter 2

Portland was supposed to be temporary. I gave myself a new name, a fake backstory about domestic violence and an unknown father, and spent three months lying to social workers while my body did something I still hadn't fully accepted.

Finn came on a full moon. Twelve pounds, and the first thing he did wasn't cry—he just looked at me, eyes flashing gold in the lamplight before I explained it away as a trick of the light. The midwife I'd paid in cash didn't ask questions. I was grateful for that.

I named him Finn. Not the name I'd imagined for some distant, hypothetical baby. Just the name that fit the small, serious creature who stared at me from day one like he already knew something I didn't.

I built a life around him the only way I knew how. An online store selling organic skincare under a name nobody could trace, a rule against routines, and a second rule against getting attached to anything I couldn't pack in twenty minutes.

He walked at eight months. Climbed everything in sight by ten. By two and a half he was the size of a four-year-old and had never once fallen and hurt himself, not even when he probably should have.

I told myself it was just good genetics.

By the time he was two and a half, three neighborhood dogs had taken up permanent post outside our front window.

"Mama, why do they always follow me?"

He was standing with his nose pressed to the glass, watching them watch him. I kept my eyes on my laptop.

"Maybe they like you," I said.

Maybe they recognize what you are.

He accepted that with the particular seriousness he had for everything, and went back to watching the dogs.

Mrs. Flores knocked that afternoon with a container of soup and a smile that asked no questions. She'd been that way since we moved in—warm, present, never intrusive. Finn hid behind my legs the whole time, which she pretended not to notice.

"Special boy," she said before she left. "Very aware."

Too aware. But I smiled and said thank you.

That night I was tucking Finn in when he looked up at me with those gold-flecked eyes.

"Mama, why don't I have a daddy?"

I kept smoothing his hair. "Some families are just different, baby. It's you and me."

"I know." He was quiet for a moment. "But I can smell him sometimes. When you have the sad dreams. Like the woods. Like somewhere far away." A pause. "Are we hiding from him?"

I didn't answer right away.

"We're just living our life," I said finally. "Our safe life."

He nodded like he believed me.

He didn't.

Three months later, a bulk inquiry came in through the store. Herbal sleep aids, substantial order, very interested, can meet anytime. I almost didn't look at the sender's address.

wolfpack_portland@protonmail.com

I read it twice, closed the laptop, and sat very still.

Coincidence, I told myself. It has to be.

I deleted it and didn't sleep that night.

The next morning, Mrs. Flores stopped by with coffee and mentioned, very casually, that a man had come around asking about me the day before. Looking for his sister, he said.

Sophie Martinez.

"I told him I don't know anyone by that name," she said, and her eyes were steady in a way that told me she knew exactly what she was doing.

I kept my voice even. "What did he look like?"

She thought about it. "Tall. Dark hair. Very—" she searched for the word. "Hungry. His eyes were hungry. Like wolf."

I thanked her, walked her to the door, and locked it behind her.

That night, I started packing.