The Alpha's Forbidden Vow novel Chapter 9

POV: Selene

Zane’s final, cruel words were the catalyst.

The fear and despair that had paralyzed me for days now crystallized into a single, sharp point of purpose.

Survive.

Protect my child.

The transition from passive victim to active planner was immediate.

The terrified girl was gone, and in her place was a mother.

The first step was money.

He had thrown it at me as an insult, a way to erase his sin.

I would use it as my salvation.

The next day, I took a bus into a larger, more anonymous city an hour away.

I walked into a bank where no one knew my face or the cursed name I carried.

With trembling hands, I exchanged the thick wad of hundred-dollar bills for smaller, untraceable denominations.

The stack of cash felt heavy in my worn backpack, a weight of sin and survival.

My next stop was the public library.

The Volkov manor had an extensive library, but I knew every keystroke on their computers was likely monitored.

Here, surrounded by the quiet hum of strangers, I was anonymous.

I sat in a dusty carrel in the back, the flickering screen illuminating my face.

For hours, I researched.

I looked at maps of the most remote parts of the country.

I searched for small, forgotten towns, far away from any known pack territories, places where werewolves were just myths.

Places where a powerful Alpha King would never think to look for a disgraced orphan.

I needed somewhere I could disappear.

Somewhere I could work a simple job and raise my child in peace, far from the brutal politics and suffocating power of the world I was born into.

I finally found it.

A delicate silver chain with a crescent moon pendant.

It was a simple, beautiful thing, a relic from a life I could barely remember.

A life before the Volkovs.

I fastened the chain around my neck, the cool metal a comforting weight against my skin.

It was a promise.

A promise of a new beginning.

A promise to the tiny, secret life growing inside of me.

Two days later, I used a library computer again to buy a one-way bus ticket to a town thirty miles from Creekwood.

I printed it out.

Looking at the flimsy piece of paper in my hand, with its departure time and seat number, my heart pounded with a mixture of terror and exhilarating hope.

This was it.

The point of no return.