Chapter 58

Cora

I could not stop thinking about how quickly my life had turned to ash. The flames had caught faster than I expected.

As Riley and I drove away, they licked up the walls of my old apartment with terrifying grace, devouring the memories etched into every floorboard and tile. Smoke coiled upward like a serpent, greedy and unrelenting.

No matter how much distance I put between us and the place we had once called home, I could not shake the sound of crackling wood, the brightness of the inferno against the sky.

It felt like a funeral.

My own.

The fire had been necessary. It was the only way to tie up the loose ends in my life. The person who had once been Cora was now dead, officially.

Everything had been in place to make sure that the fire blazed on for a sufficient amount of time. I’d shattered my old phone and tossed the remains out the car window as we drove. I'd even disabled the fire alarm before striking the match so the blaze could spread unchecked for long enough to seem irreversible.

It had to be convincing. For Riley’s safety. For Kingston’s future.

Of course, I had thought the only issue would be that there would be no human remains. If I were able to successfully and completely disappear, though, perhaps it wouldn’t matter.

But they did end up finding a body after all.

I hadn’t seen his car parked behind the building, obscured by overgrown hedges and the shadows cast by an unlit alley. I hadn’t smelled or heard him. In fact, I hadn’t sensed him at all.

Maybe I was so focused on escaping that my instincts dulled, or maybe my own dogged determination had silenced the wolf inside me.

I didn’t find out until the next morning.

We were already hundreds of miles away, holed up in a cheap roadside motel just off the interstate that had allowed me to pay in cash. The morning was lazy, relaxed, even if on the inside I was panicked.

Riley was watching cartoons, curled beneath starchy, bleached sheets, while I sat on the edge of the bed with a cup of bad coffee and a stolen moment of silence. That’s when the news alert lit up the burner phone I had purchased a hundred miles back.

BODY RECOVERED FROM BLAZE IN CEDAR HEIGHTS—FIRE UNDER INVESTIGATION.

I tapped it. My fingers went cold.

The article named the building, then Zach.

My ex-husband.

Found in the bedroom. Unrecognizable with the damage done to his corpse, but confirmed through dental records.

I dropped the phone.

I hadn’t known Zach was inside.

The room tilted, reality cracking open like ice. I stood, stumbled into the bathroom, and threw up everything I had: breakfast, guilt, panic, all of it.

My knees hit the cold tile. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

Zach had come back.

Why? To grab something? To… to try and see me? We hadn’t spoken in weeks thanks to Kingston’s intervention.

Perhaps he had come back for a place to stay after he had gotten himself into too much debt, losing his wolf and job and home all in the quick span of weeks. Maybe he came back to the last place he had felt comfortable.

I supposed it didn’t matter, though. Not really. He would never be able to answer.

And now he was dead. Because of me.

I sat on the floor of that tiny bathroom until Riley started calling for a snack. My chest felt hollowed out. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

I’d killed a man.

Unintentionally, yes. But the match was mine. The fire was mine. His death—his blood—was on my hands.

The ache that had lived in my chest since walking away from Kingston now bloomed into something more monstrous. I had thought losing him was the worst pain imaginable. But this… this was different.

This was guilt like I had never known. I had not loved Zach in the end, but I had never intended for this to happen.

This feeling was knowing that in trying to protect the people I loved, I’d hurt someone I once did. And no one would ever know. They couldn’t.

I couldn't tell Kingston. I couldn't tell anyone. It was too dangerous. Too damning.

So I swallowed it down. Every horrible thought. Every tear I didn’t have time to cry.

Riley needed me to be focused. Alive.

So I swallowed down my sobs and returned to Riley. I got him a snack and gave him a smile.

When he asked what was wrong, I merely stretched my grin to the point of pain and said, “Nothing, buddy. You ready to hit the road?” in the most enthusiastic voice I could muster.

He would never know about this.

I had protected Riley from Zach by leaving that man, and I would protect him from his ghost by plunging forward.

Later that day, we drove on. Past towns with names I couldn’t pronounce. Past diners and gas stations and blinking neon signs that hummed like static.

Each mile put more distance between me and the fire, but not between me and what I’d done.

Sometimes Riley would ask where we were going. I told him we were going on an adventure, just like I promised. He didn’t question it. He was too young, too trusting.

And it killed me a little more every time he smiled.

We crossed state lines under the cover of a storm. Rain pelted the windshield, and for a moment, I wondered if I could just drive forever. Keep fleeing until the guilt thinned out into numbness.

But grief has a way of following you. It packs itself into the quiet hours, the silence between songs on the radio, the space between your heartbeat and your breath.

And that night, after Riley fell asleep beside me, I let myself grieve.

I curled against the motel headboard, knees pulled to my chest, and cried silently into my pillow.

I cried for Zach. For Kingston. For myself. For all the love I had ruined and the future I had burned down with one desperate spark. One last stand.

I thought of Kingston’s eyes, the way they crinkled when he emitted a rare smile. He would be grieving now. He would believe I was gone. Dead.

He would be devastated and broken.

But alive.

Because he had to be.

I stared at the ceiling fan spinning lazily above me. My wolf stirred for the first time in days, a soft ache in my chest like she was trying to speak, but had no words left, or at least lacked the strength to speak them.

It was reassuring, at least, to still feel her there.

I don’t know how long I sat like that, listening to the hum of electricity and the soft breaths of my son.

Eventually, I whispered to the dark, “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t know if it was meant for Zach… or Kingston… or the part of myself I’d buried in the flames.

But it had to be enough. It was all I had left.

Tomorrow, I would start over again. A new name. A new town. A new life built on the ashes of the old one.

Because that’s what mothers do. We survive. We do everything for our kids without question or fear. I would keep living in spite of it all because Riley depended on it.

Even if it meant living like a ghost.