Leonard’s POV

​I reached out through the mind-link again, my patience wearing thin. "Leo? I’m in Australia. What hotel are you staying at?"

​The silence on the other end lasted a heartbeat too long. When he finally responded, his mental voice was sharp, laced with a strange kind of panic.

​"You’re in Australia?"

​"Yes," I snapped back, rubbing the bridge of my nose as the bright lights of the terminal gave me a headache. "I told you I couldn’t stay in that house, Leo. I had to get away before I shifted and killed someone. I took a public flight. I’m at the airport now—where are you?"

​"What are you doing in Australia?" he demanded. He sounded unhappy—no, he sounded furious that I had followed him.

​"Leo, I told you I can’t stay at home!" I growled back, my frustration boiling over. "Stop asking me crap. Where the hell are you? Which hotel are you in?"

​"I’m... I’m not in Australia right now," he spat. I could feel the hesitation in the link, a panicked edge to his thoughts. "I stopped by New Zealand for a quick business matter. Look, go to the Grand Azure Hotel. Book a suite there. I’ll be with you shortly."

​"Leo, what the hell is going on?" I pressed, my wolf narrowing his eyes at the obvious deception. "Why are you acting so—?"

​"Nothing is going on!" he cut me off, his mental voice echoing with a harsh authority. "Stop interrogating me, Leonard. I’m not your baby. See you at the hotel."

​The link snapped shut. I stared at the bustling crowd, a deep frown etched onto my face. Something was wrong. Leo was hiding something, and the way he had reacted made my skin crawl with suspicion.

​I signaled for a taxi and gave the driver the address. By the time I reached the Grand Azure, the sun had fully set, leaving the city glowing in neon. I checked into a suite on the top floor. All I wanted was a drink and a few hours of sleep to quiet the growling of my wolf.

​As I stepped out of the elevator on the twentieth floor, the hallway was long and silent, lined with thick, plush carpet that muffled my footsteps. I rounded the corner, but as I made the curve, I caught a glimpse of someone about twenty yards ahead.

​A woman was just entering a room.

​She was wearing a simple hoodie, her head down as she stepped through the doorway, but the way she moved—the graceful, light-footed gait—made my heart skip. She turned her head slightly to check the hallway just as the door began to close behind her.

​I froze. My breath hitched in my throat, and for a split second, the world stopped spinning.

​Scarlett?

​The profile, the curve of her jaw, the way her hair fell over her shoulder... it was her. It had to be her. I started to move toward the door she had just disappeared behind, my heart hammering against my ribs.

​But then, the scent hit me.

​I inhaled deeply, expecting the sweet, familiar aroma of nutmeg that had haunted my dreams for three years. Instead, I smelled nothing but chemicals—the sharp, sterile scent of hotel soap and a faint hint of a floral fragrance that was entirely wrong. There wasn’t even a trace of a wolf on her. This woman smelled flat. Human.

​I stopped in my tracks, leaning my head against the cold wallpaper of the hallway. I let out a pained, self-deprecating breath.

​"Get it together, Leonard," I whispered to the empty air.

​I was seeing things. I was so haunted by her memory, so broken by the grief of losing her, that my mind was playing cruel tricks on me. I had come to Australia to escape the ghosts of our past, but it seemed I had brought them with me.

​I turned away from the door and walked to my own suite, sliding the keycard into the lock. Entering the room, I collapsed onto the king-sized bed, the silence of the suite pressing in on me. My mind kept replaying that split second in the hallway—the girl who looked like Scarlett. It was pathetic how my subconscious was trying to resurrect a dead girl just to give me some peace.

​Suddenly, a sharp, intrusive pressure hit my temples.

​"Leonard? Where are you and Leo? Why aren’t you answering my mind-links?"

​My mother’s voice was like a needle to my brain. The woman who had lied for five years, who had watched us suffer under a plan she helped orchestrate, was now playing the concerned parent.

​"Don’t ever contact me again," I projected back, my mental voice dripping with hate. "Consider us dead to you, just like you were dead to us."

​Before she could respond with another lie or a fake apology, I slammed my mental shields into place, blocking her out entirely. I tossed my phone onto the nightstand. My life was a wreckage. I didn’t know what I was doing in Australia. I didn’t know how to exist in a world where my parents were traitors and my mate was a ghost I had spent years punishing for a crime she didn’t commit.

​I eventually fell into a dark, dreamless sleep, fueled by exhaustion and whiskey.

​The next morning, a heavy, rhythmic pounding on my door jerked me awake. I didn’t even have to look through the peephole to know who it was. The air was thick with a familiar, aggressive Alpha scent.

​I pulled the door open, and Leo practically stormed in. He looked like he hadn’t slept a wink. His eyes were bloodshot, his jaw was tight, and he looked absolutely furious.

​"Now you’re following me, Leonard?" he snapped, pacing the length of my room like a caged beast. "I told you to stay put. I told you I had things to handle. What the hell is your problem?"

​I didn’t back down. I glared at him, crossing my arms over my chest, my own wolf rising to the surface to meet his aggression.

​"My problem?" I repeated, my voice dangerously low. "My problem is that my brother is acting like a goddamn fugitive. You’re up to something, Leo. You’ve been twitchy and secretive since your trip from Nigeria. You didn’t go to New Zealand—no one flies to New Zealand for a ’business matter’ and ends up back in Australia twelve hours later."

​I stepped into his space, forcing him to stop pacing and look me in the eye.

​"You’re lying to me. You’re up to something big, and you’re doing it behind my back. You better start talking right now, or I swear to the Goddess, I’ll find out myself—and you won’t like how I get to the bottom of it. Speak."