Saving Max
Harlow Pov
The heat radiating off Max’s small body felt like an open oven. I shifted his weight against my chest, pacing the length of the cramped motel room. I had only been able to afford three nights, and the receptionist’s sharp warning about late fees was still ringing in my ears.
I took seven steps to the stained wallpaper, turned, and took seven steps back to the dead-bolted door. The air smelled of stale cigarette smoke and cheap bleach, but I barely noticed it. My mind was consumed entirely by the boy trembling in my arms.
Max whimpered, his small fingers digging fiercely into the collar of my worn-out blouse. "Mommy, it hurts," he cried.
This was the third attack this month. For his entire life, he had just been a normal, healthy toddler, but as his fifth birthday approached, the sickness had hit him just like that, with no warning or explanation, growing more violent with every passing week. Now, I couldn't sleep because my poor child spent the nights crying in pain.
"I know, baby. I know." I pressed a damp washcloth to his forehead, but the cloth was already warm.
He opened his eyes, and a fresh wave of panic seized my chest. They weren't the storm-gray they usually were—the exact shade of his father's. Right now, an unnatural gold bled through the irises, flashing in the dim light of the flickering bedside lamp. His chest heaved, the sound caught somewhere between a wet cough and a low growl that pierced straight through my heart. I hated seeing him like this, but there was nothing I could do.
Human doctors didn't know what to do with him. The last ER physician I spent my grocery money on told me it was a severe viral infection and handed me children's medicine. I had tried to explain the symptoms more accurately, but I couldn't do that without exposing the real nature of my son.
They couldn't see the gold. They didn't know his bones were trying to shift, tearing him apart from the inside because his fragile human body couldn't handle the apex predator bloodline pumping through his veins.
I was losing him. The one thing I had sacrificed my entire life to protect, and I was going to lose him if I didn't act fast.
Looking down at his flushed cheeks, my mind dragged me back five years, to the night I packed a single bag in the dark. I had been eighteen, naive, and completely terrified. I hadn't fallen for a sweet man; I had fallen for a terrifying, thirty-three-year-old biker who made me feel untouchable. But everything shattered the instant I realized I was pregnant. I could still hear Silas Rathbourne’s voice echoing in my ears, as cold as a grave.
‘Leave tonight, or I will cut that unborn abomination out of you myself. Human blood is a disease, Harlow. And I won’t let you infect my pack.’
I hadn't run because I got scared of the motorcycle club. I hadn't run because I stopped loving Torin. I ran because Torin was states away on a club run that night, and I wasn't going to stick around to let his ruthless father butcher my
baby.
A harsh buzz cut through the quiet room as my burner phone vibrated violently against the cheap laminate dresser.
I stopped pacing, my stomach dropping to the floor. This was the third call this week.
Shifting Max to my hip, I picked up the phone and pressed it to my ear. "I said I'd have the money."
"You have forty-eight hours, Harlow." The man's voice was dead flat. There was no anger, no empty threats. It was just business. That was what made the Viper's hitmen so terrifying.
"The blood transfusions were more expensive than I thought. I just need another week. I can pick up double shifts—"
"Forty-eight hours," Cruz interrupted smoothly. "Mr. Rossi doesn't do extensions. He wants the two hundred grand settled, or you submit yourself to him as payment. Don't make me come track you down. You know exactly how that ends."
The line went dead before I could say another word.
I stared at the black screen. The cartel on one side and the sickness on the other.
Max shuddered against my collarbone, his skin literally burning my arm. I was entirely out of time, out of money, and out of places to hide.
But there was only one door left to knock on. The one I swore I would never open again.
I laid Max gently on the sagging mattress, pulling the thin sheet up to his chin. I rushed and grabbed our small bag from the floor and started shoving what was left of our belongings inside. Three shirts. Two pairs of jeans. The empty bottles of useless human medicine.
In that moment, the choice made itself. I was taking him back to the monsters.
Torin Rathbourne was no doubt going to kill me the second I stepped foot onto Steel Howlers territory. He hated me. He thought I abandoned him because I was a weak human who couldn't handle his lifestyle. To protect his son, I’d had to disappear like a ghost, leaving absolutely no trace behind.
But despite how much he despised me now, he was the Alpha, and Max was his blood. There was no way he would let Silas hurt a child he knew was his, and his pack doctor was the only one in the world who could stop this fever.
I zipped the bag shut, the heavy metal sound so loud it caused my sweet baby to jerk in his sleep.
"We're going for a ride, Max," I whispered, scooping him back into my arms. He buried his burning face in my neck, too weak to keep his eyes open.
I walked out of the motel room into the humid night air, heading straight for my beat-up car. With my parents gone for years, this rusting car was my only inheritance, and my only escape. I didn't care if Torin locked me in a cage, neither did I care if the cartel burned it down.
I was going to save my son.
