Page 11 of Her Remarkable Protector

The Chapel—a notorious underground bunker stashed by the Circle, where the screams are buried too deep to ever reach the surface. They use it to settle scores—executing their enemies or torturing anyone who crosses the line, even their own. If Damon’s scheming to take Chase there, he better hope I don’t find him first. Chase might’ve gone ghost, wiped himself off the map, but I’ll find him.

A sound jolts me. I spin around, scanning the trees for its source.

Unbelievable!

A thirteen-year-old boy.

Oakley Stone?

My mind falters, tripping over the sight of him—lean and wiry, his face pale and slick with sweat from exertion.

“Jesus, Oak!” I snap, my voice clipped with shock. “I could’ve shot you!”

“I know.” He swallows hard, his chest heaving. “But I had to find you.”

I shut my eyes for a second, grimacing. “Your father sent you after me, didn’t he?” My shoulders slump, waiting for the inevitable—Damon’s men will step out of the shadows anytime now.

But the real question is this: How the hell did he follow me here, to the one place I thought no one could find?

Sensing my frustration, Oakley hesitates. “I’m alone. I ran away. No one knows I’m here. Please, let me come with you.”

My breath hitches. “How did you even find me?”

He looks down, scuffing the dirt with his shoe.

“Oakley,” I press, my voice hardening. “Who brought you here?”

“A fisherman,” he blurts, the words spilling out in a rush. “I swear, he doesn’t know my dad. He didn’t ask any questions.”

I bite back a sigh, not at his explanation, but at his naivety. The real problem isn’t the fisherman—it’s whether his father knows the fisherman.

“If you’re running away from your folks, you’d have had better odds without me,” I say, flicking a glance toward my belly.

“You’re wrong,” he says. “I’ll be safe with you. You always know what to do.”

“Are you being followed?” I ask, my gaze darting past him to the woods, every shadow suddenly alive with possibility.

“Absolutely not!” he snaps, his head jerking up defensively.

“Not even Patch?” I press. The second-in-command is sharper than Damon, cunning and patient. He moves like a leopard, always waiting to strike.

“No one followed me, I swear.” He pauses, his voice softening. “I found you because… do you remember when you read me Treasure Island?”

The question blindsides me. My brow furrows. “Geez... you remember that? That was ages ago.”

“I remember,” he says, his eyes locking on mine. “You told me everyone had a Treasure Island, and it didn’t always have to be a real island. Mine was Iceland. And yours…” He gestures to the ground beneath our feet. “Was Wild Horse Island.”

Damn me. A moment I thought was small, fleeting—a story to comfort a scared kid left alone in a hospital—stayed with him.

“Huh…” I trail off, astonished. I didn’t think I’d ever told anyone else about Wild Horse Island. But I told him. Because he was alone, his arm in a cast, and neither of his parents was there. Like always.

This boy doesn’t belong to the Stoneborn Circle. He doesn’t carry Damon’s cruelty, his manipulations. He’s just a kid trying to figure out the world. A kid who tried so hard to have a father that he didn’t see the cracks in the man he idolized. Maybe he still does.

And that’s why I couldn’t destroy Damon outright—just discard him, leave him behind, and run as far as I could. Because killing Damon would have shattered Oakley’s fragile hope, his fragile dream of family. And I couldn’t be the one to take that from him.

“I’m not your Mama Goose, Oak,” I say.

“You’re not,” he replies. “But you know what she’ll do to me. Whathewill do to me.”

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