No Bonds to Hold Me, but a Wolf to Run With Chapter 06

No Bonds to Hold Me, but a Wolf to Run With Chapter 06

The next second, high heels tapped hurriedly across the floor.

Sienna rushed out of the studio holding her skirt, the flowers in her hand dropping to the floor.

“Big sister!”

The elevator doors closed in front of me.

I didn’t press the open button. No one could keep me, not even this seemingly kind younger sister.

When I reached downstairs, a pre-called taxi was waiting by the curb.

I put my luggage in the trunk and got into the car.

Dozens of yards down the road, I saw Sienna run out of the front gates in the rearview mirror.

She chased for a few steps, her heel twisted, and she simply kicked off her shoes to keep running.

That figure grew smaller and smaller.

I gripped my seatbelt, almost telling the driver to stop.

But the next moment, the four parents walked out of the photo studio.

They stood on the steps, stopping Sienna from continuing her pursuit.

The car turned the corner, and I withdrew my gaze-good, I’m so glad they didn’t ask me to stay.

Claire’s call came quickly.

“Did you really have to leave right now? Everyone was waiting for you. How long does a single photo

take?”

“I’m going to school.”

“Get back here right now.” Victor took the phone on the other end. “You have a room in both homes, what are you doing moving into a dorm early?”

I watched the street signs receding ahead of me.

“Which room?”

There was a pause on the line.

“There was no breakfast for me at the hotel, no ticket for me at the amusement park, and no seat for me at the dinner table. Even just now, all six chairs were set out, and you still made me stand

outside the frame.”

Victor lowered his voice: “Those are all minor things. They don’t prove we don’t want you.”

“Yet you did all those minor things for Sienna.”

Gifts, seats, meal vouchers, a look back, and a question of whether I’d arrived home safely.

Love in daily life is made of these very minor things.

An argument broke out over the phone.

Victor blamed the Hartwells for taking back their biological daughter without caring for her properly, while Marcus retorted that the Greys had raised me for eighteen years, yet didn’t even know where I was going.

Sienna’s voice suddenly cut in.

“Stop arguing.” She was still breathless. “It’s not that you didn’t know big sister would be hurt. You just thought she was sensible enough to get over it on her own.”

All four of them fell silent at once.

I hung up the phone without waiting for their next round of excuse’s.

The photo studio then sent the auto-captured unedited shots into the six-person group chat.

In the photo, Sienna had already run out of the frame, leaving only the four parents under the lights.

Of the six chairs, two were empty, and the unknotted scarf sat on another.

I caught the car two minutes before boarding closed.

It was already dark when I arrived at school.

On the temporary dorm registration form, there was a section for an emergency contact. I hovered my pen for a long time, four numbers flashing in my mind, but none of them gave me a reason to write them down.

In the end, I wrote my best friend’s contact number.

The dorm manager looked at the blank relationship column: “You’re not filling in family?”

I pushed the form back: “I don’t have a family.”

The dorm room wasn’t large; the bed frame and desk were simple.

Yet on the edge of the bed, the desk, and the cabinet door, identical white labels were stuck, clearly reading: Iris Hartwell.

This belonged to me.

I didn’t have to assign a bed to anyone, nor did I have to wait for anyone else to pick first.

I touched the name and pushed my suitcase into the wardrobe.

A few days later, my adoptive mother Claire mailed a whole box of daily necessities,

Claire packed my usual toothpaste, shampoo, and stomach medicine, with a note pressed on top:

After raising you for eighteen years, it’s impossible to cut ties just like that.

They found me.

That made sense. They had power and influence, so finding me was easy.