letting him put his tongue in my ass, to escaping, to going back to him as…what? An ally, I guessed? A temporary ally, and I didn’t need to guess about the temporary part.
The spell wasn’t in effect anymore. I was useful right now, and then they wouldn’t be able to see the back of me fast enough.
I’d been on the move since I was fourteen years old. Thirteen years, now, even longer than I’d had a semi-stable life in the first place — since I’d already been about two when my brother rescued me.
The woods rushed by in a blur, and the highway wound away in front of me, empty but for the glare of my headlights. I had the window rolled down, and cold air blasted my cheeks into numbness and whipped my hair around in a wild tangle.
How many days, months, years had I spent like this, alone in a car on a deserted road, going anywhere I thought I could eke out a living and avoid becoming prey?
A lot of those days I’d convinced myself I was an old-school American nomad, enjoying the freedom of the open road. No commitments. Nothing tying me down. Nothing to do but please myself.
Most of the nights, it hadn’t felt so classic-movie glamorous. Getting fucked in a dive-bar bathroom. Having to use magic to defend myself when the guy with his dick up my ass decided he didn’t like my long hair, or my tattoos, or my attitude. Sleeping curled up alone on a lumpy roadside motel mattress with springs poking me in the hip, with one eye open in case someone who could get through my wards tried to force the door, listening to the shouts and hollers of the drunken assholes in the other rooms.
I’d been running, not living the life of a carefree vagabond. Only problem was, I hadn’t been running to anything — just away from the possibility that if I tried to find a place for myself in the world, I’d lose it. Again. The way I’d lost my brother, or the way I’d never even known my parents. I had nothing to show for those thirteen years. I might as well have curled up in a hollow tree and hibernated it away; if it’d all been erased from my memory overnight, there wouldn’t have been much to miss.
And I was tired of it. The car’s headlights flicked over a sign for Laceyville: 9 miles. Almost there. Another place I’d be leaving in the morning, once I’d done my part to bring peace to the galaxy.
The miles flew by, and in no time at all — definitely before I’d managed to get my shit together — I was turning onto the access road into the Armitage territory. Gravel and chunks of dried mud left over from the rains the week before flew up from the tires and spattered the tree trunks on the side of the road. I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Two-thirty. The Kimballs would be loading up and heading this way all too soon. I wondered if Matthew was getting updates from Colin.
I drove as far as the pack house and was met by one of the pack, someone I didn’t recognize, who jogged up to the car and bent down to the window. “Keep going along that little road north,” he said without preamble. “They’re waiting for you up there.”
He stepped back, and I hit the gas and followed his directions. The ‘road’ was generously named, even with the ‘little’ qualifier, and the Honda jolted and jounced over more potholes than I could count. Tree branches scraped the sides of the car.
Oh well. It was stolen anyway. I could’ve probably made it faster on foot — on four feet, certainly — but I wasn’t planning on shifting in front of the Armitages. Werewolves tended to be assholes about any other breed of shifter, since they were the most numerous and were often super arrogant about how much better they were. I’d once seen a weretiger fully shift in front of a group of werewolves. Their petulant, sullen, impotent irritation remained one of the few treasured memories I would miss if I got sudden amnesia.
Anyway, I wasn’t a tiger, and that wouldn’t work for me.
About two miles down the ‘road,’ Nate popped out of the trees and flagged me down. Ian appeared right behind him, looming and scowling with his arms crossed over his massive chest.
Fucking alphas.
I pulled over and parked,