Rachel crossed her arms over her br**sts, cocked her curvy little hip and arched a brow mockingly. "One of these days, I just might help them."
CHAPTER 11
She found a way out.
Storme watched late that evening as the Breed Enforcers guarding the house crossed paths, stopped and chatted. After the weeks she had been here, they were doing something she hadn't expected. They were growing complacent.
The night was cloudy, storm clouds brewing over the mountains to block the emerging moon and dim the light shining down on Haven.
She had to run.
Her emotions were in such conflict, the needs, the realities she had always known under attack. She couldn't fight this much longer. If she didn't get away from Haven, then she would never feel that the decision she was close to making was the right one to make.
As long as she was here in Styx's home, surrounded by the humanity and the joy of life and freedom she glimpsed in the Breeds, then her emotions were in such conflict that making the decision was becoming impossible.
Just as the thought of doing without Styx, of being without him, was beginning to become an agonizing choice.
It was a choice she would have to make eventually though. There was no future to a life here, no matter how much she was beginning to wish there were.
Checking the clock, she laced the hiking boots she had slid her feet into and pulled on the long-sleeved denim shirt she had stolen from Styx. When she retrieved the capsule, a grimace tightened her lips. It was crushed, the capsule no more than a fine powder now.
She could only pray she could mask her scent now.
Scent was everything when the Breeds tracked. If she covered her scent with his, it would make it easier to slip away and hike around the base of the Coyote rise to the other side, where she could slip through the security fence easier.
They would detect the break and move immediately to secure the perimeter. They might even be aware it was her breaking through, but she would be close enough to the main road that they wouldn't know if she had caught a ride or not. She knew how to hide from Breeds. She had been doing it for years, until Styx had captured her.
But that was Styx. She was convinced it had been the man combined with the situation that had led to her capture by her fun-loving, too charming Scots Wolf.
And now walking away from him was killing her.
Rubbing at her arms, she grimaced at the irritation she could feel just below the flesh. It was becoming more prominent now than it had been before. It was directly related to Styx, she knew, because if he touched her, if he kissed her, if she tasted that erotic, elusive flavor of chocolate and cinnamon, then the irritation eased. The arousal grew, became heated and hot, but that irritating, frustrating tingle beneath her skin went away.
The hunger for his kiss became sated, for a while at least.
She almost grinned at the thought. Who could have imagined that she, who had believed she hated Breeds for so long, could crave one's kiss?
But a part of her had always known it hadn't been Breeds in general she hated, but the fact that they were the reason her father had died. Protecting them had meant more to her father than protecting his daughter had. The knowledge of that had hurt.
Pulling the edges of the denim shirt closer about her, she stared out the barred window and watched as the Breed guards moved closer to position.
She bit her lip as she felt her throat tightening with emotion. Tears threatened to fill her eyes as she fought the instinctive need to stay rather than to run.
She had no business here, she told herself.
The longer she stayed, the closer she was coming to risking a part of herself she had never risked in her life. Her heart.
Styx was coming dangerously close to making her love him.
Her breath hitched as a sob caught in her chest.
She was not going to cry.
She was going to run, and she was going to hide until she could figure out what the hell she was going to do with the information her father had given her.
One thing was for damned sure, she couldn't keep it any longer. She couldn't risk her own life for something she was beginning to believe to the depths of her soul her father would have wanted the Breeds to have.
As the two Enforcers crossed the line she had marked with her line of sight over the past evenings, Storme moved.