Galyna snatched her hand away, affronted by the suggestion, but Elodie was the one who answered. “Our swords and wolves are with you. Where you go, we go.”
Brielle nodded, expression starting to crumble under the weight of it all. I don’t know what came over me, but I stepped forward on autopilot, grabbing her hand. She gave me a watery smile as I squeezed it.
“It’s going to work out,” I whispered, believing it, even though all signs pointed to chaos and destruction.
“It’s time to roll. The SUVs are here,” Galyna announced, pointing toward a small back gate.
“Alpha! We need to split up. Shay and I need Lisanne to show us how to get to the fae gate,” Dirge said, hesitating as the rest of us moved toward the rear gates.
Kane turned, clasping Dirge’s hand, something unspoken passing between them as Brielle hugged Shay as if it would be the last time.
I climbed into the back of a black SUV, praying to the Goddess that it wasn’t.
Lucien
One minute, I was lying in a shitty bed, eating my third giant steak of the afternoon and rehearsing what to say to my mate. The meat would help my wolf regenerate faster, but unfortunately, it wouldn’t help me convince her that even though I was an asshole, I didn’t want her to leave me for Alaska yet, even though I should send her away for her own safety. The next, an alarm was going off, and I was hobble-running toward the back gate.
As the conversation unfolded, horror filled me. Petr? clearly found out I was gone from their torture chamber. But how the fuck did that translate into him being here? Did they track us without us knowing?
I glanced over at Samuel, and his expression told me he was wondering the same thing.
“Were we followed?” I asked in a whisper, and he shook his head.
“No fucking chance. I used every trick in the book to make sure that wasn’t possible.”
I nodded, falling silent as I considered the possibilities. Before I could suss out how the Hungarians had found us so quickly, though, we were running through the back gate, climbing into unmarked SUVs to make our escape.
It galled me to run, but this wasn’t the time to make a stand. I was still weakened from the torture, and we had both a pregnant female and an omega female with us.
Not to mention my omega-sealed mate.
Olivia was magnetic, and I found myself climbing into the farthest-back seat to be next to her, ignoring her visible shock as I yanked the door shut behind me. Samuel and Elodie were in the seat ahead of us, while Reed drove, Fiona taking shotgun.
The rest of the pack was in the first SUV, leading the way down the craggy path off the mountain. I felt each bump through my sore, half-healed body, but it paled in comparison to the wave of mixed emotions coming off my mate on the bench seat next to me.
I turned to look at her, and she snapped her gaze away as if I’d burned her.
“I won’t bite you.” I murmured the words meant only for her, even though in a car full of wolves with exceptional hearing, they probably still heard. They seemed distracted in their own discussions, though, and I took the moment to just breathe her in.
She slowly turned to face me, arching one regal eyebrow before answering. “You’ve made that abundantly clear.”
Fuck.
Sweet and innocent she may have been, but my mate had fire in her, and I’d be damned if I didn’t like it.
Too much. My blood heated in my veins, and whether she knew it or not, she was basically waving a red cape in front of a bull. Or a juicy piece of meat in front of a starving wolf, because in that moment, my instincts to chase her down flared to life.
All my earlier protestations about how our wolves were confused meant nothing, not sitting this close to her heat and delicious scent, not when she was challenging me. There were no more righteous thoughts that she deserved better than a scarred, ugly fucker like me.
I slid closer on the bench seat, closing the gap between us as we continued the bumpy path down the mountain.
“We should talk.”
“Now? You’ve got to be kidding.” The exasperated look she sent me should have been a warning, but I didn’t heed it.
I shrugged, ignoring the pull in my stomach wound as I did so. “We’re not driving. What else are we going to do until we get to the airport?”
She pursed her lips like the sexiest librarian in the history of books, and I hated the fact that I could feel her not wanting to give me another chance. It was everywhere: her expression, her scent, the tense set of her shoulders. That only made me more determined. But I couldn’t get the sounds of her muffled sobs as she’d run away from me out of my mind.
She might not want to talk to me, but I hadn’t meant to hurt her. Not really. Everything was messed up since I got captured, since the torture. And she didn’t deserve to deal with my shit.
“Hang on!” was all the warning we got from Reed as he hooked the SUV around a tight turn, sending us all sliding-I practically flew over the back seat, slamming into the car door with a grunt a split second before Olivia smashed into my other side.
My brain must have glitched as her curves pressed into my side, her hand flying out and landing on my chest as she tried to catch herself. That was the only logical reason for the fact that I let the next words fly out of my mouth.
“If you wanna climb in my lap, baby, all you’ve got to do is ask.”
Olivia blinked up at me in surprise for a moment before shoving herself away in disgust. “Is this all just a sick joke to you?”
“No, of course not, I-” It was at that exact moment that I became acutely aware that we had a captive audience, both Samuel and Elodie, staring at me with angry looks on their faces. They hadn’t forgotten to buckle up.
Olivia wasn’t having my apology. She’d already scooted herself back to her seat, clicking her seat belt into place with cold finality as she sent me a scathing stare.
Yep, I had fucked it up again.
She wasn’t some girl I was going to screw in a club bathroom and never think about again. She was my fated mate, and I didn’t know how to handle a relationship that was serious.
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