Page 29 of Defeated

But soon, all too soon, my teeth chatter, and goosebumps prickle my skin.

Terrified of what he will do to me if he finds me anywhere except tied to this tree, I don’t move. I’ve had a year of his cruelties, and it feels too much like he’s building up to more. I don’t know if I can survive more.

So I don’t move.

For hours.

I fall asleep against the tree, woken in the early hours by my packmates’ who find me, my skin blue, and my teeth chattering so hard, blood fills my mouth from having bitten my tongue over and over again.

They untie me and help me into the house. My legs don’t seem to want to work, so they mostly have to carry me.

After I’ve cried through a hot shower that was agony on my freezing skin, I learn Harlan didn’t check on me once. No one told me. Whispers crept under my door as I shivered under the sheets and tried to sleep.

He spent the night drinking and playing computer games with the alpha.

I don’t speak a word to any of my packmates. Maybe Harlan told them to leave me there, I don’t know. But Harlan isn’t the alpha, and they could have helped me in so many ways. They chose not to.

That night, I wait until Harlan is in a meeting, and I start packing.

I blink, stare at the small wet patches on the kitchen table beside the grease stain my eggs made on the wood, and I think I was wrong.

It was one thing that drove me to shove as many clothes as I could fit into a small bag I stole from one of my packmates and run from Pack Burton.

“Zoe?”

I swipe at my wet cheeks as I keep my back to the kitchen doorway. “Yeah?”

My voice is husky. Will he know I’ve been crying?

“Are you okay?” The concern softening his voice tells me that yeah, I think he knows.

“Fine.” Head down, I edge around him. “Just need some fresh air. I’ll be back.”

“But your breakfast…”

“I’m not hungry.”

I’m moving at a near run down the entryway and burst out the front door, pulling it closed behind me.

It’s only when I’m at the bottom of the porch that I realize I’m still in the sweats and T-shirt I wore to bed and my feet are bare.

Luckily, there’s no one around. Just a post office truck disappearing down the street.

With one of my last, and most painful, memories of Harlan still filling my head, I stuff my hands into my pockets and stroll down the street, not ready to face Chris just yet.

I haven’t forgotten I had shifters breaking into my apartment and who could easily track me down here, so I go halfway and turn back around.

For maybe the billionth time, I consider returning to Washington to reject Harlan since he’s too afraid of offending fate to do it himself. I’m afraid too, but I hate Harlan more to remain tied to him forever.

It won’t be easy, and I’d have to do it in front of the pack, otherwise no one would recognize the rejection. Even if I didn’t have to do it in front of everyone, I would still want to. I need to cut the bonds not only with Harlan, but with my pack and my life in Washington.

Those memories follow me from place to place, and I can’t envision ever moving on with my life or even starting a new one until I cut those bonds.

Part of me is glad my parents weren’t around to see the way Harlan treated me. They’d been enforcers and had died years before in a skirmish with another pack; so had many others. With Harlan’s close friendship with the alpha, I doubt there’s anything my parents could have done to help me, but I wouldn’t have felt so alone.

Once Harlan made it clear that I was only good for fucking, I was on my own. I’d known it before, but that long night in the freezing forest confirmed it.

Distracted, I almost walk right past Colton’s house and swing back around. Which is when I spot two familiar men in black sweats standing at the bottom of the street. One dark-haired, the other a red-head. They’re not looking my way. One has a phone clamped to his ear. The other is peering in the other direction, but I recognize them.

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