Page 14 of Pack Fever

Oh, fuck!

I’m coughing and choking on the smoke from the burning rubber. Farther behind the bus is the black pickup truck, doors open, but there’s no one inside. Are they helping my friends?

“Casey! Kayla! Jess,” I yell, needing to find my friends. I stumble onto the road, now cloaked in smoke. I can barely see the road on either side of the crash site from the smoke, the oncoming night, and the storm still pounding down onto earth.

Glancing around, I hear my friends calling back to me, so I know they survived. The flames cast an eerie glow around the bus, but I force my aching body toward the sounds. Smoke as thick as a blanket is cloying, clawing at my nostrils and the back of my throat. Each breath becomes a struggle. We need to get the hell away from the fire. Hobbling, I push through the pain radiating from my hip.

“Jess,” I call out, moving on instinct and adrenaline. Her earlier response had sounded closest to me.

Suddenly, I can make out Jess’ silhouette in the smog at least twenty feet down the road from the bus scene, and I breathe a sigh of relief. I rush forward until she comes into view. That’s when I notice she’s not alone. A huge figure towers close behind her—an enforcer who escaped the bus.

As if my world falls into slow-mode, I watch the man pull out something from his pocket. Terror slams into me, and the moment I scream out, “Jess, watch out,” he tasers her. The air crackles with electricity, and her body convulses. She crumples to the ground in a heap.

I scream, confusion pounding into me. Why the fuck did they need to taser her?

Wild, frantic fear thumps in my ears just as the enforcer turns toward me, taking calculated steps in my direction. His grin slices through the gloom as he approaches, a ghastly sight on his dirty, streaked face while he’s gripping the taser gun.

“You’re not going anywhere, pretty Omega,” he says loudly, taking a step closer. “You are now the property of Nexus after breaking the rules.”

My heart’s in overdrive against my ribs.

We’ve survived the crash, so why would they use tasers on us?

My pulse hammers in my throat as I step away from the enforcer, his grin chilling.

“Look,” I begin with a raspy voice, the smoke scraping my throat as I break into a cough. “I’ll come with you. Just put the taser away.”

He just smirks like a fucking asshole.

“We’ve been in a goddamn accident.” Rain lashes down on me, rolling down my face and slipping under the collar of my shirt. Its icy fingers rush down my back.

That dark amusement in his gaze tells me he doesn’t care, which leaves me shaking. What else is a man like him capable of?

My gaze darts frantically, seeking an escape and my friends. That’s when Kayla emerges in the distance, darting around the rear of the bus with the other enforcer on her heels. She’s shouting for Casey, telling her to run into the woods, to get away.

I have a decision to make.

As my own enforcer edges closer, my skin creeps at his taser at the ready.

With a surge of adrenaline, I spin on my heels and bolt into the woods at my back. The storm growls overhead, rain coming down in sheets, turning the forest ground into a mudslide.

My feet keep slipping, and I catch myself with the low-hanging branches, but fear pushes me forward. Otherwise, how can I help my friends if I’m caught? The only chance I have to save them is to escape myself, then sneak back to the crash site and rescue them. In this storm, the enforcers getting backup help will take a while. So, that gives me time to get my friends away from them.

But first, I have to shake off this enforcer, then return to my friends and not get caught.

A branch whips me in the face, and I cry out, the pain so sharp it leaves me in tears. I stumble over dead logs and trample on shrubs that tangle around my legs. Glancing back, the enforcer never relents. His shadowy figure charges after me through the woods like the devil himself is chasing me.

Dread comes over me at how in the world I ended up in this situation.

Driving forward, I keep going, frantically checking over my shoulder every few seconds. The distance between me and the enforcer grows, and hope pulses inside me that I’ll actually pull this off.

Another look over my shoulder. I lose sight of him when my foot catches on a root. The ground suddenly disappears.

Before I know it, I’m falling, tumbling down a steep decline, and my stomach’s in my throat with a roller-coaster sensation.

I cry out desperately as my world blurs in and out. My fingers finally grasp onto a root, but it’s ripped out of my grasp from the momentum of my fall. A sharp ache digs into my elbow and up my arm as I use it to lean on, the same arm that had been banged up in the car accident with my dad. It hurts.

Air rushes past me, the rain drenching me. There’s mud everywhere, leaves stuck to me. Hitting a rock with my ass, I cry out, and the branches I slide over aren’t helping.

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