Page 42 of The Alpha's Surrogate

Her phone was under the couch. She got it out and headed out of the house. The car keys were in a bowl on a shelf near the front door. She grabbed one of them and left the house.

It took all her will not to look at anything. She’d created too many memories and it felt like she was running from all that. That was exactly what she was doing. She was running, just like she’d always known she would. She’d tried to warn Callahan, but he hadn’t listened.

She got in the car, one of the sports cars, and sped away from the house. She’d taken one of the faster cars, and there was no way Callahan was catching her now.

She ran through possible destinations in her head as she weaved through the now familiar path through the woods. She couldn’t go to Silver Peaks. That would be the first place that Callahan came looking for her. Plus, she was wary of the were-bears.

She decided to head to Silver Springs. It was only a few hours away, and it had pleasant weather, just like Whispering Oaks. The best part was that it was a human town. Callahan wouldn’t think to find her there, and she doubted the were-bears would come that far either.

She drove through town and felt a pain deep in her chest. She’d started to view this place as home, and despite its cold reception, it had started to accept her as one of its own. She wished she didn’t have to leave, especially not like this, but she didn’t have a choice.

She was so scared. The part of her she’d suppressed the previous night had smashed to the surface when she woke up this morning. When she glanced at Callahan and realized what they’d done, she’d realized there was only one thing left for her to do.

Callahan’s words, which had sounded so moving and soothing the previous night, now tasted bitter. She didn’t think he was lying. He was telling the truth, she felt it in her bones.

But there was a hill she couldn’t get over. He thought he understood her, but he didn’t. He thought he knew her, but he really didn’t. No one really did. Not her father, not her grandfather, and not Callahan.

She was broken, and she didn’t think she could be fixed. She had past traumas that haunted her and wounds that had refused to heal for years. That was who she really was. Callahan had an image of her, but that image was wrong. How could he know her without knowing her scars and their origin?

She had to show him who she was, not who he thought she was. And she didn’t think she would ever be brave enough to do so. She wasn’t going to lead him on any further. He was a kind soul and he deserved better than that.

So, she’d run away. Not to hurt him, but to protect him. She needed some space away from him. He needed it too, if he was ever going to get over his fantasy of them creating a family together. What was the point of hoping for something that didn’t exist? They’d been living a fairy tale, and they were bound to wake up from the dream sooner or later.

She tried not to think about the pain he’d feel when he woke up and realized she was gone. After the night they’d shared, it seemed like such a callous thing to do to him, but she didn’t have a choice. If she stayed, it would have been harder to leave.

Despite all her justifications, she still felt like a horrible and selfish person. Tears rolled down her face and she slapped the wheel in anger. She raised a hand to wipe her eyes, and then the world spun around her.

Gasping, she crossed her arms protectively over her belly and chest. A loud crash sounded on the other side of the car, and the windshield smashed in as the car leaped six feet in the air.

The car slammed into the concrete, then somersaulted several times before coming to rest on a boulder in a field, thirty meters from the highway. Her ears rang dully and she couldn’t feel her legs. Her vision had gone black and she tasted blood in her mouth.

Everything hurt, and she could tell she was bleeding from several places. She hung upside down, held in place by her seat belt. Her mind was foggy and she couldn’t understand what had happened to her. She struggled to breathe and wheezed painfully.

She heard a sound outside the door and turned in time to see someone ripping off the door of the car. An arm reached into the car and a blade flashed before her eyes. She was too confused to react, but the knife snapped the seat belt, releasing her.

She was pulled roughly out of the car and the pain of moving jolted her awake. She looked up to see who had saved her from the car wreck, and she went cold with fear. All her injuries suddenly seemed small and nonexistent. She tried to shy away, but nothing moved.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Klaus said, smiling. “Looks like you’re having some car trouble. Let me help.”

Chapter 18 - Callahan

In the dream, they were out on an open field. The sky was perpetually locked in twilight, although it seemed to him like they had been there for hours. In the dream, she was in his arms, and they lay together in a sprawling bed filled with soft pillows.

It was a perfect dream, at least when it started. But it always ended the same way, with her breaking out of his embrace, kissing his forehead, and then leaving him. He tried to rush out of bed after her but found himself trapped in the large bed. Seeing her walk away and not being able to go after her filled him with despair, and he screamed and raged until his throat bled.

And then she would appear beside him again, and it would be like she never left, only for her to leave all over again. He was in an endless, torturous loop that threatened to drive him mad.

He tried to wake up, to put this horrible dream behind him, but he remained asleep and was forced to watch her leave a thousand times over. She was always destined to leave, he knew. How did one catch the wind with their bare hands?

Trying to hold on to her was more futile than trying to carry water with a basket filled with holes. It was foolish to try, and yet he tried anyway. And every time he failed, it broke his heart just a little bit more.

The knowledge that she would leave made her presence painful, like metal spikes driven slowly into his eyes, and when she did leave, he stopped screaming. He just lay there helplessly and cried like a whipped child. It was the most horrible dream in the world, for all the significance that it carried with it.

It was the immense pressure in Callahan’s bladder that finally roused him from sleep, an hour after noon. He opened his mind and felt the entrapping dream turn to dust in his mind even as he grasped for bits and pieces of it.

All that was left was a painful memory, and the distinct feeling in his gut that something was profoundly wrong. He ignored everything else and swung out of bed. He lumbered into the bathroom, his legs heavy as lead. He sighed contentedly afterward and staggered out of the bathroom. There was something out of place, but he couldn’t put a finger on it.

He was still groggy with too much sleep, and something about the dream he’d had still troubled him deeply. Josie was missing, of course. He hadn’t noticed earlier, but now her absence was glaring. Scenes from the night they’d had filled his mind, and they left a bittersweet aftertaste in his mouth.

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