Page 8 of A Bloom in Winter

His surge of aggression was so great, Callum was powerless to fight the shift.

His wolven self exploded out of his molecular makeup, his jeans and his flannel shirt shredding under the force of the change, his limbs retracting before reconstituting in an entirely different form, paws extruding from his feet and hands, a lupine muzzle extending from his face, fur clothing his bare skin.

And now . . .

He ran.

CHAPTER TWO

Hey, I was glad to hear from you. Why’s that such an insult?”

When Apex didn’t respond, the other vampire in the Chevy Suburban’s passenger seat looked over. And kept fucking talking. Like Mayhem had been doing for the last two fucking hours on the Northway in a blizzard.

Why was air free? Maybe if it cost money, the male would ration the shit.

“I mean, I’ve missed our little yappy-yaps like this.” Mr. Chatty leaned across the console. “I know you have, too. Fireside talks. Yup, they’re my love language. Uh-huh. Yeeeeeeah.”

Annnnnd the fucker was sporting a mullet. Because . . . of course he was.

“So. How ’bout them Yankees?”

When Apex didn’t reply, cue the tapping: The male turned his thighs into a drum set, his forefingers sticks on the muscles under those jeans, the tippity-tappity-ratta-tat-a-lum-a-lim-a-ding-bat the kind of thing that made Apex question his choices in life.

He should have driven the luggage and equipment up himself, and had the guy ghost to the coordinates.

On that note, Apex eyed the shoulder of the highway. If the weather weren’t shit, he’d pull over and tell the twitchy bastard to go on ahead, for the love of God. As it was? He wasn’tinterested in bottoming for the succession of semis that were behind them.

“—or are you a Red Sox man, like some people we know? Huh? Helllllllllllllllllllllllo.”

Fuck, he had to say something. “I don’t like basketball.”

Mayhem’s head cranked in his direction, and those super pale peepers popped. “Okay, that would be baseball. But we can argue about the Golden State Warriors and the Lakers if you want.”

“I don’t like football.”

When the male just kept staring, Apex was forced to glance across the interior. Over the last thirty years since the prison had been liberated, nothing much had changed in the guy. He was still lean, in a bare-knuckle fighter kind of way. He was still brilliant, and hiding his IQ under a bushel of smartass. He was still—well, yeah, he’d grown his white-blond-and-deep-black hair out into thatLethal Weaponmullet.

Probably because he didn’t make time to go to the barber and had whacked off the shit around his face with a pair of safety scissors.

“What,” Apex muttered as the windshield wipers slapped back and forth.

Mayhem slowly shook his head. Like he was contemplating something that violated the laws of physics and wasn’t sure whether it was going to wipe out the planet. “I’m just curious how they let you drive a car, s’all.”

“Huh?” Before there could be a follow-up, Apex leaned into the windshield and focused through the sweeping wipers and the waves of flakes that ebbed and flowed in the headlights. “Fucking finally.”

The exit sign was the beacon he had been praying for.

As they drifted onto the ramp, Mayhem muttered, “And here I thought we would be driving north forever. Or maybe this trip’s justfeelinglike eternity.”

The SUV handled the unplowed decline like a champ. The stop sign at the bottom? Not so much. They sailed right through the no-go with a set of locked winter treads—a reminder that four-wheel drive did not mean four-wheel stop. Fortunately, no one else was out at midnight in the blizzard, so as they came to a halt in the middle of the plowed county road, it wasn’t a problem.

“When are you going to tell me what we’re doing?” Mayhem pushed a hand into his wool peacoat and offered something. “Life Saver?”

Apex put his head down on the steering wheel. “Okay, I’m not that and neither are you. Don’t get ahead of yourself—”

“The candy? And fuck that, even if you’d throw a drowning male a rock, I’m always ready to save someone.”

Lifting his head, Apex thought all about the ways stones could be used with the right follow-through. Then he waved off the offer of the colorful little tube and put the engine in reverse.

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