Page 3 of Knot Dead Yet

The light turned green, and I eased off the brake. I hadn’t really thought about what I was going to do when I left the arena. I only knew I was furious and I wanted not to be there. It wasn’t the hockey itself. Dad and I went to games all the time before I went off to St. Anne’s School for Girls. We even played in the driveway, and he let me pelt him with balls as he stood in the net.

No, it was the fact we were supposed to have time together. But here, he had to work out all the business shit and meet with the team. I wasn’t allowed to go to any of those things. Dad had me waiting in the hotel room for three days while he did whatever, because I couldn’t go anywhere without a chaperon. On top of it, he wanted to stay until the end of the season, which could be like a month. A whole freaking month.

Then there was a little hope, a light in my dark sentence. We were going to go out to have dinner together. But the team returned from Illinois, and he suddenly wanted to meet them.

“Wait in the office, Kienna. Be a good girl, and you can order room service later.” I growled my bad imitation of his voice. “What-the-fuck-ever.”

I wasn’t going to be the docile little Omega waiting for my father to introduce me to some full-of-himself Alpha and spend my life breeding for him. No thanks. I wanted adventure, excitement, and… Not the life that everyone deemed proper for me.

Maybe I wasn’t exactly clear on the life I wanted, but I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to be here.

Pulling into the next gas station I spotted, I parked in front of the little convenience store and took out my cell. The first thing I looked up was if there were any flights out of the city tonight. None. Of course not. The airport wasn’t even open twenty-four hours, because who would want to come to Winnipeg?

I could drive. Surely I wasn’t that far from the border. The internet told me I was only four hours away from Fargo, North Dakota. I could make it there on a full tank of gas, and my dad wouldn’t even notice I was gone until I was far over the border. “Bingo!”

Yet even as I made certain I had the directions on my phone, my stomach quivered with anxiety. I’d done a lot of crazystuff before, but drive off by myself and cross a border? That was big. My friends had always been by my side when I snuck out to go to parties at school or they came with me on weekend adventures.

I swallowed hard. Damn, I missed them.

Without another thought, I dialed my three best friends for a group chat.

Aubrielle was the first to answer. “Hi Kienna!”

“Hi, girl!” Did I sound too enthusiastic? Manic? I tried to tone my voice down. “How are you?”

“Bored. Trying to find a job that I can actually work.”

“Still nothing?” I raised my brows. Aubrielle was smart and sweet, and any employer would be so lucky to have her, but the problem was she was an unclaimed Omega. She had yet to meet an Alpha who was compatible with her and wanted to take her as his mate, but I was pretty sure her dad didn’t let her meet any at all. The world sucked for us. “I share your pain, sister.”

Nicolette hopped onto the line. “Hi! What’s up?”

Callista was the last to join. “Hey, girls! Are we having an unscheduled wedding chat?”

With her wedding coming up in June, it was the only thing on my cousin’s mind these days. It was annoying, but who could blame her? She was tying the knot with three absolutely gorgeous Alphas who would move the world for her.

“I did want to talk to you about the flowers.” Aubrielle was helping Callista plan, and she was equally as bad about talking too much about it. “The blue roses—”

“No wedding stuff.” I put a stopper in that conversation. “Let’s just talk like we did in the old days.”

“Like about when we caught Headmistress Liddelle waxing her mustache?” Nicolette giggled, and the rest of us laughed with her. Those days seemed like so long ago and my heart was empty without my friends always around.

“Well, if we’re not going to talk about the wedding, I need to go. We were just about to sit down for dinner.” Callista used to stay up all night with me. Now I was lucky if we talked for ten minutes once a week.

“Yeah, me too. The guys will be home any minute,” Nicolette added. She had her Alphas as well, and they consumed her life. She was so far away in Alaska, and Aubrielle and Callista were on the west coast. I was stuck in the middle of nowhere, and I was becoming more desperate to get out.

“Oh, that’s too bad. I guess I’ll just go back to my stolen car and race over the border to try to hide out for a while.”

“What?” Aubrielle gasped.

“What the hell, Kienna?” Nicolette shouted over Callista’s groan.

“Please tell me you didn’t really steal a car.” My cousin was due any day now, and she sounded like a nagging mom already. We were more like sisters than cousins, and she’d make an awesome mother, but I didn’t need one at the moment. I needed my friends.

“Iborrowedmy dad’s rental. It’s not like he’ll notice for a while. He’s busy doing hockey stuff. I’ve been so incredibly bored stuck in the hotel room, that I can’t stay here another night. So I’m making a break for it.”

“You can’t go anywhere yourself. You don’t have a chaperon.” Aubrielle sounded terrified, but she was the one out of us that was the most cautious. She rarely left her house since she finished school. She needed to steal a car and have an adventure as much as I did.

“Chaperon smaperon. Who cares,” I sighed. Back in the day, they’d cheer me on. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to call them. I felt even more alone now. “It’s not like I’ll run into any Alphas in the Great Dull North.”

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