Page 60 of Shifter Marked and Claimed

“Get to the bedroom.”

We got to our feet, and with our eyes glued to the hardwood floors, we hurried to our designated safe space, the master bedroom. The window in that room had blackout curtains that stayed drawn at all times.

“What happened?” I asked, closing the door behind us.

“I was watching him chew out the rock, and then he just turned and stared right at the window. I immediately averted my gaze and told you. Which I’m never doing again, by the way. I think I bruised a hip.”

She sat on our bed and huffed a sigh.

“How long do we need to stay in here?” she asked.

“A few hours to be safe.”

“I don’t even think he saw me.”

“Do you really want to take the chance?”

There was a long moment of defeated silence before her sullen answer.

“No. It’s not fair, though, that two seconds of watching something more interesting than the walls turned into two hours of solitary confinement.”

“Three. And it’s not solitary. I’m here with you.”

“Three? Text Eliana. We don’t even know what kind of creature he is. For all we know, he’s harmless.”

“We’ve been told repeatedly that nothing in Uttira is harmless.” I picked up the journal I’d left on the nightstand. “I suggest you use the treadmill. Ashlyn swore it helped.”

I returned to reading, this time about dryads, while Zoe walked out her frustration. Once she was tired enough to sit, she lay down on her side of the bed and started flipping through an old magazine. Well before our three hours were up, she fell asleep.

Setting the journal aside, I watched her sleep and again wondered if we’d made the right choice. Living out on the streets in New York had been hard. Always looking over our shoulders, wondering how close Joey was to finding us. We’d played a dangerous game of hide and seek. One I didn’t want to go back to. Yet, were we any better off here?

My head told me yes, but my heart wasn’t so sure. Zoe was miserable and doing her best to hide it. She knew what waited for us if we wanted to return to our old life. A druid would memory wipe us, and we’d be dumped back on the streets where we’d been found with only a few hundred dollars in our pockets. Confused and nowhere to go sounded like a version of hell I didn’t want to visit. Here, we had food, shelter, and relative safety if we followed the rules.

Before coming here, Zoe and I had several lengthy discussions about our limited options. We’d talked about going to the police, but the odds were good that telling them our cousin was after us wouldn’t end well. For us. The police would figure out we were living on the streets. At eighteen, I’d be given minimal help, which wouldn’t keep me safe. And Zoe, at sixteen, would be swept into the system since, with no diploma or means to support us both, I wouldn’t qualify as a guardian for her.

There wasn’t anyone else to take us in. Joey was the only family we had left, and we weren’t ever going back to him.

Staying in Uttira really was the best option. We simply needed to get better at following the rules. Which is why I woke Zoe.

“I’m going to go check things out. Do you want to be the defense this time?”

“Yeah,” she dragged herself out of bed and shuffled down the hall behind me.

I peeked into the spare bedroom, glancing out the windows.

“No crazy guy,” I said softly.

The guest bathroom’s high window above the shower remained free of peeping Tom’s too.

At the end of the hall, I hesitated then leaned around the corner to give a sweeping glance at all the windows in the room.

“We’re clear,” I said.

“About time. I’m hungry.”

She went to the kitchen while I turned on the television. The Uttira Council had hooked us up with channels from the city so we could keep up on news. That small privilege was one of the perks of being human. The non-human residents were only allowed Council approved content, which didn’t include most of the human news stations.

“How does spaghetti sound?” Zoe asked.

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