Page 64 of Never Run from an Immortal

Rae didn’t answer. She had two minutes to pack up her life. With the rutok nuzzled around her neck and Quinn at her side, she glanced around her apartment one last time, grabbing a bag from the door.

He’s sent two hybrids to find me, Vale.

One minute.Until the car arrived. It was still daylight for another hour, so Rae had no idea who he’d sent. It wouldn’t be him; he couldn’t risk being discovered.

She grabbed some of her favourite pieces of jewellery, the ones she was most proud of. Ran back down to the studio to pull a few sketches from their frames, a picture of her and Nim, a sketchbook full of designs, the concert tickets she’d bought for Nim’s birthday, and took one last look at her studio as a car door closed outside. Bax had taken the envelope with his name on it. He had the ring, which meant she could track him.

Quinn nudged her hand, and she took that as a good sign as she opened the door.

“Reed.” Rae made no attempt to hide the surprise in her voice as she pulled the door shut behind her and Quinn. She hadn’t seen the Fae since he’d been at the manor, had tried, multiple times, but Aidan’s Units always had his room surrounded.

“You’re alright?” he asked her, his gaze sweeping up and down as if assessing her for damage. He wore an earpiece and a uniform startlingly like Aidan’s Units wore, Rae realised, as he opened a car door to usher her inside. She didn’t object: the vehicle obscured her from anyone or anything that might be watching from the street, and she wasn’t about to get Reed mixed up with two hybrids if Bax had truly sent them to track her down.

She merely nodded once as he shut the door, too busy trying to work out how he’d gotten caught up in all of this.

“He forced you to come?” Rae asked as Reed set off.

A huff of laughter, Reed’s eyes meeting hers in the rearview mirror. “Is this a test?” he asked, his eyes darting to Quinn. To the audience they both knew was at the end of Quinn’s connection: Baelin and Aidan. “I’ve nothing to hide from them. I owe your husband my life.”

Rae said nothing, trying not to think about the kind of male she’d expected Aidan to be and the one he was, another misjudgement in what was becoming a startlingly long list. Another bad decision to throw in thefuck uppile with the others. Quinn curled up on the seat beside her, and Ru curled up in the space between the daemon’s legs. They both wore their tags, and Rae’s heart warmed a little that she’d be able to check up on them both when she was gone.

“You too, Rae,” Reed went on when she didn’t reply. “Thank you for helping me. For searching for Nim.”

Still, she said nothing, swallowing down the lump in her throat, too many emotions turning over themselves. “This isn’t the way to the manor.” They’d turned towards the Southern Quarter, the opposite direction to the one they should have been heading. The architecture changed to the mismatched human style, but just as many Fae as humans walked the streets here,the borders between the different parts of the city becoming less and less defined.

“Boss’s orders,” Reed explained. “We’re here, Baelin,” he said, either into his headpiece or just for Quinn to hear, Rae wasn’t sure. Both most likely. They turned down a narrow street, wide enough only for the vehicle, and a metal shutter rolled open to their left. Reed pulled into the dark alongside another car, and before he’d even pulled to a stop, Aidan stepped out of it. Rae ignored the way her heart raced at the fact that he’d come into the city in the daylight. For her.No, for his magic, she reminded herself.

She opened her door before he could, leaving Quinn and Ru behind. “You just put a target on his back,” Rae told him, trying to sound angry.

“He knew what he was signing up for,” Aidan said coolly. Rae had suspected as much. He reached out to brush a finger along her hair, showing her the dust when he pulled back. “Under the bed? He fell for that?”

“Didn’t trust me to return?” she asked, trying to hold onto that spark of anger despite how entirely correct his suspicions were, despite how much it had calmed her to know he was with her under that bed.

“Trust was never a prerequisite of our union.” He took her bag from her shoulder, opened the passenger door for her to get in, and leaned across to fasten her seatbelt. “Thank you,” she heard him say to Reed.Reed. Goddess. She’d all but forgotten he existed the moment she’d seen Aidan.

Dusk was only an hour away; she’d have made it back to the manor before then. The vehicles were made with glass that prevented the sunlight from harming the Vampires within them, but Rae knew he’d still risked a lot to come into the city.

“How did you hide from him?” Aidan asked when he got in the car and fired up the engine.

There was something hard in his tone. Suspicion, perhaps. “I hid under the bed, spelled myself so he wouldn’t see me.”

Aidan’s grip tightened on the steering wheel as a different metal shutter opened on the opposite side of the building to the one Reed had entered. “You weren’t breathing.”

Not suspicion, panic, and it did something stupid to her heart. “It’s a weak spell,” she said, studying his profile, the way he’d fastened his hair into a knot, how the muscle in his jaw feathered where he clenched it tightly. “Even the slightest bit of movement can break it.”

Silence fell between them as Aidan pulled up to the ascending shutter. “Since we’re talking about breaking things,” he said after a heartbeat. “You broke your own rule last night.”

Rae turned away from him then, didn’t want to see the disappointment on his face with what she knew was coming.

“You ran.” He exited onto the street, sunlight hitting the car but the inside of the vehicle remained dark. She wondered if he missed it, the feel of the sun on his skin. Recalled how he’d closed his eyes against it back at the rutok kennels.

His words washed over her, settling into her skin, her bones. There were so many things she wanted to tell him. How she kept moving because the momentum was the only thing holding her together. So many things she couldn’t say.

“Haven’t you noticed, Vale?” Rae murmured after a while, a tiredness she knew she wouldn’t be able to shake sinking into her bones. “Running is what I do best.”

Chapter thirty-two

They all should have been sleeping. With the next sunset, they’d all be leaving, heading out for the raids, but Rae knew the same thing that kept her awake kept them awake too. That was how she’d found herself passing time with Baelin and the entirety of First Unit in one of the large lounges in the eastern wing of the manor, far away from the natatorium.

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