Page 28 of The Beast's Baby
He stared at her. “You were raised by wolves?” he repeated. “In a pack?”
“No, we lived by ourselves,” she said. “Wolves do that, you know.”
“I didn’t know that they do that,” he admitted. “I thought it was pack life or nomad life. I had no idea wolves can live as human families.”
“Well, I don’t know about all wolves,” she said, growing a little defensive at his assumptions. “But that’s how we did it. My aunt and uncle took me in when my parents were killed.”
“Oh,” he said, heart immediately aching with worrisome sympathy. “I’m sorry to hear that.” To take his mind off the fact that he wanted to hug her to him to offer her comfort, and maybe to let her know that he would try his darndest to not get himself killed, in case she cared, he looked back at the metal cabinet with a sigh, “I don’t think there’s anything here,” he admitted. “And it’s cold. I didn’t realize snow was on the way or I would’ve prepared a little better. Not that there was much time… We should drive closer to the nearest town, ditch the car and walk to a motel or hotel. A bed sounds nice, right? And a hot shower?”
“We shouldn’t find anywhere to spend the night,” she disagreed. “We should steal another car and get the hell out of dodge. As far away from dodge as we can possibly get.”
He thought about it, and even though his body was aching for that hot shower and that soft bed, he gave a nod. “I want to find Olive,” he stated. It was the most important thing. Warmth and cleanliness and sleep could wait.
“That’s fine,” Isobel nodded. “I want to disappear,” she added informatively. “I’ll go to Canada or Europe or something. As far away as any cash I can get my hands on will take me. Do you have cash, by the way?”
“No,” he said.
“Then how would you pay for a motel room?” she asked, eyebrows raised.
“I didn’t think of that,” he admitted. “This is my first time on the run.”
“Clearly,” she remarked.
“Right, because you’ve been on so many,” he shot back.
She smiled then. “You’d be surprised.”
He cocked an eyebrow, then asked, “Why were you so desperate for money that you signed up for the trial? Did you do something bad? Did you need the bucks to disappear?”
“I lost my job,” she replied simply. “Had trouble finding another one.”
“And that made you do something bad so you needed disappearance funds?” he pushed, but she merely gave him a look to shut the fuck up. “Not going to say, huh?” he asked.
“Listen, I think you need me more than I need you right now.” She completely skirted the topic, making him wonder if she actually had done something bad and needed to get away.
But what bad could she possibly have done? Was she fucking with him? Because he was being gullible and was the idiot trying to fit her into a box? Could be.
“I can shift and run far, far away from here and you’re stuck. Right?” she went on, merciless but correct. “So, please, stop prying and let’s focus.”
“I wasn’t prying,” he said, and he meant it. “I was genuinely interested.”
“Why?” she asked. “You’re not falling for me, are you?”
He tried to keep his eyes from rounding and failed miserably. How had he ended up in this position within their dynamic? It had been his role to read her like an open book and feel secure in it and now here she was taking over for him and calling him out on whatever the hell he thought he was doing. Trying to get to know her?
He needed to check himself before he wrecked himself.
“No,” he said, about to elaborate and dig himself deeper into the ditch of making it obvious that he was maybe falling just a little, when a noise made the both of them stiffen.
They tilted their heads back to look up at the broken ceiling of the factory as the lights from a helicopter glittered through the cracks. They moved their heads to watch as a beam of light hit the roof of his car, getting it in the line of sight of whoever was occupying the helicopter.
A second later the blood-chilling howl of a wolf was heard from the forest surrounding them. Another one replied. And another.
“The pack,” he said. “The guards. They’ve found us.”
Her hand was suddenly in his as she stepped close to him, watching as the helicopter touched down on the large dirt yard in front of the building. They could see it through the half-open sliding metal doors. They could see the wolves as they loped into view as well, emerging from the trees like huge, black shadows.
“What do we do?” she asked.
