Page 22 of The Beast's Baby
“What kind of car do you drive?” she asked, teeth beginning to chatter despite the parka, and he remembered he had his sweaty gym shoes stashed in his trunk.
Hopefully, they wouldn’t smell too bad. But until then…
“Get on my back,” he offered.
She stared at him. “No,” she said. “Where is your stupid car?”
“It’s not stupid,” he retorted, getting annoyed at her stubborn refusal of his help. “It’s a Nissan.”
She raised her eyebrows, then threw her head back and laughed. Her face turned blank when she looked back at him. “Like I said,” she remarked. “Stupid.”
“Hey, I’m out on a limb here,” he remarked. “And you were stupid enough to sign up for this without checking the fine print. So, how about we agree we’ve both made mistakes and all we can do now is decide where to go from here?”
She raised her eyebrows at him. It seemed she hadn’t expected that. Neither had he, not really, but he wasn’t wrong. She gestured for him to turn around, grabbing onto his shoulders and letting him grab her legs to hoist her up so that he could carry her on his back.
“You’re right,” she said. “I made a mistake. Many mistakes. One of the foremost one was drinking that tea without ever questioning it. But I’m a wolf,” she replied. “And what I should decide to do right now—shoeless as I am—is shift and run the fuck away from you. I mean, my mistake was being too trusting, right? Because I was desperate. And here I am again, desperate and trusting you, for God knows what reason. Maybe this is just—”
“Just what?” he interrupted. “My ingenious idea to kidnap you and get you all to myself? You know, any signs you might be reading on me that I’m into you or whatever, you know they’ve got nothing to do with you, right? It’s your wolf. It’s you in heat. It’s notreal.”
She grew quiet at that. He glanced back at her over his shoulder and noticed that she was pouting. Good. So she should. If she thought that this all came down to nothing more than her female wiles, then she had another thing coming.
“I know you didn’t have to come to my rescue,” she said. “It’s just been a lot. It’s still a lot.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. He had no pithy comment. In fact, surmising it all with ‘a lot’ was such an understatement he almost felt grateful to her. Why was he the one lecturing her about mistakes anyway?
His car was thankfully where he had left it and let her slide off his back to walk the final few yards. She immediately began jumping from foot to foot and he went around to the trunk, opening it up, grabbing his gym bag. She watched with a frown, but when the shoes dropped in front of her feet her eyes lit up. He liked it when they did, he concluded. While he unlocked the driver’s side, she put the shoes on, not even pausing at the fact that they weren’t smelling of roses.
“Thanks,” she said. “I mean, really—thanks for everything.”
He lifted his shoulder in a shrug, giving her a smile that she returned tentatively.
It felt like at least a momentary truce.
They were in this together now.
“How much do you know?” she asked. “About… what’s really going on.”
“Not nearly enough,” he admitted freely. “But I want to find out,” he added.
“Find out what?” she asked.
“Everything,” he replied.
Just as he got the door open, an alarm started sounding across the parking lot. A low, blaring horn that told him trouble was about to find them. And fast.
Chapter 7 - Isobel
The blaring warning that something was wrong hurt her ears to the point of making her sink onto the cold asphalt. She flattened her palms over them, trying to blot the sound out, but it didn’t help. She felt strong hands clasp her upper arms and soon she was sitting in the seat on the passenger side of his car. He didn’t bother with the seatbelt. He slammed the passenger side door, running around the hood, sliding in and shutting the driver’s side door. He locked it from the inside and made her slide down—hands still over her ears—and she realized he wasn’t starting the engine.
“Go,” she whispered.
He shook his head, putting his finger to his lips. And then she realized why. She could hear their paws as they approached across the parking lot.
Wolves.
She calmed her breathing, staying very still, unsure of what exactly the fuck Jay had been thinking. If he’d told her the guards were wolves, she wouldn’t have chosen to come with him. This was a suicide mission from the start. Did he have some sort of death wish? He’d been difficult to read in the lab, but this was beyond what she would have imagined about him.
She looked over at him, wanting to offer a glare of remonstration, noticing that he was very slowly finding the hole for the car key. She furrowed her brow at him when he noticed her looking. He just kept his finger over his mouth like an idiot. The gratitude that had taken over for the risk he was taking, for the shoes he’d provided, was evaporating with the growing irritation.
