Page 20 of Furever Loyal
She ran as fast as her legs would carry her.
It was still too slow, and she wished that in a prior life she could have been a track start or something, anything that would get her away from that horrible warehouse and the nightmare she’d just witnessed. The tears streaming down her face were equally generated by the now picked-up wind as it whipped at her face, and her own tears sprung from the fear of what had happened inside that building.
It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. She had to be imagining it. But how? Why would someone have kept a wolf back there? And since when did wolves getthatbig? She’d seen some before, in captivity of course, but none that gotthatbig. The thing had been monstrously huge. The stuff of legend.
Her feet carried her down the road, and then she hung a left, hoping to lose him in the maze of buildings that surrounded the docks themselves. She’d never really explored much of the area and could only recall having come down to the place a few times back in school when she’d worked for a woman whose family had owned a fishing—or was it crabbing?—business. It had been a decade or more now, and she couldn’t remember.
Focus. Stop letting your mind wander.
Haley wasn’t sure she waslettingher mind do anything. It was working on its own now, making her think she’d seen a giant wolf in the middle of the town. What sort of nonsense was that? If she couldn’t stop it from hallucinating, how was she supposed to stop it from sliding back into random details from her past?
Heavy boots slammed into the pavement behind her. She ran slightly faster thanks to the spurt of fear, but it wasn’t enough. She could hear him catching up to her, and in another dozen paces, huge hands wrapped around her waist and lifted her from the ground.
She started to cry out but her attacker—she had no idea if it was Kincaid or the stranger, but she didn’t want either one touching her—clamped a hand over her mouth.
“Be quiet.”
It was Kincaid.
Angrily, she bit his finger.
He yelped in surprise and put her down, but didn’t back away. “Stop it. Don’t bite me.”
“Leave me alone.” For some reason, she didn’t shout. The wolf could still be out there. She didn’t want it finding her.
“You’re scared. Panicking. You need to come with me.” He looked away, unhappy, then continued. “I’ll answer your questions.”
“What the hell was all that?” she snapped, slamming a fist into his chest.
Kincaid didn’t notice, the strike rebounding off his pectoral muscle hard enough that it hurt her.
“Ow.”
“Shouldn’t have hit me,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Shut up. Tell me what the hell is going on?”
Kincaid frowned. “Which is it?”
Her eyebrows came together. “What?”
“I should shut up, or tell you what’s going on? Pick one.”
Angrily, she threw her hands in the air and stomped away. Well, she tried to. Kincaid was everywhere, blocking her from taking more than a step or two in any direction, always moving faster than she could. Even when she tried to fake him out, he ended up in front of her.
“This isn’t fair. Let me go.”
“I can’t do that. Not yet. You need to calm down and come with me.”
Haley shook her head. “Hellll no. The only place I am going is back to my office. Without you.” She paused. “That meansalone. I don’t know how you two planned all this shit out, but that was not cool. You and I are done. If your precious Queen doesn’t like that, too bad. I’m not some sort of…of…Fuck you!”
She started walking again, simply moving left or right when Kincaid got in front of her. He reluctantly gave ground, not wanting to physically restrain her. Yet.
“If you go back, you’re going to have to walk. Or take a cab or something,” he reminded her. “Since I was the one who drove.”
Her frustration at the situation ratcheted up another level at that reminder.
“How did you two set this up? Why? It wasn’t funny!” she said, slamming her fist into his chest again as the adrenaline began to fade.
