Page 53 of Runaway Mate

I cocked my head at him.

Is that safe? For a human? I’m pretty quick.

It is—if she hangs on for her life,he said grimly.Congratulations, by the way. You just communicated with me in wolf form.

Reese approached me cautiously before I could respond to that. I immediately moved toward her, rubbing my body along her outstretched hand to put her at ease, then went to my stomach.

I wasn’t as big as Johnny, but I was still larger than the average wolf. It also helped that Reese wasn’t a big person herself.

“Oh shit,” Reese swore as she climbed on. “Okay. This is fine.”

She trembled slightly as I rose, shifting my body to distribute her weight evenly.

“Lay flat and hold on to the longer fur around her neck. Mind the pack,” Sariel instructed. I waited until she followed his instructions before I turned to him expectantly.

“Once we’re in the trees, we’ll decide how we’re proceeding. We just need to get out of plain sight for now,” he explained.

No sooner had the words left him than his arm snapped out. A Guardian appeared, their neck already trapped in his hands, and he squeezed, making the Guardian’s eyes bulge.

I looked away when they stopped struggling.

“Go,” he growled.

I took off after Johnny when he started speeding across the clearing towards the trees. I forced myself not to look back at Sariel and Neo, focusing instead on the subtle tugging of Reese’s hands in the fur on my back. She was taking shallow breaths, which made sense, considering how fast we were going.

Johnny and I made it to the treeline in five minutes. He didn’t stop once we broke into the cover of trees, so I didn’t, either.

Keep going,Sariel said.Can’t fly while we’re in the trees, but I’m right behind you. Follow Johnny.

I wasn’t sure how long we ran before I almost stumbled into Johnny. He’d frozen behind a smattering of shrubs, his head cocked as though he were listening. Reese yelped at the impact, and his head snapped toward her.

“Did you hear that?” a voice sounded out.

I froze, too.

The newcomers weren’t very close, but they weren’t too far away to not spot two oversized wolves carrying people on their backs.

“No, Leroy, I didn’t hear shit,” someone else answered. “Now shut up and keep walking. We’ve got an hour of sunlight left before we’re fucked.”

Their footsteps carried on.

Johnny glanced at me before slowly stepping out from behind the bushes. He sniffed the air cautiously, then took off again. I followed without question.

We encountered two more groups of humans before we stumbled upon a dilapidated wooden shack in the middle of goddamn nowhere. At this point, I had no idea where we were, but when Johnny approached it, and Sariel stepped out of the bushes with Neo limping next to him, I prayed that it meant we could rest.

While Johnny seemed to have an endless supply of energy, mine had begun to wane at some point between the first and second set of people to appear.

Tired?Sariel asked.

And hungry. So is Reese; her stomach has been grumbling for at least the last hour,I told him truthfully.

“We can spend the night here,” he said aloud for the others’ benefit. “I know some of us are tired. We’re deep enough that we should be unreachable for maybe six hours. Neo and I have been trying to hide our tracks as we went; by the time they realize they’ve been going in multiple wrong directions, we should already be on our way.”

“I still think it’d be safer to travel at night and rest during the day,” Neo said. He sat on a thick log, clutching his head.

“You’re too weak to continue, Reese is hungry, and Marilyn is worse,” Sariel said, seeming annoyed. “Get in. I’ll hunt down some firewood, and we’llrest.”

He turned and disappeared into the forest, leaving the rest of us staring after him in concern.

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