Chapter 15
chapter
fifteen
Tobias pried his eyes open in the backseat of a strange car.
His side was on fire. His arms throbbed with lacerations.
His ribcage ached. He felt like he’d been tossed in a blender along with hot coals.
Hazy memories trickled back and made him tense up: Muzzle’s cold grin.
Josh bruised and gaping from the stands.
Rubble raining over the arena. Alexander’s grimacing face, his dyed hair streaked with blood as they emerged into the night.
Tobias shuddered. He didn’t hurt Alexander—right? He couldn’t. Even feral, he wouldn’t hurt his mate.
A familiar mutter made him sag with relief as Alexander leaned into view from the driver’s seat to fiddle with the radio. Tobias breathed in his scent, sharp and cleansing, overwhelming the stench of blood and smoke and car exhaust.
He smacked his lips. “Are you running away with me?”
Alexander jerked. He met Tobias’s gaze in the rearview mirror, a look of impossible relief flooding over his face. But only for a second. Then Alexander pulled his expression back into that blank haughtiness Tobias was still getting used to.
“You wish,” Alexander said. He raked a hand through his dyed hair, which was streaked with scorch marks. There was another on his forehead, shiny and pink.
His jawbone knife gleamed in the drink holder beside him. There was a Twinkie wrapper stuffed next to it, which didn’t make sense. Alexander hated Twinkies, as he hated all sponge cakes. One of the many things Tobias had learned while he lay naked on the couch with him yesterday.
Tobias looked around him at the rickety car. “Whose car is this?”
“No clue,” Alexander said, his gaze fixed on the street ahead. “We’ll have to switch it out soon.”
Tobias let that sink in. “You steal cars?”
“Yes,” Alexander said. It sounded a lot like obviously. Then his voice softened. “How are you feeling?”
Tobias groaned, shifting in the backseat. Every small movement made his injuries light up. Burns, cuts, some creaking bones he really didn’t like the sound of.
“Great,” Tobias croaked. “What about you?”
“Fine.”
Tobias eyed him warily. Other than the burns on his forehead and a series of cuts over his arms, he looked mostly unharmed. “Muzzle?” he asked.
Alexander sighed. “Still alive.”
“How did we get out? I remember…” Tobias frowned at the rusty car ceiling. “An explosion?”
“I stole Josh’s bomb,” Alexander said simply. “We escaped in the ensuing explosion.”
“Oh, the ensuing explosion. Great.” Tobias let his head thunk back against the car seat. “Where the hell are we?”
Alexander checked his phone, which was lying on the dashboard. “Almost in Fester, North Carolina.”
North Carolina. Tobias lifted his head to stare at the endless stretch of trees lining the road. He had assumed they were still in Virginia. They must’ve been driving for longer than he thought.
“What’s in Fester?”
Alexander hesitated. “Somebody who can help. Or she’ll shoot me on sight. Either way, she’ll probably help you. And I’m out of options.”
There was a story there. Tobias wanted to ask about it. He wanted to scratch the itchy shallow burns that were already healing over his cheeks. He wanted to make Alexander pull over and bury his face in his neck, inhaling until he felt like things might finally be okay.
He reached up to rub through Alexander’s charred hair.
“You look so hot like this.” He waited for Alexander to bat him away and lecture him about distracting the driver.
But Alexander actually leaned into his touch, even if only for a second.
Then he straightened, fixing his dyed hair with one hand.
“You look awful,” he told Tobias.
Tobias laughed bitterly. Everything hurt. He lifted his ragged shirt to see a fresh claw mark scissoring over one of his biggest scars.
He let the shirt fall back, frowning. Did Muzzle set the pack on him? How messy was their escape?
“This isn’t all from the explosion,” Tobias said, waving at his beat-up body. “Did I hurt anyone?”
“No,” Alexander said immediately, and paused. “You…you had the chance to hurt me. But you refused.”
Tobias forced a smile. “Are you complaining?”
“Of course not,” Alexander said. “I just…natural transformation is one thing. But you were feral. There should have been nothing of you in there.”
There usually isn’t. Tobias shifted uncomfortably against the car seat, wishing like hell he hadn’t asked that ‘mate’ question the other day.
There was a limit on what Alexander was going to believe before he put the pieces together.
Tobias needed to tread carefully. And by tread carefully, he meant change the subject.
“My question is, why am I not feral right now?” Tobias asked. “Muzzle said if I ever stepped too far out of line, he’d turn that amulet on for good. I think bombing the fucking arena is pretty over that line.”
Alexander hummed thoughtfully. “Maybe there’s a distance limit.”
“I doubt it.” Tobias could feel the pull in his chest. The smallest, sharpest tugs, indecipherable from the sea of pain if not for the horrible recognition. Like scenting a wolf in the woods. Like feeling his bones lengthening.
Muzzle was out there somewhere, giving that amulet the barest touches. Just enough to remind him whose paw he was under.
“He’s planning something,” Tobias said. “He must be.”
Alexander’s impeccable jaw clenched. His fingers went white around the steering wheel. “Good,” he said fiercely. “So are we.”
The house Alexander pulled up in front of was…different than Tobias expected.
Alexander had told him about his family home. The huge rooms and varnished floors and decaying foundations his mother refused to acknowledge. Tobias had pictured some cold New England mansion.
This house looked almost cozy. Two stories on the edge of the woods. A wraparound porch with columns to prop it up. Hydrangea bushes and trellises. Tobias could hear and smell chickens in the backyard.
He leaned over to Alexander as they walked up the path. “Cute house. Not very huntery.”
Alexander didn’t look at him. “She’s not a hunter.”
“Oh?” Tobias was burning so hard with curiosity he almost didn’t notice the stinging wounds acting up as he climbed the steps. “What is she?”
Alexander looked pained. He ignored Tobias, knocking on the door with those short, efficient taps that Tobias was growing ridiculously fond of.
“Alexander,” Tobias said, a niggling suspicion rearing its head. “What is she?”
The door swung open. A strong scent barreled into him, icy and dead.
Tobias had only smelled it once before, in the early days when he hung out at the arena without being summoned there.
It had been a tall, pale, unassuming woman who didn’t cheer like everyone else.
She just stood there, head cocked, watching the wolves rip into each other.
Vampire, his big sister had told him, weeks away from her death. If you were wondering what that corpse smell was.
The gaunt vampire in the doorway gaped. She had short black hair, purple nails, and a faded band tee that read HONEYBLOODS.
“Alex,” she gasped.
Tobias turned, expecting to see Alexander looking sheepish.
But Alexander looked just as shocked as she did. Whoever he’d been expecting at the door, it wasn’t a vampire goth with a penchant for band tees.
“Sadie?” he blurted.