Chapter 24
chapter
twenty-four
Honey sat down next to Tobias at the corner table of Burgers N’ Beats and shoved an iPad in front of his face.
Tobias stopped chewing. He’d been eating a bagel, which was now behind the iPad Honey was brandishing.
“Hi, Tobias,” Tobias said, muffled. “How are you, Tobias? Hey Tobias, can I show you something?”
“I am showing you something,” Honey said. She shook the iPad pointedly. “Is this the amulet?”
Tobias shushed her, narrowly managing to avoid spraying bagel over the warped table.
He took the tablet and stared at the photo she was showing him.
It was a grainy snapshot of a wrinkled book, its pages yellow with age.
The paper displayed an old sketch of an amulet so familiar it made Tobias swallow his bagel in a sudden, painful lump.
“That’s it,” he said. “Where’d you get this?”
Honey tapped out of the photo to display a text chain. “Rosaline. She says good luck, by the way. And she was super happy to hear about Alex starting to drag that stick out of his ass.”
Tobias grimaced at the mental image and craned his head toward the sliding doors. “Where’s Sadie? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you guys apart, literally ever.”
“She’s parking Steve-van,” said Honey in a rush, tucking her phone away and holding the tablet out again. “She’s punched out most of the dents, so all the doors close again. Look, Rosaline says the amulet isn’t just a wolf thing, it’s all monsters. So—”
“So that means I shouldn’t get close,” declared Sadie as she came striding through the sliding doors. She slid onto a seat next to Honey, barely bothering to give Tobias a nod before she took the tablet.
“You can get close,” Honey argued. “We just have to smash the amulet first.”
A loud shriek made them all turn. Tobias’s claws emerged, piercing his bagel, as he turned toward the sudden sound of rushing footsteps. What he saw made him slump in relief.
“You’re back,” Donna cried, bounding over to their table. She patted her staff uniform down with a wince. “Ignore the scream, that went way higher than I wanted. But you’re back! Alex is around here somewhere, right? He said he’d be back at work soon.”
“He’s around,” Tobias said, prying his claws out of his bagel.
“Good, we’re understaffed.” Donna raised her brows at him, then leaned over him to offer a hand to the girls. “Donna. Part-time silversmith, full-time manager of this hellhole.”
“Silversmith,” Honey said, her eyes flashing like she was already putting pieces together Tobias didn’t even know he’d given her. “Cool! I’m Honey, full-time undergrad and extra-full-time bug enthusiast. This is my girlfriend Sadie, part-time music teacher and full-time hot stuff.”
She turned to shoot Sadie a wink. Sadie pretended not to smirk, and Tobias was hit by a bittersweet sensation that struck him often during his time in the backseat of Steve-van.
It hit him every time Honey absentmindedly straightened Sadie’s hoodie or leaned on her shoulder while they were waiting in line at a gas station.
Every time Sadie put Honey’s sun visor down without needing to be asked or knew what Honey was trying to say before she was even halfway through a sentence.
They knew each other to their bones. Loved each other beyond bones.
Tobias wanted that so badly it ached. And he couldn’t have it—not unless Alexander walked away from his family. Not unless he pried their claws out of him and let Tobias lick the wounds.
Tobias didn’t know if he could. He hoped—but he honestly didn’t know who would win: the sweet, caring Alex, or the cold, guarded Alexander wrapped around him, squeezing the life out of the first.
‘So,” Donna said, dragging Tobias out of his sad sack thoughts. “How did my tarot predictions go? I’m four for five right now, so I’m counting on Alex to be my five out of five! Is he soul-searching? Has his past come back to bite him?”
“No biting,” said Tobias with a sunny smile.
“Yet,” Honey added.
Tobias ignored her. “What have you been up to, Donna? Any new hobbies?”
Donna grinned. “Yes, actually! I was joking with my aunt about silver bullets so she got me tickets to a gun range. She even got me this cute little handgun! I’ll show you later. I bedazzled it and everything, it’s going to be adorable.”
“Cool,” Tobias said, unsure how else to respond to that. He pointed back at the counter,
where a line was forming in front of her panicked employee. “I think they need you up front.”
Donna turned to see the line and sighed. “Tell your boyfriend to text me when he can come back in. This place is way grosser without his obsessive cleaning.”
She flounced off toward the counter, her hips swinging.
The girls watched her go, both their gazes dropping to admire her swinging hips before turning back to Tobias.
“She seems fun,” Honey said, delighted. “I want to see her bedazzled handgun.”
Sadie asked, “Why does Alexander’s boss think you two are dating?”
“Probably because we told her we’re boyfriends,” Tobias said with a breeziness he didn’t feel. Luckily, they were too excited by the gossip to call him on it. Even Sadie looked interested, although in a more low-key way than Honey, whose eyes had lit up like a Christmas tree.
“You don’t say?” Honey said, dropping her chin into her hand and leaning so close her perfume made his eyes water. “Why, pray tell?”
“It was easier.” Tobias took a large bite of his bagel in the hopes it would deter them from asking more questions. It immediately seemed like a stupid thing to do, because of course Honey kept pushing.
“Easier than…what? Did you guys get caught breaking into the safe and decided to pretend you were making out?”
“Something like that,” Tobias said, garbled around his bagel.
He swallowed, thinking about telling them the whole thing.
Even the idea made him enormously tired.
He didn’t want to tell the story. Hell, he didn’t want to be in this story.
He wanted to be on the other side of it, however it turned out.
To stop waiting for everything to come into place or fall to shit.
To finally stop waiting and start living.
He sat back against the tacky plastic seats and gave the girls a weary smile. “Long story short? I wanted to pretend for a while.”
“I don’t know if pretending is the right word,” Honey pointed out. “You two are fucking like rabbits. Sadie wanted to move our motel room.”
“Serves you right for getting one so close to ours,” Tobias said. “Three rooms away was never gonna be far enough.”
He finished the last of his bagel, considering. Alexander’s bitch mom knew the truth. He wanted to tell someone who actually gave a shit about him. Someone who could sympathize.
“He’s my mate,” he said in a rush.
Sadie stopped smiling. In contrast, Honey grinned so hard Sadie had to pinch her.
“What?” Honey demanded, rubbing her arm. “That’s delicious. I mean sad! So sad. And tragic. And hot.”
“Hon,” Sadie warned. She was, once again, doing a much better job of hiding her interest. She even looked genuinely sad about it. Or maybe that was just discomfort, and he was reading her all wrong.
“Do not tell me it’s not hot,” Honey demanded in a whisper. “The werewolf and the hunter? Bound to be together, but their pasts drag them apart! Will he follow his family…or his heart?”
“Thank you for that dramatic rendition,” Tobias deadpanned. “Feels great hearing my love life narrated like a telenovela.”
Honey laughed. But she actually looked sad now, even if it only leaked through in the brief moments between her smiles.
One thing Tobias had gleaned about Honey on their little road trip: she didn’t wear sadness well.
If given a choice, she would hide it with whatever she had on hand. Even if it pissed people off.
Tobias could relate.
He wiped crumbs out of his stubble and shot them a weak grin. “Don’t tell him about it, alright? He doesn’t know.”
Honey gasped and batted Sadie’s arm.
Sadie took Honey’s batting hand and slid their fingers together, never looking away from Tobias.
“Seriously?” she asked. “That sounds like the sort of thing you should tell someone.”
Tobias snorted. “Sure. Let me call up the hunter real quick and tell him he’s bonded to a werewolf. You know that jawbone knife he carries around everywhere? Guess what it’s made out of!”
“But it looks so cool,” Honey said. Her smile was stiffer now, like she was playing the role of Honey Williams—cool and funny and effortlessly easygoing—rather than actually being it.
“He’ll choose you,” Sadie said.
Tobias laughed bitterly. “You don’t know that! I can hear it in your voice. His parents are here, man. I can feel their claws in him. We’re running out of time to make him realize that this rigid, bullshit life isn’t what he wants! He’s going to go back to them.”
Tobias dragged his hands over his face, feeling tired and stupid and so much older than twenty-one.
“God,” he said, lost in it. “He’s going to go back to them, and he’s going to be so fucking miserable.
And he’ll tell himself that’s what life is meant to be: misery studded with these little moments of joy when your mom tells you good job for shooting some monster who was just living his life. And I’m gonna be here…”
“Free,” Sadie said quietly. “Right? Even if he doesn’t choose you, we’re getting rid of Muzzle. Of the amulet. You can go find a pack worth something.”
“Or strike out on your own,” Honey added, picking absentmindedly at the bite scar on her neck. “You can do whatever you want.”
It sounded so much like what Tobias kept telling Alexander that he chuckled. He’d been dreaming about what he’d do without Muzzle’s shackles for years. Now he had an actual opportunity, and all he could think about was the hunter who tried to kill him the first time they met.
“I want him,” Tobias admitted. “I want him all the time, it’s driving me crazy. And I know he wants me too! That he wants to be—”
“Different,” Sadie finished. “The kind of guy who can have you.”
She was staring down at the table, her brow furrowed. Honey squeezed her hand, her expression uncharacteristically soft. Sadie looked at her, and they managed to have a whole conversation without opening their mouths.
Tobias wished they would stop being so fucking adorable. He was suffering here.
“You know,” he said, “it’s been a unique kind of torture watching you two jackasses be all coupley the whole time.”
Sadie shushed him.
“Seriously,” Tobias said. “You know you can dial it back, right?”
Sadie shushed him louder. Her dark eyes were huge, looking over Tobias’s shoulder. Honey followed her gaze, looking confused.
Tobias turned and froze.
Josh Waters stared at him, standing stock-still between the sliding doors.
His arm was still in a cast, his face covered in puffy, healing bruises.
He stunk of wolf, but it was only skin-deep.
Even after throwing away his friendship with Tobias and leaving both him and Alexander to die, Muzzle still hadn’t turned him.
If Tobias wasn’t so bitter, he would have laughed. But Josh looked so small and pathetic, all baggy clothes and scraggly chin hair, staring at Tobias like he was trying not to burst into tears.
The sliding doors closed on him.
“Ow,” said Josh, surprised.
Tobias stood. He held up his hands and gave Josh his best disarming smile, the one that had gotten him out of some sticky situations and gotten him into many more.
“Josh,” he started.
“Shit,” Josh whispered, and bolted.
Tobias cursed and ran after him.
The girls fell into step with him shockingly fast. Even Honey kept up, which really shouldn’t have surprised him after their brief arm-wrestling on the second day of the road trip—for a human, she was pretty damn strong. And apparently, she did cardio.
“God,” Honey panted as they sprinted down the street after Josh. “I miss when running didn’t need any effort! I could run for miles and not get winded!”
“You didn’t need to breathe back then,” Sadie reminded her.
She glanced around the street, annoyance flickering over her face at the people walking past. If the street was deserted, she could have burst into super speed and caught him no problem.
Now they were stuck gaining on him normally, like a bunch of humans.
“You can’t outrun us,” Tobias called as Josh skidded around a corner, his patchy sneakers almost making him wipe out on the cracked pavement. “You don’t do cardio, dumbass! You have no stamina!”
“Shut up,” Josh called back, already wheezing. He gripped his cast-clad arm and ran faster, the desperation clear in his voice as he pelted down the street.
Tobias swore and sped up. They were heading toward an even more populated area; they needed to cut him off before he made it.
Tobias veered off to the side, running around parked cars. Sadie followed him, running ahead. He caught her eye as she passed, and he saw a flicker of black and the barest grin.
Tobias had to bite his cheek to hold back a smile. His blood was surging, the wolf instincts rising up in him as they ran down their prey. There were some good things about being in a pack.
Sadie ran in front of Josh, cutting him off.
Josh yelled and swerved into an alleyway. Tobias watched him stumble, the teen’s breath hitching in fear when he saw the dead end.
Tobias stopped in the mouth of the alleyway.
Josh was standing at the back of it, his baggy shirt damp with sweat, distraught tears glimmering in his eyes.
He was holding a knife, chipped and dull.
It wasn’t silver. It was just the simple protection of a kid who had to defend himself one too many times.
Tobias raised his hands again. “We just want to—”
Talk, he tried to say.
An arrow cut him off. It whistled through the air and embedded itself in the shoulder of Josh’s injured arm, triggering a scream so loud Tobias flinched.
Honey arrived behind them, puffing. “Oh god, they’re on the roofs now?”
Tobias looked up to see Meredith and Call-Me-Bart White decked out in combat gear and crossbows, glaring down at them from the roof of the building beside the alley.
“Thanks for the assist,” Meredith said. “We’ll take it from here.”