Chapter 20
Kaylee
The ground was uneven, and my calves were already burning. It wasn’t hot, but a sheen clung to my clothing, and I was pretty sure I had at least one new blister. I glanced behind me, keen to see my progress.
And then my glance became a stare. Rook’s home still loomed above me, it couldn’t be any more than half mile away.
Fuck’s sake, it felt like I had been hiking and climbing for hours.
I flexed my shoulders against the bag slung over them.
Probably would have been a whole lot easier if I wasn’t lugging this thing with me, but grabbing it had seemed like a good idea at the time.
I figured if Rook had put it together when he’d planned on tossing me out, then it probably had a few useful things in it.
I hadn’t stopped to look inside though. I had no way of knowing when Lord Lock-People-In-Their-Rooms Asshole would get back, and I needed to be as far away from here as possible by the time that happened.
It had taken me too long to get out of the window and down to the ground—turned out there was a shortage of useful things like vines and trees anywhere close to my window, and I’d almost fallen twice while climbing down.
A broken ankle was the last thing I could afford.
Lying around waiting for Rook to catch me was not on today’s agenda.
No way was I ever going back there. I don’t care what agreement he’d had with the alpha of my pack before I’d even been born—Rook didn’t own me.
And my own pack turning on me and giving me away didn’t change that.
With a sigh, I wrapped my hand around the bag strap, forced my eyes forward, and got my feet moving again.
Rook had been confident about people not escaping from here on foot for good reason.
This ground was deadly, and if I hadn’t spent most of my spare time at the pack hiking, I’d never even have made it this far.
I’d spent as much time climbing as walking, and more time than that trying not to slip or trip.
The average wolf from my pack would have broken an arm or twisted an ankle by now.
But I wasn’t an average wolf from my pack.
They’d put me through hell, and it hadn’t broken me.
It had made me stronger, and I was going to keep going, and I was going to get out of here. And no-one was going to stop me.
I didn’t have a plan for where I was going, beyond ‘away’.
I couldn’t go back to my pack, couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t just tie me up and hand me straight back to Rook.
And I couldn’t stay anywhere else in this territory.
There was no way of telling if there were more packs here, or more dragons, and how loyal they might be to Rook. It was too dangerous.
Trouble was, I didn’t know how far Rook’s territory stretched in each direction. My best bet was just to pick one and keep walking—or climbing—until I was as far away from here as I could possibly get. As far away from him.
I let the thought power me as the sun trekked across the sky, and Rook’s home became a distant dot.
Its height made it easy to see, even after what had to be hours of hiking and climbing and scrambling, but as long as it kept getting smaller, that was fine by me.
Occasionally it would vanish from sight entirely as I moved through a thicker part of the woods, and I waited until I was covered in shadow and sheltered under a particularly dense section of canopy before I allowed myself my first break.
I really hoped there was food and water in this bag. Was I ever going to be pissed if I found he’d packed me a ballgown or some ridiculous shit. Not that I’d have put it past him, I bet he’d have found it freaking hilarious.
My shoulders sagged in relief as I spotted the water bottle and I quickly pulled it out, pausing just long enough to sniff it and be sure it really was water, because I imagine Rook would have found the idea of me stumbling around blind drunk just as funny as the ballgown.
But apparently his sense of humor had deserted him, because the bottle was filled with plain, simple, blissful water.
I’d drained half of it before my sense kicked in and I lowered it regretfully.
There was no telling how long this would have to last, or when I might next find a clean source of water.
Half the planet was basically uninhabitable, and those parts that were—my part—was as much contaminated as not.
I’d heard some wildlife around here, at least, which was a good sign.
Rook’s land obviously wasn’t completely soiled, but every wolf in my pack grew up on stories about not venturing outside the packlands lest the poison and the monsters got you.
Then again, the monster was probably Rook…
because it was hard to imagine anything scarier than him lurking out here.
Setting the water down, I rummaged through the rest of the pack, pleased to turn up a container that turned out, on closer inspection, to have some kind of cooked meat in it.
At least I wasn’t going to starve—today, anyway.
There was a change of clothes, too, though luckily nothing that looked like a ballgown, and a pair of hiking boots that I wished I’d found a few hours back.
They looked like my size, and brand new, too…
My brow furrowed. Had Rook got these especially for me?
I dismissed the idea as quickly as it came.
Probably just some he’d found lying around from one of his many Tributes past, that happened not to have been worn.
Either way, I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I kicked off my leather shoes, which already had a small crack in one sole, and tugged on the boots.
They were padded and soft, and luxury on my feet after the long trek.
I shoved the shoes into the bag—might need those later—and my hand caught on something.
Pushing the bundled clothes aside, I spotted lettering staring up at me.
A book. And not just any book. The one I’d been reading in his garden.
He’d…he’d given it to me. From his personal hoard.
I stared at it for a long moment, my chest squeezing uncomfortably.
Was I doing the right thing? Maybe Rook deserved the benefit of the doubt.
A chance to show the side of him I hadn’t seen before now.
Because the man I thought I knew, he’d never have done something like this.
He liked to torment me, to make me feel less.
To give, only to take away. But maybe…maybe that wasn’t right.
Maybe when he’d given me the book in the library, he hadn’t done it planning to take it away again.
Maybe he was…trying. Because that man? That man might be someone I wanted to get to know.
And then I shook my head. That man was a dream.
That man wasn’t Rook. One good deed, one moment of consideration and generosity, was not enough to undo all the bad shit he’d done up to that point—and hell, after it, too.
It didn’t undo him forcing me to his home against my will, and it didn’t undo locking me in my room like a kid…
or a prisoner. I deserved better. I deserved somewhere I could be free.
Equal. And that was never going to happen as long as I was in Rook’s territory.
But I’d heard him on his phone before. He’d said something about rebels in the east. Rebels meant someone was fighting back against this bullshit world.
And maybe I wanted to be in that fight. I’d spent my whole life sitting on the sidelines, on the outskirts, but I was sick of that.
I was sick of being nothing. Of meaning nothing.
I set my jaw and slung the bag over my shoulders again as I rose swiftly to my feet. I’d spent enough time in the woods that I’d learned to navigate by the trees and plants during the day, and by the stars at night. And now I had a direction.
I was going east.
I followed the game paths through the woods, grateful for each step that took me further away from Rook and, hopefully, the insanity that seemed to creep over me every time I was near the man.
It was like since that night he’d come to my room and I’d tried to climb him like a tree—and been rejected—every time I was in the same room as him my body couldn’t decide whether to fight or fuck him, despite the fact that clearly they were both shit ideas, likely to lead to my untimely death.
I’d spent nineteen years working my ass off to stay alive, but a few weeks around Rook was enough to obliterate my sense of self preservation.
I’d just run away from a freaking dragon who thought he owned me, and where was I heading?
Towards rebels who wanted to fight with dragons.
There was definitely something wrong with my head. I was so going to get myself killed.
Maybe it wasn’t too late to go back to R—
I cut the thought off. The next time I laid eyes on that man, I was going to wind up in a ditch or in his bed, and despite what my body seemed to think, I didn’t want either of those things.
…and if I kept telling myself that, I might actually start to believe it.
I shook my head as I pressed on, slowing my pace to work through a particularly dense section of the woods, studded with thick roots that’d break an ankle if I wasn’t paying attention. Turned out I was paying attention to the wrong thing.
The hand clamped over my mouth before I could shout, and he yanked me backwards against him, keeping me off balance. His head ducked low to my ear.
“Well, well, fancy meeting you out here, Kaylee.”