Ivy
The mountain fog rolls across the road in slow waves, swallowing the headlights. It’s so thick and so dark, the trees leaning in on either side of the road look more like rough scratches from a pencil.
"Are you going to tell me where we're going?"
Wraith shakes his head.
"Not even a hint?"
He takes his hand off my knee just long enough to sign with a back-and-forth movement of his fist, even though he could shake his head.
No.
"Rude."
His shoulders shake.
I lean my head against the window and watch the dark fog slide past.
I have no idea where he’s taking us.
We were cuddling by the campfire while the sun set over the river, and there was clearly something on his mind. I assumed it was the upcoming mark, but he suddenly asked if I wanted to go for a drive.
I’m always up for an adventure. So I said yes, of course. But he wouldn’t tell me anything else.
We have to be at least half an hour from the campsite now, and I know we’re deep into the mountains because of the occasional dropoffs into the void.
But I trust Wraith, and I trust his driving. I trust him enough I don’t panic beyond a slight skittering of my heart when there’s a muffled thunk sound from the front right tire and the SUV pulls slightly.
Wraith's hand tightens on the wheel. His head tilts, listening, and then he's easing us onto the shoulder, gravel crunching under the tires.
He puts it in park, tapping the dash display to get my attention.
Tire pressure.
Stay, he signs.
"Absolutely not."
He gives me a look.
"My legs are asleep and I've been sitting for thirty minutes. I'm coming."
It’s dark.
“I like the dark.”
He glances around at the haunted fucking forest closing in around us and sighs the way only he can sigh, with his entire body, and gets out.
I hop down after him through the same side, taking his offered hand.
It’s dark AND cold, he signs, gesturing around us. He’s already shrugging off his warm, heavy hooded canvas jacket and draping it over my shoulders, leaving him in a black henley that clings to his frame.
“It’s fine,” I reassure him, but when I stop talking, the silence hits me.
There’s nothing out here.
Just the idling of the engine and crickets somewhere in the underbrush, fog pressing in on all sides, glowing red around the taillights.
I stretch my arms over my head and roll my ankles out.
Wraith is already at the back, hauling the spare and the jack out like they weigh nothing, his henley sleeves shoved up over his forearms. His breath fogs out between his teeth in the cold.
In the headlights, the lingering ferality in his eyes flashes a soft ghostly blue, like there are mirrors in his eyes.
I don't mention it because he might not even be aware of it, and he doesn't need to know he has another feature he might think scares me when it's doing the exact opposite.
He slides the jack under the frame and cranks it with a couple of pumps of his arm.
"Okay, that's genuinely unfair," I say.
He glances up. What?
"You're doing that like it's a bicycle."
He huffs, shaking his head, and gets the lug wrench.
I wander a few feet down the shoulder, hugging my arms, and look out into the trees. The fog just ends the world about fifteen feet in.
There's just gray, and then black, and then… whatever's in the black.
Something cracks out there.
I don't jump. But I do maybe walk kind of briskly back toward Wraith.
He's crouched with one knee in the dirt, spinning lug nuts off and dropping them into the upturned hubcap. He doesn't look up, but the muscles across his shoulders shift, and I know he heard it too.
"You know," I say, planting myself beside him, "this is exactly the kind of place where a couple gets murdered in a horror movie."
He sets the wrench down in the dirt and lifts his head, his blue eyes coming up to mine, deadly serious.
No one will ever hurt you.
Oh.
He took that literally. He heard horror movie and went full protector mode.
"I know," I say, and I have to work to keep my voice level, because if I say what that just did to me, he'll get embarrassed and stop doing it. "I know you wouldn't let anyone hurt me."
I lean in and kiss his jaw.
He stares at me in soft bewilderment, then nods, satisfied, and picks the wrench back up.
Then he pauses, sets it down, and lifts his hands again.
You would start biting anyway.
I bark out a laugh loud enough to scare something with wings out of a tree.
"I would. I've got a track record."
His chest shakes as he goes back to the wheel, and the gravelly huff-huff-huff of his broken laugh is the best sound in this entire forest.
I watch him work. He pulls the flat tire off one-handed and sets it aside, then lifts the spare into place with the same lack of effort and starts threading the nuts on with his scarred fingers, checking each one, tightening in that careful crossing pattern.
And I think about how if a serial killer actually came out of that fog right now, he wouldn't get three feet. Seven feet of feral alpha would just rise, and it would be over before anyone could make a sound, and I'd have to explain to Thane why someone was pulled apart five ways on a mountain road.
I'm not scared out here at all, actually.
I'm the safest omega in this state.
"Do you need me to hold anything?" I ask.
He thinks for a second. I can see in the dark. But you can get the flashlight, if you want.
I grab it out of the door pocket and aim it at the wheel. He signs a thanks before torquing everything down. He lowers the jack and gives the tire a shove with the heel of his palm to test it.
All set, he signs, standing and brushing the dirt on his hands onto his thighs. The subtle glow in his eyes leaves a trail in the fog.
"How far are we from wherever we're going?"
He tilts his head. Ten minutes.
"Ten minutes to what, Misha?”
His eyes crinkle at his name. He tosses the flat and the jack into the back, shuts the hatch, and finally signs it.
Diner. Off the highway.
I stop walking.
"A diner?" I ask, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice.
He nods, his eyes flicking away from mine. It's almost midnight. It'll be empty.
I press my fingers against my mouth. "Are you sure? Because we could go back to the tent and I would be thrilled, I promise I have zero complaints about cooking over the campfire—"
He steps in front of me and his hands come up between us, and even in the dark I can see how steady he makes them on purpose.
The others got to take you on real dates.
My throat closes.
Thane got a restaurant. Whiskey got the rage room. Plague got the planetarium. Valek got—his hands stall—whatever the fuck that was in the woods.
"A hunt," I say, swallowing. "Val got a hunt."
A hunt. He huffs. This is my chance.
"Okay," I whisper.
Okay?
"Okay. Yes. Take me to the creepy midnight diner." I grab two fistfuls of his hoodie and pull him down until he bends, until his forehead is against mine and his teeth are inches from my mouth. "But if it's too much, we leave. I don't care if the pancakes just arrived."
His jaw shifts against my palms.
Deal, he half-signs, or at least I think it's the sign for deal. His version of mumbling.
"What's that? I didn't catch it."
He rolls his eyes and signs it letter by letter, exaggerated.
D… E… A… L.
I kiss his teeth.
He makes that low sound in his chest, the one that isn't quite a purr yet but is trying, and opens my door for me with his scuffed-up hand.
As the forest gives way to a lot ahead of us, the neon red sign for the diner shines out of the fog.
Dolly's.
There's a single rusted pickup truck in the lot, parked crooked across two spaces, covered in vaguely threatening, edgy bumper stickers.
Across from the truck, a shielded payphone by the door with cracks in the plexiglass and the receiver hanging off the cord.
Two other cars across the lot, parked next to each other, one, um… rocking.
It looks exactly how you'd want a diner at midnight in the middle of nowhere to look.
Haunted as hell.
Which always means you're about to have the best pancakes you've ever had in your life.
Wraith parks close to the entrance and sits there for a second, letting the engine idle, glancing warily around the diner and the parking lot. His knee bounces once, twice, and he stills it deliberately, pressing it hard against the underside of the dash.
"You okay?" I ask.
He nods. Then he signs, quick and a little messy, which is how I know he's anxious.
Don't want to scare anyone.
"I know," I say softly, leaning on his arm.
Or embarrass you.
"You won't. I promise. You could never embarrass me."
He watches me, eyes searching my face. Even if I accidentally taste bacon and go feral?
That makes me snort. "You've been hanging out with Whiskey too much," I say, pushing his arm playfully.
And he has been. I've caught him sneaking out a few times here and there, always with Whiskey, and I know it's because Whiskey is using himself like a human meat shield so Wraith can get desensitized to going out in public while Whiskey absorbs all the attention.
I can do that, too.
Wraith rolls his shoulders back, one at a time, like he does before anything he's amping himself up for. Games, medical trauma, stepping outside. Bracing himself to get stared at, or worse.
For me.
With a deep, uneasy breath, he kills the engine and comes around to the passenger's side to help me out, always gentle and chivalrous, even now.
We're almost to the door before I realize it feels like I'm wearing a backpack, and it hits me out of nowhere that I'm still wearing his heavy canvas coat, and he's in a henley.
A hoodless henley.
"Oh, fuck," I mutter, already starting to shrug out of it while he just stands there and blinks down at me. "Why didn't you tell me I still had your coat?"
It's cold, he signs simply. Keep it.
"I have my own coat on under it. I'm fine," I tell him, unrolling the sleeves so I can wriggle my way out of it. My own sleeves are tangled up in it. "I'm actually cooking in this. Seriously."
He hesitates, his eyes traveling over my clothes. Are you sure?