Chapter 27
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
Everything he’d grabbed from her apartment and a single black duffle bag of his own went into the back of a small, nondescript car parked in the very back of the garage.
The vehicle didn’t look like much from the outside, but when she slid into the passenger’s seat, she was confounded to realize it was fully modern and equipped with extras she was pretty sure were illegal.
Like the black tinted windows, for instance, and the windshield that projected a different image onto the inside of the car so no one could actually see who was driving it.
Bundled up in comfortable clothes, running shoes, and a pink puffy jacket, she sat calmly in her seat as her elf roared out of the long concrete tunnel.
He’d been astonished by her apparently easy agreement to run away with him and kept checking in every few minutes to be sure she hadn’t changed her mind.
Cecilia suspected that he peeled out of the garage so fast because he half-expected her to bail as soon as her ass hit the seat.
But she wasn’t bailing.
In her mind, there was no way the situation was as dire as he said it was.
She just couldn’t imagine a system so blatantly unfair to people who’d been victimized their entire lives.
There had to be a workaround, a plea they could make, that would allow them to return quickly and go about their business like normal.
In the meantime, there was nothing wrong with a vacation.
It wasn’t like anyone expected her at work after she’d no-showed multiple days in a row, and her parents certainly weren’t looking for her.
The only person who would care that she left was Dahlia, and it just so happened that they were headed right for her.
Strangely, Dahlia hadn’t sounded all that surprised when Cecilia called to ask if they could come stay for a while. But maybe nothing shocked her much anymore. Having a husband like Felix could do that to a woman.
She’d offered to send Genevieve, the Amauri-employed witch who could open m-gates in the fabric of space-time — presumably to do crimes — but Sloane flatly refused to travel that way.
Cecilia wasn’t exactly excited about the idea of being squeezed through and spat out a cosmic straw, so she agreed that the car was the best bet.
All in all, Sloane was far more tense than she was as they roared out of what she learned was Marin County.
They were making a break for the border, which would take several hours.
She didn’t exactly expect to be chased or anything, so she settled in with a soft blanket and a pillow, one arm extended to rest on his thigh as he drove.
They were silent for a while. She tried her best to give him time to decompress a little, but in the end, she just wasn’t the kind of person who could take quiet for that long.
“So… your team,” she began in her best nonchalant tone as she gently rubbed his thigh. “Can you tell me about them?”
Sloane’s chest rose with a deep breath. “Tell me what pertinent details interest you.”
“Are you friends?”
“No,” he answered, “we’re part of the same unit.”
“Okay, but you kind of grew up together, right? And you’ve been part of the same unit for how many decades? You must at least like each other.”
He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. “Liking each other is irrelevant.”
Smothering a chuckle, she gave his thigh a quick, playful squeeze. “You know, another thing I love about you is how you think you can get away with not answering by being, like, super literal or side-stepping the spirit of the question. It’s cute.”
Sloane’s helmet briefly turned in her direction before it focused back on the road. “…You are the only one who thinks anything I do is cute, doe.”
“Well, I’m the only opinion that matters,” she stated, shrugging. Cecilia wiggled her eyebrows at him. “Unless you’re friends with your teammates, in which case they also matter.”
She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he let out a very quiet, put-upon sigh. “We’re not friends. We’re… pack.”
“Pack? Like… shifters?”
Sloane tilted his head in one direction, then the other. “Not quite. Our structure is unique. Elves naturally gravitate toward hierarchy, but it’s normally slightly looser. Due to our training, a stricter and more tight-knit formation was prudent.”
Oh, she thought, eyes widening. Oh no.
Bracing herself, she asked, “So… where do you fall in the pack hierarchy?”
“I’m the most senior member of the unit,” he confirmed, “followed by Vesta. There was a gap between our capture and the others, so we were slightly older. Leadership naturally fell to us.”
Horror clung to the back of her throat like bile. “Is she sort of like your sister, then? If you’re taken as kids together and… and everything else.”
“We would never compare our working relationships to siblings or a family unit,” he replied, as blunt and nuanced as a brick.
“You wouldn’t say it but that doesn’t make it untrue,” she argued. “Sloane… I think they’re your family. You’re the big brother, aren’t you?”
His voice came out clipped when he insisted, “If you must assign it a familial title, it would be more accurate to say I’m co-alpha.”
“Oh good gods, that’s worse!” she cried, twisting in her seat to give him her complete attention. Nearly draping herself over the center console, she grabbed his bicep. “Sloane, am I taking you away from your pack? The pack that needs you?”
Peeling one hand off the wheel, he completely covered her knee with his palm. “You’re my consort. You come above everything. Even them. They’d do the same.”
“But you’re the example, Sloane,” she insisted. “You’re the leader. Even if they’ll survive losing you, don’t you think it’d be better to show them that this is something they should have, too? That they shouldn’t have to give up everything for?”
“Cece,” he said, a strained note in his voice, “if they can’t separate me from you, they have orders to terminate.”
“I just think it’s not fair to— What?” She couldn’t have heard him correctly. Cecilia stared blankly at the side of his helmet. “Terminate? What do you mean?”
“Shoot on sight,” he clarified. “I would be deemed an unacceptable risk to a civilian and the population. Standing orders are to put us down in the event that we can’t be restrained.”
“Oh,” she breathed. Cecilia collapsed back into her padded seat, nausea churning in her belly. “Oh. Okay.”
Hours dragged by. The silence was heavy between them as she digested what he’d told her. She tried to, anyway. She’d never done well with guilt. Her parents had wielded it against her at every opportunity, molding her into the grinning, recovering people pleaser that she was.
Dahlia liked to remind her that just because she felt guilty for something didn’t mean it was her responsibility. Objectively, she knew that to be true. Sloane’s relationship with his unit — pack, family — was not hers to maintain or destroy. That was entirely his decision.
But she couldn’t help but feel like it was her responsibility, and not just because he was choosing her over them.
She didn’t know Sloane well. Or more accurately, she didn’t know him in detail. That would come later. What she knew now was that he couldn’t truly appreciate the gravity of what he was risking.
Her elf had never known a world without his team. Not since he was a kid, anyway. He didn’t know who he’d be without them, and it didn’t sound like he’d put much thought into what that would mean. Not because he didn’t care, but because it hurt.
And Cecilia didn’t fucking like the thought of her elf hurting.
She couldn’t stop picturing those sad eyes in that beautiful face. He’d looked at her like she was everything good in the world, like she’d make every evil thing that’d been done to him right again.
Cecilia couldn’t do that, but she was damn determined to find a way to make this right.
She turned the problem over and over in her mind, trying to see it from every possible angle as they drove into dawn.
The main problem she faced was her lack of functional knowledge of elvish culture and the inner workings of their hierarchy.
She thought she had a pretty good grasp on EVP law, considering her past relationships, but obviously she didn’t if someone, somewhere had the authority to just put a man like Sloane down for running off with a girl.
It was as they were approaching the border into Nevada that she thought to ask, “Why did you suddenly decide today that we had to go?”
Sloane took a moment to answer. “I knew we would likely have to leave quickly.”
“Yeah,” she dragged out, “but you didn’t seem like you were in a hurry a couple days ago. What changed?”
“I… was informed that I had forty-eight hours to return to service. During that time, my reason for failing to appear for duty became obvious.”
Cecilia made a face at the dark road that stretched beyond their windshield. A touch of blue and pink had begun to limn the horizon beyond the craggy desert mountains, highlighting the stars that shone over their heads.
Trying to puzzle out when they hadn’t been together in the last two days, she asked, “When did this happen?”
Again, Sloane took a minute to respond. “After our date.”
“When after our date? We went to bed after— well, you know.”
Adjusting his grip on the wheel, he haltingly explained, “After you fell asleep, I left to follow up on Duke’s business associates. I wanted to be sure you weren’t in any danger from past orders or unhappy business interests. While I was out, I was waylaid by three members of my unit.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
She was surprised by the punch of hurt that struck her right in her solar plexus. It wasn’t like they’d talked about things like that, and gods knew they’d been pretty busy doing more pleasurable things the past few days, but it still stung.
“I didn’t want to concern you,” he replied, quieter than before. “And if I only had forty-eight more hours with you, I didn’t want to waste them.”