Motel California
It’s hard to explain just how difficult the sort of drive we endured was.?
A sense of urgency compelled us to get on the road, focus, and get to our destination quickly… but Los Angeles was about 900 miles away, and we were getting a late start.
The sun was already setting by the time we hit the highway. I tapped my fingers on my knee, instantly feeling guilty that we weren’t going to be able to drive far.
“We’ll be able to go a while yet,” Aegis said, sensing my distress. “Werewolves have good vision at night. I can see very well.”
“How long are you comfortable driving? Do you want me to take over?”
He snorted. “No. If we’re driving at night, I’m the better option; the moon hasn’t waned completely, so I’m still in good form. More energy at night.”
I nodded, feeling somewhat amazed. “I knew all of this from school, but man… you guys have quite the edge over us regular people.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Aegis said dryly. “We also have ravenous hunger, short tempers, and territorial issues. It’s embedded in us; we simply cannot thrive in an environment larger than one single pack, and a pack becomes unstable when it grows too big. Mine is already pushing the limits, and we’re trying to share grounds with two other packs at the same time.”
“Give and take,” I said softly. “I suppose there’s balance in everything.”
“The world doesn’t want apex predators,” Aegis mused. He glanced at me. “If you want, you can have radio control.”
I looked at him in surprise, and then burst into laughter. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Would you rather drive in silence?”
“You know what, maybe I will play DJ for a bit.”
He chuckled.
The minutes turned into hours; the sun sank, the world grew dark, the road grew sparsely inhabited. Even in the darkest stretches, when the stars twinkled overhead and the only light we had was the moon, Aegis drove steadily onward.
The day’s activities caught up with me quickly. In spite of the upbeat music, I felt my head nodding off only thirty minutes into the drive. By the forty-five minute mark, I was gone. I didn’t wake up until the distinct impression of the car slowing down drifted in through the fog of sleeping upright in a passenger seat startled me awake. I blinked blearily at Aegis, looking around as he pulled into a spot. We were in a motel parking lot, and surprisingly, our car wasn’t the only one.
“I’m sorry,” I said, stifling a yawn and sitting up. “I don’t know what happened.”
“There has never been more of an excuse to pass out than right now,” Aegis said, before exiting. I was still rubbing my eyes, trying to come around and out of a groggy state, when he popped open my door, making me jump.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said, turning pink as I snagged my bag from the backseat and hurriedly climbed out.
“No,” he said, falling into step beside me. “But I liked doing it.”
The receptionist looked up, and for the first time, I realized what a sight we must have made. A man with a visible werewolf tag walking in through your motel late at night with a woman beside him.
If she had any strange assumptions about what we were doing there, her face didn’t show it.
“Room for two?” She asked, fingers primed over her keyboard.
“Two rooms, please,” Aegis said firmly.
Her eyebrows shot up for a fraction of a second, but then she maintained her poker face. “We may be all out of extra rooms, honestly. Let me take a look.”
“Damn,” Aegis muttered, frowning. “Please do,” he added, louder.
She tapped around on her keyboard for a moment, spent several long, embarrassing seconds clicking, and then shook her head.
“We’ve got one room with one Queen-sized bed in it.”
We stared at her, totally taken aback.
“One room?” I said finally. “I didn’t see that many cars out there!”
“I promise, they’re all taken,” she said, tapping her pencil on the table in mild irritation. “Are you going to take the room, or not?”
Aegis and I exchanged tense looks, but it was now very late at night. Aegis couldn’t go running himself tired; pushing him too hard on the first night wasn’t a good idea, and I was apparently still muggy from the car nap. I felt like a drunk woman; my skills as a driver would be halved, at best, and that wasn’t even considering the darkness.
“We’ll have to take it,” Aegis said, grim. “How much?”
“Let me pay half,” I said, but Aegis waved a hand at me.
The woman walked him through the payment, and they both studiously ignored me the entire time. When I tried to offer a card, Aegis deftly slipped it out of my fingers and pushed it down into my back pocket, which caused me to blush so hard, ketchup would’ve been jealous.
“All right, one night in a single room with a single Queen-sized bed,” the woman said, totally unphased by our shenanigans. “Here are your room keys, checkout is at noon.”
“Thank you,” Aegis said, before turning to lead the way toward the elevator, keys in hand.
“You did not have to pay for the whole thing,” I said, walking faster to keep up with him. “I don’t want to be a burden.”
“I tell you I’ve been in love with you for nearly as long as I’ve known you, and you think you’re ever a burden to me?” He turned and raised his eyebrows at me. “Seriously?”
I’m going to get stuck this color, I thought, flames roaring up my neck and ears. “I- I just mean… this is supposed to be an equal partnership!”
“Right, but as I have not yet married you, you’re still functioning off of a bank account that hasn’t had a chance to recover from a recent move to a new state,” Aegis said bluntly. “I care about your family. I want the kids to be comfortable. I’m paying, right now.”
I scowled, but only because he was… right. I really wasn’t actually in a good position to be trying to pay my own way.
“Thank you,” I said finally, the two of us stepping into the elevator.
Aegis just chuckled, his voice low.
We walked single file down a lone hallway barely wide enough for two to walk abreast. The carpet looked like it had been put down in the ’80’s, and there was this distinct feeling of nostalgia to the entire place… which is to say, it was old.
We found our room. Aegis opened the door and let me walk in first, but my heart sank at the realization that we really were going to have to make this work.
A single queen-sized bed sat smack in the middle of a sparsely decorated, mostly clean room. The air conditioning unit was one of those enormous ones that either belched frigid arctic airs directly into your facehole any time it turned on, or just… didn’t work altogether.
Aegis came and stood next to me, frowning slightly as we took it in. The distance between the bed and the wall with the TV on it was… maybe three feet, max. There were two chairs stationed there, plus a tiny fridge with absolutely nothing in it, and a single bathroom.
“Well,” Aegis said finally, dropping his bag into a chair. “That’s a lot smaller than I was hoping it would be.”
“Why’s that?” My throat had gone dry.
“I was going to take the floor.”
We both looked down at the floor; there was absolutely no space here for a grown Alpha werewolf.
“Huh,” I said, letting the room fall back into silence.
“You want the bathroom first?” Aegis finally asked, glancing at me. “You can snag a shower, if you want.”
“Yeah, I… I think I will,” I said quickly, hoisting up my bag. “You need to uh… you know. Go?”
“No, I’m fine,” Aegis said, trying to hide a smile and nearly failing. “Go on.”
I nodded, tried to back into the bathroom, missed and smacked into a wall, and then finally managed to scrambled in.
My heart raced as I clicked the door shut, blanching and groaning silently. This is going to be a weird night, I thought.