I wasn’t naïve. Swallowing my pills wouldn’t magically solve everything. They needed time to actually kick in, but I was hoping the placebo effect might swing into full power and make it feel like my heart wasn’t about to explode.
“We’re almost there,” Ben said, his voice hoarser than it had been before our date turned into an action movie. I figured transforming from a wolf’s body?—
Wait, no, I wasn’t going to think about that.
“Maybe ten more minutes, give or take.”
Funny, I had no idea how long I’d been in the car with the kidnapper, but it seemed like we were making great time back. It could be that my perception of time was completely off-kilter, but I was pretty sure it was because Ben was seriously speeding.
“Okay,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood for talking, and even if I were, what could I possibly say? I’d been plunged headfirst into a world I hadn’t even known existed, and I really couldn’t dedicate any thought or voice to it until I got my heart rate under control.
Besides, it seemed that Ben also had plenty on his mind. Again, completely understandable. The night hadn’t gone how either of us had expected.
So, we sat in silence. Despite my heart slowly beginning to ease up, it still felt like a truly arduous journey before we pulled over on a small side street.
“I hid it in this alley,” Ben said as he put the car into park. He jumped out of the car and sprinted into the darkness between two buildings.
I had no idea how he could see in the pitch dark, but given everything I had witnessed in that clearing, it was probably the least concerning mystery I had to deal with.
Ben moved impressively fast, and in a blink of an eye, he was practically throwing himself into the driver’s seat and handing me my purse. Relief washed over me, taking some of the edge off, and I dug through my purse for the bottle in question.
I always tried to be prepared for any situation, but thankfully my purse wasn’t overstuffed or cluttered. I found my beta blockers, popped open the child safety top, and knocked back two of the pills without water.
“Impressive,” Ben remarked. He was aiming for levity, but I really had none to give. I was not in a good state, and I was pretty sure he could tell that—not that I was being subtle about it.
“Do you need to go to the hospital?” he asked after several beats.
“No,” I said flatly. “At least not yet. Let’s give time for the medicine to take effect.”
I wondered if we should call the cops, but this was far out of their jurisdiction. I didn’t know how I would actually begin explaining things to them, let alone what they would do if they drove to the clearing and found a man with a smoking eye.
God, I would have to order a new medical bracelet. Damn it, those things were expensive.
“How long do you think that might take?”
Ben was trying to keep his voice steady, but there was still a slight tremble in it, which was a jarring contrast to the awful noises I’d heard him make as a giant animal.
Now that I’d swallowed down my meds and felt relatively safe, all the mental walls I’d put up crumbled to dust. I could see the exact moment Ben had leapt out of the trees, massive teeth flashing as he let out the most threatening, animalistic snarl I’d ever heard.
I knew wolves were massive—I worked with enough kids that I’d probably looked at multiple picture books about every animal native to the continental United States—but Ben’s wolf form was impossibly huge. On all fours, he was nearly as tall as I was standing, and when he’d reared onto his hind legs, I understood why so many myths had deities taking on lupine forms.
His fur was so similar in color to his hair, but with a white underbelly and chest, and his teeth were as long as my hand. If he or the man who had kidnapped me had wanted to, they easily could have bitten me in half.
It was impossible! Truly impossible. And yet I had seen it with my own two eyes. Had I had some sort of psychotic break? It was the only thing that made sense. After all, I was on the brink of a full-blown medical crisis, and even though I’d taken my medication, there was no guarantee that I’d be able to come down on my own. Maybe my brain was completely fried from the sheer amount of adrenaline from being kidnapped and everything else was it trying to cope with that dangerous reality.
“Giselle?”
Huh?
Oh.
Right, Ben had asked me a question.
“Could you repeat that for me?” I asked hollowly.
“How long do you think it might take before you are sure that you don’t need to go to the hospital?”
That was a good question. I wished I could give him a straight answer.
