“Get in, it’s unlocked.” He slips into the driver side, and I make my way around, settling in beside him. “Where to?”
In all my haste, I hadn’t thought that far in advance.
A realization pierces my subconscious.
Serena. I haven’t spoken to Serena in nearly a week.
“Can I borrow your phone please? I need to call my friend.” Before, when this all began, Wren would have been toosuspicious to have just handed his phone to me. But now, he doesn’t hesitate.
He drops the phone into my hands before turning on the car. Dialing Serena’s number by memory, she answers on the first ring.
“Hello?” There is a deep sadness to her voice that I don't recognize.
“Serena?”
“Ohh God. Thank God. Thank all that’s holy and unholy in the fucking world.”
“Serena, what’s wrong? I’m so sorry I went MIA! But I have so much to tell you!”
“Xenia, you don’t understand. Vinny called me. He told me that he found your car at the bottom of a ravine, that you were dead. And I believed him. It was in the way he said it. He thinks you’re dead! He thinks it’s that pack’s fault!” Serena is hyperventilating now.
I can’t truly understand what she’s saying.
But then I hear it. Just outside of this garage, multiple approaching vehicles, all of them revving up into the driveway.
And I know, Iknowthat he’s here.
That Vinny has come for his pound of flesh just as we knew he would.
That I am too late.
Wren looks at me, there is clear fear in his ashen face and widened eyes.
“Xenia what’s going on?” Serena’s voice is distant as the phone falls from my hand.
Before Wren can stop me or even fully understand what’s happening, I jump out of the car and run from the garage.
Directly towards the man I never wanted to see again.
twenty-six
Luther
“This isn’t right. None of this feels correct. Wren shouldn’t have sent us out so quickly after her heat. And Ruth’s fine, there’s nothing at all wrong with her, she’s just munching away.” Pierce shakes his head, shutting the stall back.
Luther agrees, but he doesn’t voice his concern. He’s afraid of what they’re going to walk back into.
He originally chalked up the oddity to Wren’s actual concern of Ruth, but now it’s evident that it was a ploy.
One to get us away from Nia.
Luther doesn’t allow the thought to land. He simply takes off, back down the hill, into the house, hoping that Nia is still in the nest, that Wren hasn’t taken her or done anything unforgivable.
BecausetakingNia, removing her from this house, from Luther, from Pierce—thatwould be the definition of unforgivable.
Luther barely makes it back inside when the front door slams open.
His eyes widen, and he freezes in place as he stares down the barrel of a gun.
