* * *
The blacktop of the road is warm on my feet, and a soft breeze has my hair tickling my back and shoulders. I’ve been walking for a little while replaying the harsh words that the paladin and I traded hours ago. I’ve been cementing my resolve and filling in the details of what I’m going to do now when the steady thrum of a car sounds from somewhere behind me.
I stick out my arm, thumb up, in the universal sign ofI need a ride. A Range Rover materializes in the distance, and my nerves and adrenaline start fluttering around at the thought of one of the paladin being behind the wheel.
The vehicle gets closer and starts to slow. It comes to a stop perfectly parallel to me, and I hold my breath as the passenger window rolls down. I curse in my head, when the absence of the tinted barrier, doesn’t reveal a paladin but Enoch Cleary.
“Are you okay? What are you doing all the way out here?” Enoch asks, speaking across the dark-haired guy sitting in the passenger seat.
“Um, my car has two flat tires.” I point behind me in the direction I’ve been walking from.
“Was it that Jeep just outside the boundary?” the dark-haired passenger asks. “What’d you run over?”
“Yeah, and I have no idea," I answer flatly cursing my luck that theirs is the only vehicle that’s passed me since I started the trek back to civilization.
“Nash move to the back. We can take you home," Enoch tells me.
I scoff, and I’m not sure if it’s from his use of the wordhomeor that this group of casters are offering to help me. Nash opens the door and slides out. He’s tall and fit and the opposite of Enoch in coloring. His hair is black and his skin fair. His eyes, I notice, are deep dark blue as they roam down my underdressed body to my bare feet.
He steps away from the now open door and offers me a hand like some gallant gentleman helping a woman into a carriage. I look around me, silently begging the universe to send another vehicle this way, so I don’t have to accept Enoch’s help.
No other car magically appears, so I force myself to walk past Nash’s open hand and climb into the passenger seat. He chuckles at my obvious dismissal of his chivalry and waits until I buckle myself in before he closes my door and then squeezes into the back seat where two other guys are already sitting.
“Where are your shoes?” Enoch asks me, his eyes on my bare feet.
“I forgot them."
He’s quiet for a minute. “Forgot them in your car or somewhere else?”
“I was in a hurry when I left.”
Enoch seems bothered by my confession as he presses the gas and navigates smoothly back onto the road.
“So why the hurry, where were you going?” AJared Letolook-alike from the back seat asks me.
“Why do you care?”
He raises his arms in surrender. “Whoa, I was only curious why you’re out in the middle of nowhere with no shoes, bag, or phone?”
“Trouble at home?” The observant Nash queries.
I scoff again. Apparently, that is the noise I’m now going to make any time someone speaks the wordhomearound me.
“Trouble would be an understatement," I mumble quietly to myself, as I focus on the road in front of me.
“What’s going on?” Enoch questions, picking up on my quiet grumbling.
“What makes you think I would tell you?”
Enoch releases a deep sigh and drums a rhythm on the steering wheel. “I think you have the wrong impression about us Ms. Aylin.”
“I wonder how that happened Mr. Cleary?” I mock his overly polite cadence.
“We’ve never laid a hand on the shifters," Jared Leto look-alike defends.
“Maybe, but I watched you sit back and allow it to happen, and it clearly wasn’t the first time.”
Enoch breaks at a stop sign and turns to me about to say something, but he gets cut off.
