Liam folded his ears back.Shit.
I could see my reflection in his gaze; I could see the red seeping over the white. Using his surprise, I flipped onto my stomach, my cheek weeping blood on the cement floor, and leaped out from underneathhim.
I burst into the sunlight, speeding away from the boy who made my heart beat fiercely, from the warehouse that held cherished moments of my childhood, from the pack I’d wanted to become a part of even though I’d claimedotherwise.
Chapter Forty-Six
Liam didn’t comeafter me, which led me to think he’d changed back to his human form and indulged my plea. I prayed his explanation would get back to Everest, and that he wouldn’t hold my supposed desertion againstEvelyn.
I flew toward the inn like a lightning bolt, pounding the earth so violently I thought my heart would crack. The urgency and the adrenaline dimmed the horror of what I’d just learned…of what my cousin haddone.
When I reached the inn’s property line, I slowed to make sure there weren’t too many humans but then realized I was wasting precious minutes. To hell with sightings. I was not an impressive creature, not like Liam and the rest of the boys. They couldn’t pass for real wolves; I could. I muscled my way through the prickly fir trees and bounded into the parking lot. Evelyn’s sash window still gapedwide.
As I trotted toward it, I lowered my nose to the hot asphalt and inhaled. There it was again. The ashen scent of a crushed cigarette laced with Evelyn’s minty ointment. Everest didn’t smoke… Or did he? Did I even know mycousin?
The odor of arthritis cream ran the length of the parking lot, tempered with that of gasoline fumes. He’d taken Evelyn in a car. How was I supposed to trail acar?
I ran, but not fast, clinging to the edge of the road. I discovered a cigarette butt, coated in dry saliva, then picked up more hints of Evelyn’s salve. I prayed it wasn’t my addled mind conjuring up smells that weren’tthere.
The sun baked my hide, but thankfully, the whiteness of my fur repelled some of the heat. I walked and walked, losing the invisible trail more than once, but retrieving it each time. Like a fractured chain, it hung in the stifling air. The only explanation I could come up with was that her captor had left the car windowopen.
A fork split the road in half. I smelled the air but froze as I took in mysurroundings.
No…
NO!
I’d followed an old scent. Despair limning my vision, I stared at the steep hill with the pockmarked road that led to my childhood home. My heart thudded. I backed away but stepped in a spot of mud that sucked at my hind paw. I yanked my leg free, noticing tread marks beneath my pawprint.
Fresh treadmarks.
A carhadcome byhere.
Maybe I hadn’t followed an oldtrail.
I sped up the hill, pulse lurching savagely. Tucked behind the house was a black minivan with the Boulder Inn logo. Part of me had held out hope that I’d been wrong. That it wasn’t my own family that had done this to me. The van trampled thathope.
Wolves didn’t have goose bumps, yet my fur tingled withthousands.
I swayed but steeled my nerves as I inched closer to the house, ears perked up for sound. Through the grimy window of my old living room, I caught a sight that sucked all the oxygen from theair.
Evelyn was strapped to a chair, her snarled black hair spilling over her hunched shoulders. My eyesight narrowed as I took in her legs hooked to the chair rungs with duct tape, her arms taut and stretched backward, her hands bound with a zip tie. I tried to see her chest, see if it still rose and fell, but she was angled away fromme.
The desire to sink my fangs into flesh and spill blood seized me so hard my musclesjerked.
One of Evelyn’s fingerstwitched.
She wasn’tdead!
A voice, scratchy yet feminine, rose from within. “She didn’t go through with thetrial.”
My vision blurred andsharpened.
Lucy!
I circled around my house toward the broken window pane of my bedroom. The second the crackled glass would fall against the hardwood floor, Lucy would know I washere.
My stomach seized as the scent of cigarettes and menthol blasted into my pulsingnostrils.
