“A short cut,” I repeated. “I don’t think so. Ethan told me that most of these roads lead to dead ends because the houses are so far apart and isolated from one another.”
Flint’s green eyes once again sought out the rearview mirror. Looking over my shoulder, I glimpsed a nondescript white SUV following behind us. An uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach began to form as I considered the reason Flint would be so concerned with that.
“Do you know that car behind us?” I asked, hoping to hell he did.
“Nope,” Flint returned, “but they’ve taken the last three turns in the same direction as us and I’m testing to see what will happen If I take a fourth.”
He didn’t have to say anything else. That statement, coupled with how isolated it was out here, made that car suspect as hell.
I glanced back again, trying to look inside the SUV. Unfortunately, their windows were so tinted, I couldn’t see anything but the sun glaring back at me.
My mouth went dry as I licked my lips. “Do you think whoever is driving that car is the person who texted me?”
Flint smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Unlikely,” he spoke, as he slowed down to a crawl. When the vehicle was right behind us, he unexpectedly cut the wheel and pulled off onto the side of the road where there was a bit of a clearing.
The SUV behind us braked hard, but didn’t stop. Like he’d driven cars for a living, Flint smoothly kicked the truck into reverse, spun it around, then floored it so we were now heading back in the opposite direction.
While the SUV didn’t mimic our move, it inched down the road like it was watching us from afar. Stepping on the gas, Flint drove about twenty miles over the speed limit back to the cabin. It didn’t feel like I could breathe until we pulled down the driveway and the cabin came into view.
Despite always parking in the driveway, my cautious companion drove the truck toward the oversized garage and banked it directly inside a vacant bay using an app he had on his phone.
When he cut the engine, I felt my body still thrumming with unspent energy from the creepy experience we’d just shared.
“You can’t tell Ethan what just happened,” I frantically blurted.
“Millie, there’s no way I’m keeping what just happened from my brother,” Flint stated flatly, brooking no arguments.
Tears welled up in my eyes. To my utter embarrassment, that had been happening a lot since yesterday. “He’s never going to let me leave the house if he thinks that was someone from the Tupilaq pack tracking us back there.”
“Probably not,” Flint agreed.
“That’s not fair!” I argued childishly.
Flint sighed. “Things rarely are, Princess.”
I hated when he called me that. It never sounded genuine coming from his lips, like it did from Ethan’s. It was more like a dig than a term of endearment whenever the cocksure ware used it.
I tried another tactic then. “You’d never hide away in your house if someone followed your car around town.”
“We’re not talking about me, a trained marine and a male ware. We’re talking about you, a vulnerable female omega,” Flint reminded me then.
Getting creative, I preyed on his male weakness in an attempt to trick him into submission.
“You don’t think you can keep me safe against another ware?” Sure, it was dirty pool I was playing, but I didn’t want this one incident to force me to quit a job I’d just started and actually liked. “For what it’s worth, I think you could. I can’t imagine another ware being stronger than you.”
Catching onto my game, Flint turned to me and smiled that dangerous smile of his. “Oh, I can keep you safe, babe. I just don’t want to draw any attention to us by having to drop bodies while I’m on my vacation.”
I got desperate then and shouted, “Come on, Flint! Don’t do this to me. Ethan’s going to keep me hostage in the cabin forthe next decade if you tell him a car drove too close to us on the way home from work. We don’t even know who was behind the wheel. You said it yourself, it was unlikely that it was anyone from the Tupilaq pack.”
“Let me tell you something, Millie,” Flint began, as he popped the keys from the ignition and turned to look me dead in the eye, “If you were my mate, you wouldn’t have even been allowed to leave the house in the first place. Consider yourself lucky you aren’t with me. Ethan at least gave you a chance at freedom. That would have never even crossed my mind.” With that little dramatic speech of his, he opened his door and lithely hoped out.
“You’re a barbarian!” I accused, before reluctantly following him, dreading my conversation with Ethan.
“Yup, I am. Now come on inside, coward,” Flint encouraged, his joking side returning. “Let’s go and tell the class what happened at recess today. Ethan’s going to love it.”
“I’m not quitting my job!” I shouted at Ethan from inside the locked bathroom.
“Come out of there and let’s talk about this,” Ethan called back.
