After a moment, Jonathan and her father unbuckled their seatbelts and left the car. Adria watched Jonathan pull on the barrel of his gun and press it into his back belt.
She wasn’t supposed to know about the guns. Her father made a point to hide them whenever she came in a room, but they were always around.
“Why does Jonathan drive us?” Adria asked her mother.
Her mother looked at her. Her face was full of warmth and after seeming to think, she ran her fingers through Adria’s hair and said, “It is because of your blood.”
“My blood?” she asked, pointing to her freshly skinned knee.
Her mother laughed. “No, silly, it’s because of who came before you.”
Adria scrunched her face.
Her mother tapped Adria on the nose. “Sometimes, the people before us choose our path.”
Her mother’s voice was soft, “Someday you will learn what walking in your ancestors’ footsteps means.”
Adria felt nervous. “What if I get lost?”
Her mother tapped her now healing, skinned knee. “You remember how you went too far from home and got this?”
Adria looked down at her freshly healed scab. She thought about a few days ago when she had gotten lost and fallen off her bike. Her knee had bled and bled, and it took Adria hours to find her way home.
“Well, sometimes we have to skin our knee in order to find our way back.”
At Adria’s expression, her mother laughed. “You’ll understand someday.”
Adria woke up to a soft hand against her mouth. Her eyes flashed open, finding Seth’s face. Her mother’s kind eyes fading quickly as Seth put a finger to his lips, telling her to be quiet.
She strained to listen, trying to discern what had put him on alert.
Sure that she was awake and had understood, Seth moved. He was already dressed. She watched him take a gun out of the nightstand and silently cock it. When it was loaded, he offered it to her, but she shook her head.
He would probably be a better shot than her, anyway.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a switchblade, giving her that instead.
“What’s going on?” she mouthed.
Seth showed her his phone. It was a text from Eric.
Eric: We are not alone.
Well, if that wasn’t vague as fuck. Adria mentally ran through their situation. Elena, Bryson, and Kaydon were in a separate hotel. She had Seth and Eric with her.
“Does Bryson know?” she whispered.
Seth nodded.
Adria took in a steadying breath.
The silence stretched, and when no sounds followed, she moved towards the door.
Seth’s hand wrapped around her wrist.
“Eric wants us to wait,” he said, voice lower than a whisper.
She raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to wait?”
