I amsoscrewed.
THREE
Robyn
“Get in the car,” Titus growled, pulling his phone from his pocket. “We’re not going to have this argument in public.”
I glanced across the welcome center, past a dark, empty playground and a bank of vending machines, at his SUV. “How do I know you won’t drive me back to Atlanta?”
His scowl deepened. “You’re the stowaway threatening to start a war in my territory.I’mthe one who has a reason to distrust.”
“I’m not threatening to start a war,” I insisted as I headed toward his car. Slowly, in spite of the cold and the fact that I snuck out of the territory without my jacket.
His frown lingered on me as some battle I couldn’t quite make sense of raged behind his steely gray eyes. “Yet that’s exactly what will happen if they find out I have you and I refuse to return you.”
“Look, I’m not trying to make life hard for you. I just want—”
“You can keep saying you don’t want to start trouble.” Titus clicked a button on his key fob as we drew closer to the parking lot, and his SUV’s locks disengaged with a solid-sounding thump. “But as long as what you’re actually doing is starting trouble, it’s a little hard for me to believe you.”
Okay, that’s fair.“I admit I didn’t think this through. I saw an opportunity and I took it. I couldn’t stay in that house forone more second.”
Titus pulled the passenger’s side door open for me, frowning. “They lock you in the house?”
“Well, no,” I admitted as I slid onto the gray leather seat, setting his briefcase in my lap. He rolled his eyes and tried to close the door, but I held it open. “But they never let me leave the property, and they confiscated my phone, cutting off my access to the outside world. I’m under guard at all times. I’m a prisoner there.”
“Yet somehow, you managed to sneak into my car without being seen.”
“That was only possible because they trust you even less than they trust me,” I insisted. “While they were watching you, I slipped through the cracks.”
“And into my car.” Titus slammed the door.
He rounded the front of the vehicle, then stopped suddenly, and I could practically see some new realization smack him on the forehead. Then he stomped to the driver’s side and pulled his door open. “I already told them you weren’t with me!”
“I heard. And I’m sorry. But your empty SUV was the only shot at freedom I’ve had in more than two months.” If four hours spent hiding under a stranger’s change of clothes didn’t prove how desperate I’d been to get out of there, I wasn’t sure what would. “Titus, if I’d stayed in that house, they would have turned me into some kind of feline Stepford wife and mother.”
He slid into his seat and closed the door, leaving us in the dark when the interior light went out. Yet even in human form, I could still make out every silvery striation in his gray eyes, thanks to a cat’s ability to see in low light. “I’m sure you misunder—”
“This is still the US, isn’t it? I still have rights?” I demanded, my fist clenched around the door grip.
“Yes, but you made a deal with the council, and—”
“I was coerced. I wasthreatened. If I hadn’t taken that deal, they would have ripped out my teeth or cut off the ends of my fingers to ‘declaw’ me. Have you seen what that looks like? Have you met Manx?” I saw her once, and a single glimpse of her mutilated hands had given me nightmares.
“No, but—”
“And there were veiled threats of execution. I had no choice but to accept their deal, not just for me, but for Abby. I did what I had to do to keep myself alive and to help her during her trial, but that doesn’t mean the deal was fair. That doesn’t give them the right to hand over my future to the Alpha with the most eligible son!”
“No, it doesn’t.” Anger flashed behind his eyes at the thought, and his reaction made something low and sensitive clench inside me. “But yours isn’t the only life at stake here…” He started scrolling through the contacts list on his phone, and I realized I was losing him, in spite of the fact that he clearly agreed with me.
“Titus!” I waved my hand in front of his screen. “If you send me to the Di Carlos, you have to admit that you’re a sexist hypocrite!”
He arched both brows at me. “How the hell do you figure that?”
“You’re offering protection and aid to all the strays in your territory, as long as they have a Y chromosome. That’s textbook sexism.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re the only stray in the country without a Y chromosome.”
“Does that mean I don’t deserve the same consideration as the men?”
