Letting his hands fall to his sides, Samuel took a deep breath. “Keep the flag, free of charge,” he said. “It looks to me like I’m not the only one holding on to the past.”
I opened my mouth, ready to make him eat his words, when I felt a light tap on my arm. Turning quickly, too quickly, I nearly knocked into a woman standing beside me. Caught off guard, she stumbled backward, her hair falling into her eyes.
“Fucking watch it,” I growled, and turned away to look for Autumn. The old woman stood in the same place we’d found her, directly beside her stool, but Autumn was nowhere to be found.
A pang of panic speared me. Where the fuck was she? Did she try to make a run for it?
“Eagle?”
I turned toward the voice and blinked in surprise when I found it was Autumn standing beside me. Her hair was just as the woman had said it would be, chin length and angled toward her jaw. It was still damp, but dry enough that her natural highlights were glinting in the sunlight.
Tucking her hair behind her ears, she stared up at me, her big gray eyes full of questions. Wait, what the fuck? Was she wearing eye makeup? She looked ten years older than she was.
“No,” I snarled, grabbing for her wrist. Dropping the vulture at my feet, I dragged her forward and spit into my right palm. As I wiped my wet hand over her left eye, Autumn shrieked and attempted to jerk away. Nearly losing my grip on her, I grabbed a fistful of her newly shorn hair and forced myself not to shake her.
“No,” I repeated, spitting on my hand again and giving her other eye the same treatment. “You want them to think you’re a whore? The last thing I fucking need is some sick motherfucker looking to get between the legs of someone like you, pulling a gun on me and making that brand on your wrist fucking useless.”
She stopped fighting me, went still in my grip and simply stood there, allowing me to finish ruining her face paint. Whatever the woman had used on Autumn’s eyes was now successfully smeared across her forehead and down her cheeks, making her look filthy again.
“Everyone is staring,” she whispered as she blinked up at me. Tears had gathered in her eyes, threatening to spill free from her lashes.
I glanced around us and found she was right. Everyone was staring. Half the main drag had stopped what they were doing to stand and gawk at us.
“Fuck ’em,” I muttered, and bent over to pick up the vulture. Finding the space by my boots empty, I straightened, fury coursing through me as I surveyed the crowd. I spotted him quickly, a boy of around five or six who was moving quickly and had just broken through the small crowd. Shoving Autumn aside, I took off after him.
He was a damn fast little fucker, but I was faster. My legs were longer and far stronger. Heaving, I shot forward, picking up more and more speed until I was nearly on top of him.
“You little—” I grabbed the shock of long curly hair bouncing on his head and yanked him straight off his feet and into the air. Comically, his legs and arms continued to pump for several more seconds, his shocked gasp coming a few moments too late.
“You’re hurting me!” he screamed. “Mom! MOM! MOMMY!”
I snatched the vulture from his hand and released his hair. He hit the ground on his backside with a loudoomphand started to wail. Red faced and with snot dripping from both nostrils, he let loose an ear-splitting siren song that was sure to draw every mother or ovulating female for miles around.
“Shut the hell up,” I gritted out. “I’m not going to hurt you!”
Through his tears, he glared up at me. Folding his arms across his scrawny chest, he released another brain-melting scream.
Unwilling to deal with a mob of angry women, I turned away from him only to realize how far I’d actually run from the main drag. I was near the far lot, where most of the vehicles were kept, the same place I’d last seen Wildcat as she’d torn straight through the gates.
For a moment I just stared at the recently repaired section of gate and wondered, yet again, if any of them had actually made it out there. Out there in the wild, where Autumn was from.
“Fuck!” Coming to my senses, I started jogging back the way I’d come. I’d just left her there alone, and with all those people.
How much trouble can she have gotten into in a matter of minutes?
And the voice in my head just laughed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Autumn
Angry and embarrassed with the weight of everyone’s eyes on me, I watched helplessly as Eagle took off running into the crowd. Considering his size, I wouldn’t have thought he’d be able to run so fast, and yet within seconds he was out of sight and lost in the crowd.
“I’m so sorry, honey.” The older woman who’d cut my hair offered me a tentative smile that I couldn’t manage to return. There was too much happening all around me, too much happening inside me to be able to focus on anything other than my racing thoughts. And even then I couldn’t seem to pinpoint any one of them for any substantial amount of time.
Oh God, why had he acted like that? Why had he left me here, out in the open like this and all alone?
And why was I constantly upsetting him and making him so angry? It had only been a little bit of makeup. Once my matted hair had been cut away, the woman had reached into a bag she had strapped to her waist and pulled out some makeup.
