Swiping a hand over his dripping face, Beck grabs my hand and leads us out of the creek. “Anywhere that isn’t fucking here.”
We only make it a handful of steps before boisterous laughter rings out from a little way in the opposite direction, making us pause. Pain flashes across Beck’s face before he hardens his features, taking another step. Digging my heels in, I toss a look over my shoulder.
“They’ll be blindsided. All of them, slaughtered.”
A myriad of emotions stare back at me with his pleading gaze. “And if they see you, they’ll try to kill you, too. I can’t, Scar. I’m running on fumes. I’ve got maybe one shift in me, if that. There’s at least five guys; if things go south, I won’t be able to protect you, let alone when the vamps catch up. We need to go.”
He’s not wrong. It kills me to admit that I’m tempted to let him drag me away, to let him shoulder the burden of their inevitable deaths so I can tell myself it’s not my fault. Fuck, how many people have tried to kill me in the last few months alone? They hate me, so why should I care about them?
But that’s why they hate me; they think I’m a soulless monster, and if I walk away right now knowing what’s going to happen, I’d be proving them right.
“Godsdamnit, Scarlett!” Beck snaps as I bolt in the opposite direction, chasing after me.
Branches snap beneath my bare feet, and each one is intentional. I want to give them as much notice that something’s coming as possible rather than sneak up on them. Crashing into the clearing, five figures are already on their feet, staring back at me, and even though it’s a shitty fucking thing to do, my morals are willing to take a backseat in favor of the endgame.
Shifters are instinct driven, and I can use that to our advantage so we can all walk away from this.
Seeing a filthy, terrified girl sprinting through the forest is enough to put anyone on edge, and shifters are notorious for being overprotective. The fear wafting off of me is completely genuine, only adding to the image I desperately need to project if I hope to have any chance of this working.
“What the hell?” one growls, his attention immediately snapping to Beck coming to a stop behind me.
Panting, I bend over to rest my hands on my knees, using the flickering campfire to make my eyes appear solid garnet instead of ringed. “Vampires.” Another breath. “Dozens. Run.”
That gets all of their attention, and several sniff the air before growls rumble in their chests, low and full of warning.
“Come in front of me to offer me a hand up,”I mentally hiss at Beck, who does so without question, even if I can feel his confusion.
It puts him so that the shifters can see the savage marks on his back, so that once they pick up the smell of vampire on me since the water will have washed off most of Beck’s scent from me, it’ll work in our favor. Any trace of vampire they pick up from me now, they’ll think it’s from us narrowly escaping an attack and not look too deeply.
Is it a dick move to manipulate them? Absolutely. Am I above doing it? Absolutely not.
Even with seven of us, no sane person would seek out dozens of vamps and try to exterminate them; that sort of thing is for trained teams with proper equipment and numbers. This just means that we can get these five people the hell out of here and they’ll take us with them.Someonehas to have a car, even if it’s a hell of a run to get there. We can use them to get to town and help, while also making sure the people trying to kill us aren’t slaughtered before Malcolm can get one of Archer’s teams out here to liberate them.
A yowl pierces my eardrums as one of them shifts into a leopard, sprinting off and leaving all of us in his dust. It’s followed by the sharp ripping of cloth, a wolf tearing off at a breakneck speed behind him. The others start running in that direction, Beck and I following by default.
“Yeah, no, don’t wait up,” Beck snaps, at the end of his rope.
One of the guys glances back at us, nervously assessing the treeline. “The rest are asleep at camp.”
Despite it not being a thought per se, I feel Beck’s mental state plummet as well as any emotional bond could connect us, turning his way in time to see him blanche as he whips his head around. “We’re not far from the cabins, are we?” At the grunt of affirmation from one of the guys up ahead, Beck curses, tightening his hold on my hand. “It’s going to be a bloodbath.”
We opt for speed over discretion as we race ahead, knowing the vamps will be called by the scent of people and our thundering heartbeats either way. “Cabins are safer than being out in the open if they barricade the windows.”
Beck’s bruising grip is answer enough that he doesn’t believe me. But by the same token, I can feel his relief that I took the choice out of his hands. If we’d run, it wouldn’t have been just these five people that wound up dead.
They were out here having a bonfire when a storm is threatening to break at any minute, but the speed with which the first two bolted, they have people they love waiting for them in those cabins. Seeing as shifters come here to reconnect with their other halves and nature, if there are people opting for the comfort of cabins, it doesn’t take a genius to guess it’s for the sake of their families; mates or children that aren’t as willing to rough it for several days.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say, though I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince, me or him.
A wave of undiluted relief crashes into me and I send Beck a confused look before realization dawns on me and I grind to a halt. Only his hold keeps me from face planting as I choke on a sob, and with another few seconds, the feeling becomes even more intense.
“Babe?” Beck asks, worried as we break through the trees into the giant circular clearing that contains a dozen cabins spaced around it.
“Pack link range is about ten miles, what’s a mage bond?” I demand.
Hope is clear on his face as we sprint for the nearest cabin, not far behind the shifters. “Fifteen or twenty I think?”
But by the time we’re bounding up the steps and pounding on a wooden door, I hear an incredibly faint,“Scarlett?”
