Jasper is staring at me with an amused smirk, but he turns from me to scan the pods with his hands on his hips. “It’s pretty nice, right?”
“Yeah, I mean…I get that you’re used to it, but I never thought I’d be flying first class.”
“I get it. We flew coach once when I was about seven and there is no denying this is pretty special.”
“You flew coach once?” I ask indignantly, verbally rolling my eyes. “That must have really sucked.”
“It did—oh, you’re making fun of me.”
I feign shock. “Me? Never!”
We settle in and it isn’t long before we’re taxiing out to the runway.
As the plane speeds up, the tarmac slipping beneath us as we surge forward, I reach over and take Jasper’s hand.
“Thanks,” I say. “For planning this.”
He holds my hand up to his face and kisses my knuckles. “I can’t wait to show you the house.”
An hour into the flight, we’ve eaten more amazing food and had our seats converted into the equivalent of a double bed. Jasper, the consummate traveler, is out in a second, breathing lightly. He must be exhausted.
I watch him sleep for a while, distracted from some rom-com I’ve got playing on my TV. And as my eyes begin to close as well I realize for the first time in months, my head isn’t aching. The dull throb is gone, left behind with the wolves back on the ground, the troubles of our pack and the thoughts of our kind forgotten, unable to reach me up here.
I just hope when we land my mind stays as clear.
THE HOUSE IN THE
DESERT
A painful howl tears through my mind as I’m wrenched from sleep, springing upright, my hips pressing against my fastened seat belt.
What was that? Was I dreaming or was that the same howl I’ve heard before in my visions—only magnified? I thought I was escaping the noise, yet somehow it’s traveled with us. Maybe it was just a dream, a fluke, the last death rattle of a fading life force. It has to be, right?
“Sorry,” the flight attendant, a petite blond woman who has been super-duper friendly the whole flight, says. “I didn’t want to wake you but”—she glances up and down the plane as if to sayYou’re the last ones on board—“we’re here.”
“California?” I ask like a doofus.
“Uh-huh, welcome to the Golden State.”
Jasper is beside me, only just stirring awake. He opens a squinty eye. “Are we here?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I think they want us to leave.”
Jasper sits up, having spotted the flight attendant. “Right. The car should be waiting.”
He’s adorably sleepy, his hair sticking up at a strange angle on one side, his eyes a little puffy. We both must have slept all the way through landing. I would’ve thought someone would have woken us, made us put our chairs in the upright position. Things really are different in first class.
“You sure you’re okay to drive?”
“Will be…with coffee.”
“I’ll have some waiting for you as you disembark,” the flight attendant says, still friendly, but obviously wanting the sleeping passengers to get out of her hair so she can begin cleaning up after us.
It’s dark out when we exit the airport. There’s a car waiting for us just outside the sliding doors of the arrivals terminal. It might as well be Jasper’s car’s identical sibling; it’s so similar. The valet driver hands off the keys and we slide in.
“Ready?” Jasper says. “It’s about a two-and-a-half-hour drive.”
“Perfect.” I nestle into my seat and try my best to stay awake as we drive off into the night—though of course, it’s all of three minutes before I’m drifting off again.
