“I can’t. We need to just get back on the road and drive. The tranqs are only going to last so long.”
“No, Austin, this truck doesn’t move until you talk to me. And you’re not going to do it while we’re driving; I want to focus and hear every word you’re telling me without distraction. Saving your ass is more important than delivering this mark. You know what? If I don’t get this bounty, we will lose the restaurant. And that will be horrible. But you know what would be worse? Me letting you, my True Mate, down. Me not fighting to the last breath for you. My mother would agree with me, you know. If someone had come along and said that we could save my dad but we’d have to give up our house and the restaurant and everything we own, she’d have been building a tent for us in the woods and sewing us clothes out of rags and rubbish.” She fixed him with a stern look. “You should have told me earlier.”
Austin’s face twisted in an anguished grimace. “I should have. You’re right. I’m just not used to anyone going to bat for me.”
“Well, get used to it, idiot. Jerk. Wuss. God, I am so angry at you right now, I can’t decide if I should punch your stupid face in or kiss you.”
He tried on a rueful smile. It looked as if it hurt his face. “Do I get a vote?”
“No, you do not. Just talk to me, Austin.”
He glanced down at Roy, who was lying there between them. “Wait.”
He climbed out of the truck and walked around to her side. Then he reached out, threw his arms around her, and pinned her up against the side of the truck.
Desire flared through her. “What are you doing?” she choked out.
“This.” He bent down and brushed his lips across hers, ever so gently, then pulled away for just a second, and then he kissed her hard. His kiss was hungry and commanding, drinking her in, tongue invading and probing, and she melted into his mouth with a moan of pleasure. The kiss stretched on and on, and when he pulled away, he cradled her face in his hands. “I’m kissing my True Mate. Because I don’t know how many days I have left, and I want to stop wasting time.”
“Please don’t talk like that.” A sob caught in Savannah’s throat.
She couldn’t have found her True Mate just to have him snatched away from her. Fate couldn’t be that cruel.
Austin sighed and stepped back away from her, and her body cried out in protest. But he wasn’t looking at her now – he was retreating into somewhere far away.
He started telling her everything. It had been going on for the last year. It had started out with terrible, realistic dreams that felt like waking nightmares. He’d suddenly come to, standing in his kitchen or out in the street, with no idea of how he’d got there.
Then he started having the nightmares while he was most definitely awake.
Even though his nightmares were bizarre and distorted, and even though there was no history of Seers in his bloodline, he’d hoped against hope that they were future visions. But, he said, they weren’t. And Korbin the healer had confirmed that.
“They’re all messed up. I see things that couldn’t possibly be – dead people walking into my visions, people I know turning into monsters, things that couldn’t happen. It’s not me being a Seer. It’s me going crazy.”
“You saw one healer, Austin! One!” Savannah yelled at him. “After we drop this jackass off, we are going to visit other healers. We’ll do research. We’ll contact that wolf shifter database.” She headed for the driver’s seat.
Austin nodded and climbed into the back seat, settling next to Roy and slamming the passenger door shut. “There’s always the possibility that the database will have answers that we don’t like.”
“And I thought I was the one who always borrowed trouble. We’ll fix this. I swear to you, Austin.” She started up the truck and pulled out onto the road.
“Okay,” Austin said quietly, but Savannah could tell he didn’t really believe it. She felt a bleakness in her, a despairing sorrow. She was deathly afraid that he wouldn’t really fight for himself. That he’d let himself go, thinking he was protecting her when really he was breaking her heart.
* * *
It took them almost an hour to get there from Rural Route 7, bouncing along a rutted dirt road deep in the woods. Several times they had to get out and clear fallen branches in the road ahead of them.
They found a tiny group of shifters – only about twenty, counting cubs – with half a dozen cabins clustered together. The windows of the cabins were cracked, the roofs carpeted in twigs and leaf litter. The area around the cabins was choked with weeds and adorned with rusting car parts.
Their Alpha, Aberthol, came out to meet them as they shuddered to a stop in front of the largest cabin. His dirty feet were bare, and he wore only stained jeans.
“Welcome, welcome,” he said as they climbed out of their truck. “Mi casa es su casa. Let’s just get the prisoner locked up safe, okay?”
The rest of the pack clustered together and stared at them with open curiosity. Apparently they didn’t get many visitors out here.
Austin opened up the back of the truck and dragged Roy out, hauling him across the ground to a small concrete block building with a thick steel door. He flashed Aberthol a look of annoyance. “You told me you didn’t have anywhere that could hold him. This looks just fine.”
Aberthol shook his head regretfully. “Look, man. We’re out in the middle of nowhere. If anything goes wrong, help is a long, long way away. The nearest pack is at least three hours from us, and that’s assuming any of us is alive to call for help. If he breaks out, every last one of us is dead, and we got six cubs here. So I’m trusting you when you say you got him under control.”
“I understand,” Austin said. “We won’t let him hurt your pack.”
