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The look he gives me from over his shoulder steels my spine. Like a physical blow to the gut, I recoil at his sneer.

“Don’t you dare speak to me that way!” He spits. “You ungrateful brat.”

My face hurts as my eyes water, my tongue lies heavy against the roof of my mouth.

I’m sorry. Please. Please, let me go!

I say nothing. I want to scream. I want to throw my fists against the back of his seat. I want to howl my hatred for this life he’s forcing me to live. But my muscles won’t move. My voice won’t speak. I dip my head, curling into myself.

I’m useless. I can’t do anything right. I’m so scared. Arden will come back to find his cabin empty. With my phone left on the counter. With my mom’s photo on the coffee table. But I’ll be gone.

We mated. I vowed to choose him. But here I am, unable to move, unable to speak. Locked back into a world, a life, that isn’t mine.

I clutch at my chest as my heart hammers away. Beat after beat, the pumping muscle tightens with pain.

I’m sorry. I’m useless. A disappointment.

“How far from the airport?” My father asks the driver.

“About fifteen minutes, sir.”

I shut my eyes. It’s over. There’s nothing I can do. If I run away again, my father will just find me again. He’ll drag me back screaming and kicking if he has to. But I doubt I’ll be able to put up much of a fight.

“Quit crying!” He snaps. “Just like your mother. Emotional.”

My mom. She wouldn’t be sitting here, letting someone else control what happens to her. She’d fight. She’d argue. She’d do far more than whimper uselessly in the backseat.

I wipe at my face, but the tang of iron fills my nose. That’s when I see the smear of red across my palm. A cut. Only shallow, yet crimson blood drips from the wound.

I’d been holding the dish in that hand. It must have cut me when I dropped it.

No one is perfect.

Arden’s voice comes back to me like a tidal wave. The way he held me while I cried, not telling me to stop, not yelling at me or punishing me for being emotional. Just letting me cry.

It’s now or never. If I don’t face my father now, then I never will. I’ll lose my only chance at a life I can live on my own terms. To live with someone who actually loves me for who I am. For not being perfect.

Sucking in a deep, shaky breath. I scream.

The car jerks as the driver flinches. My father curses and throws a fist at me, making me scream again.

“STOP THE CAR!”

It doesn’t stop. But as I stare at my father and he stares back, my gaze flicks through the windscreen at the ominous shadow lurking in the middle of the road. The shadow in the shape of a hulking beast, with sharp teeth and a furry coat.

“What the fuck!” The driver slams the breaks. The tires squeal and the car fishtails.

It’s too fast to understand what’s happening before I’m weightless. Floating midair in the backseat, I look down at the seatbelt I should have put on. But it’s too late.

The sound of shattering glass pierces my world. I shut my eyes, pulling my head tightly against my chest as I’m thrown against the window with a blast.

My chest caves, my lungs seize and I gasp a strained breath. But the world is dark and cold and I’m too scared to move. I want to cry. I want to be back in the cabin, sitting beside the fire. I want the smells of the forest in my nose. I want the softness of the flower crown against my head. I want Arden.

I don’t know who’s groan fills my ears. It might be my own. Footsteps crunch the snow beyond the car and the splintering shriek of bending metal surrounds me. I whimper.

This world is too hard. Too sharp and cold.

Maybe it’s my imagination, a last-ditch effort to remember something nice as warm, gentle hands grasp at me. I’m pulled from my hard place, wrapped up in a soft warmth where the world feels a little safer than before.