A Place to Run (Trials of the Blood Book 1)

by Becca Lynn Mathis

  Languor suffused my body as the final waves of pleasure rolled over me, and he was warm and comfortable. With a little squirming and repositioning, he pulled the blanket over us. The pounding in his chest mirrored my own as I curled against him, and he placed a gentle kiss atop my head. I trailed my fingers across his chest as he buried his hand in my hair, his fingers brushing against my scalp.

  “I think I could get used to this,” I said softly.

  His heartbeat quickened at that and I smiled. “Oh yeah?”

  I nodded. “Mmhmm.”

  “I think I would like that,” he replied, placing another kiss on my head.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I WOKE TO LIGHT STREAMING in the window, bathing the grey room in a sunny glow. I was still wrapped against Jonathan’s warm body under the blankets, his breathing slow and steady. He wasn’t awake, yet. A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth as I reached and brushed a lock of his hair from his face.

  Mine, whispered that damnable voice in my mind. And I was starting to feel like maybe I agreed. Maybe.

  I pulled my lip between my teeth and lay my head back down on his chest, listening to the even, steady pace of his heart. Sighing, I reminded myself that you can’t fall for people you don’t actually know much about. I mean, sure, werewolves were pretty clearly the good guys in a battle of good versus evil—but not all good guys were actually good guys. Some just wanted to win.

  Ugh. But that didn’t even ring true in my head for Jonathan. If anyone in the pack felt likely to only be in it to win, it’d be Matt. Except his gentleness with Chastity and his apparent selflessness at saving me—twice—told me even that was unlikely.

  And then it hit me. It was morning. Today was the day the pack was going to go hunt vampires. I was pretty sure that meant I was going to be expected to actually kill a vampire.

  Today.

  I sat up and pulled a knee to my chest as I ran a hand across my face. God, I wasn’t even sure I could do such a thing.

  Something surged in my gut, hot on the heels of that thought. Of course I could do that. I could kill a bloodsucking vampire. I had to. If I didn’t, people would die. Innocent people. And I simply wasn’t going to allow that.

  Something pinched my butt and I damn near jumped out of my skin with a loud yelp.

  “So that wasn’t a dream,” Jonathan said, his green eyes glittering.

  I narrowed my eyes at him and rubbed the spot he pinched. “You’re supposed to pinch yourself to confirm that!”

  I reached and pinched his bicep in retaliation.

  “Is that how that works?” He grabbed my elbow and pulled me down to the bed. I landed on top of him and he closed his mouth on mine.

  I relaxed against him. Maybe you don’t fall for someone you don’t actually know much about, but I’ll be damned if everything with him didn’t feel like it was exactly how this was supposed to be.

  Mine, asserted that voice in my head again.

  There was a light knock at the door.

  “C’mon pups,” came Matt’s gruff voice. “Plenty of time to fuck later. We’re leaving for breakfast in five.”

  Smiling against Jonathan’s mouth, I snorted lightly and pulled back. I rested my forehead against his. Now that Matt mentioned it, I noticed the hardness against my thigh. Jonathan was, uh, ready for another round. Y’know, or it was the fact that it was morning. It didn’t make a difference to the warmth spreading through me.

  “We’ll be down in a moment,” Jonathan called. “Keep your pants on.”

  He gripped one of my thighs in each hand and resettled me on top of him—settling his hardness against me, which sent another wave of heat through me.

  “Just put on your own and get downstairs so we can go already,” Matt replied, and he tromped back down the stairs.

  I was definitely getting wet against Jonathan, and we decidedly did not have time now for the things I wanted to do, but I couldn’t stop myself from reaching down and pressing him into me for just a moment. I bit my bottom lip as his length slid inside.

  “Mmmm, nope,” I said. “This is definitely not a dream—or if it is, it’s a damn good one.”

  His wicked smile and mischievous chuckle made me even wetter around him as he sat up and spread strong, warm hands along my lower back. The motion caused him to twitch inside of me and my eyes fluttered closed as I rolled my hips along him a couple of times.

  “You are fucking amazing,” he whispered, tangling a hand in my hair and pressing his forehead against mine. He wrapped his other arm around my waist. “We will have more of this,” he punctuated the word with a thrust of his hips against mine, “later today, after the hunt.”

  I stilled. The hunt. How on Earth could I concentrate on that when I wanted him so badly?

  He pulled back and met my eyes. The gold flecks had become more pronounced again. “Let’s get breakfast before Matt drags us there naked.”

  “He wouldn’t!”

  “He might,” Jonathan replied. “Besides, we’re gonna need the fuel.”

  I sucked on my bottom lip and sighed. God, he was right. “How the hell do you manage to be so damn rational all the time?”

  “It’s easy when you know you basically have all of the time in the world,” he replied, rolling a shoulder.

  His eyes hungrily traced the lines of my body and I tried not to let the hyperawareness of my scars settle against me. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “Come on.” He patted my thigh gently. “Breakfast.”

  Reluctantly, I shifted off of him, letting him slide out of me as I turned and kicked my feet off the edge of the bed. My pants were still in a pile on the floor.

  Jonathan shifted around and sat next to me. He looked down at my pants. “You’re going to want something looser than those jeans. We’re probably heading to the cave straight from breakfast, and quick-change clothes are usually the easiest.”

  I took a deep breath. I had a feeling the day was going to come at me faster than I was prepared for it to. “Okay.”

  I stood and rifled through my backpack until I found the stretchy brown pants I had packed.

  “Well I have these,” I held them up. “They should work for that.”

  “They don’t have any buttons or zippers?”

  I shook my head as I came back to the side of the bed where my panties had fallen. “Nah, they just stretch. I have enough hips that they don’t seem to fall off.”

  I had enough hips for most of Colorado, really.

  “I happen to like your hips,” he said, stepping into his jeans. His abs were positively mesmerizing.

  I smiled at him as I pulled my pants on. “Well I’m glad to hear that. I don’t think I would know how to change them if you didn’t.”

  He grabbed my hands then and pulled me to him, his expression suddenly serious. The gold flecks faded from his eyes so that only the rich green bored into me.

  “I would never want you to change a thing about yourself. What we have will either work as we are, or it won’t. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you,” he pressed a kiss to each of my knuckles as it got harder to swallow around the lump in my throat. “There never will be.”

  Tears welled in my eyes. I had no idea what the hell to say to that. Everyone always wanted me to change. His intensity cut straight to my heart, and I sucked on my bottom lip as I tried to keep my breathing even. But I could feel the wetness on my cheek. Dammit. I squeezed my eyes shut and turned my head away, pulling my hands from his as another tear fell. I wiped at my face and picked up my bra and shirt from the floor. I could feel his eyes on me as I hooked the bra closed and tugged the grey shirt over my head. I took a breath and tried to collect myself.

  “Lynn,” he said quietly.

  I don’t think I had heard him use the name to actually try to get my attention before now. It felt good to hear coming from his lips. Dammit.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  I turned to look at him, my eyes focused on
the scars on his chest. “You didn’t. I just—” I wiped at my face and met his eyes. “It’s been a really long time since I felt like I belonged anywhere. But now, with the pack, and with you, I can’t imagine how I could possibly fit in anywhere else. And it just doesn’t make any actual sense. It almost feels like a dream that is sticking to just enough parts of me to make me believe it’s real. But I don’t really know any of you, not really.”

  “What’s there to know?” He shrugged, spreading his arms, hands palm up.

  “Well,” I said, “there’s a lot really. Like what your favorite dessert is or where you grew up or what you like on your pizza. The simple things—and the not-so-simple things. Like what drives you to get up in the morning or how you make sense of the world.”

  He smiled at me, but there was still concern in the expression. “Tell you what. You get your shoes on so we don’t miss breakfast with the pack, and I’ll answer as many of those as I can on the way to the diner. Deal?”

  Nodding, I sighed. “Deal.”

  His smile grew and he placed a light kiss on my forehead. He stepped past me to get to the door as I pulled my socks and shoes on. I grabbed the rosary from the bedside table before we headed downstairs.

  In the Jeep, I hung the rosary from Jonathan’s rearview mirror, looping it a few times so it didn’t tap against the dashboard. He watched it dangle for a moment and then smiled at me.

  “Just till I get the time to hang it from the rearview of my own car.” I shrugged. “Sheppard thought I should probably keep it close.”

  Jamie and Ian rode with us to the diner, sitting quietly in the backseat as Jonathan answered my questions. Pecan pie, Tallahassee, and meat-lovers (of course) were the simple things I had asked about. I told him I preferred apple pie, I grew up in Colorado Springs, and that I liked to add pineapple to a meat-lovers pizza. By then, we were pulling onto the highway, and the typical argument ensued about whether pineapple had any business being on a pizza.

  “Sheppard,” Jamie exclaimed as he jumped out of the Jeep at about the same time as it stopped moving.

  Sheppard looked over as he closed the door to his Ram. Matt and Chastity came around from the other side.

  “Tell her!” Jamie gestured emphatically to me. “Pineapple doesn’t go on pizza!”

  He was almost whining like a little kid.

  Sheppard smiled. “I would, Jamie,” he said with a shrug. “But it’s pretty tasty.”

  “Thank you!” Ian crossed his arms with a satisfied smile.

  “Look,” Jonathan said. “You guys can like it all you want, I just don’t want it on my own pizza.” He used the same placating gesture his brother had at my place yesterday.

  I laughed. “Then we’ll have to get meat lovers pizzas with half pineapple!”

  “Ha,” Matt barked. “Like half a pizza would be enough for either of you.”

  “Then put it on the whole thing and whatever Lynn doesn’t eat, I’ll finish,” Daniel said, closing the door to the van he had rented for today as Kaylah came around from the far side. It was a white, 12-passenger van—the kind you see little league teams go to neighboring town games in. He beeped the horn to lock it, a sound loud enough to make me flinch.

  When we walked in, Dolores ushered us right back to the pack’s normal table in the secluded corner of the diner.

  The strangeness hit me again—it had only been two days since I ran in fear from this pack after Matt told me that sometimes the first change makes you crazy. Only I hadn’t gone crazy. I had survived the change, and they were my packmates, just as much as I was theirs. I had nothing to fear from them, just as they had nothing to fear from me.

  I couldn’t focus on breakfast, but I know we had the same steaks we had the first time I joined the pack at the diner. The time blurred for me. And the excitement among the pack was an almost tangible thing. They were going to be at my back as we attacked a stronghold of creatures. Creatures that killed people like Dolores and the others in this diner simply because they could. There was tension and the anticipation along the strands of the pack. I was as eager for the coming fight as the rest of them.

  Today, the vampires would pay for burning down Sheppard’s house. Today, they would pay for following me all over town and tainting the safety of my own home. Today, they would pay for the lives they had taken.

  I couldn’t wait to tear into them.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE RIDE TO THE RESERVE was quiet, and I tried to focus on what we were doing. We drove into a section on the north side and hiked to a rocky outcropping hidden behind a copse of aspen trees whose red leaves still clung to the branches. Wolves move quieter than people do, so we changed there—except for Sheppard, who stayed on two legs. It took all there was in me to not nip at the heels of the pack and set us on a run through the forest, but Sheppard’s power as alpha wafted along the breeze, the warmth of his scent contrasting with the cool fall air.

  “This way, I’ll be better able to concentrate on grounding you through the bloodlust the cave will incite,” Sheppard explained, his voice a low murmur, “and I’ll have thumbs free to do things wolf paws can’t manage.” His golden-brown eyes met mine, “And I’ll be able to direct you better.” He reached into the Jeep, pulling my rosary from the rearview mirror and looping it over my head. “You never know what protection it’ll offer you here.” He looked across the pack, meeting each wolf’s gaze. “Let’s go.”

  The power in the words radiated along the strands of the pack. It was not a request.

  I shivered in anticipation as the pack emerged from the aspens. The surrounding trees had dropped their leaves already, and I was sure our footsteps through the terrain were not likely to be silent. Surprisingly, we were quieter than I would have guessed as we made our way to the cave Matt had indicated on the map. I marveled at my own nearly silent footfalls across the fallen leaves and pine needles. And Sheppard made much less noise than I thought possible. I focused on him. His footsteps were easy but deliberate, landing more often on the fallen needles of the countless conifers than on the crunchier fallen leaves.

  The cave’s scent hit me long before it came into view, its natural wet-stone scent mixed with blood and gasoline, as well as fur and wild things. The hackles along my shoulders rose.

  People, just normal people, walked around outside the cave. No. They were patrolling a perimeter around the mouth of the cave. They wore the same camouflage that the local deer hunters used and carried rifles on straps slung over their shoulders. But there was a hint of death to their scent.

  “Sheep,” Sheppard whispered.

  He threw a hand out, palm down, in the direction of the pack. Power washed over me. Stay.

  I lowered my head and watched as Sheppard crept around behind each of the four sheep in turn, swift and damn near silent. In a single move, he wrapped an arm around their throat, locking it into place by grabbing his opposite shoulder as he kicked the back of their knee, lowering them to the ground as they lost consciousness. It took only seconds for each. Once they all were out, he picked up the unconscious bodies and brought them all together, back to back around a tree trunk. He pulled long black zip ties from his pocket and tied their hands together behind their backs. He intertwined the ties so that one couldn’t get up unless the others were up as well.

  “Kaylah. Daniel.” Sheppard’s voice was barely above a whisper, though Daniel and Kaylah had already moved closer as Sheppard finished tying. They were beautiful side-by-side—Daniel in black with silvery grey lining his shoulders and belly, and Kaylah in mostly grey that faded to white on her face, belly, and tail. They took up opposite sides of the tree, facing each other and the tied guards, who were already coming to. Sheppard pulled the walkie talkies from their belts and turned them off before hurling them into the forest. He then fished their cell phones from their pockets and hurled them as well.

  The eyes of the guard facing roughly my direction went wide as he resumed consciousness and noticed his bound status. His hea
rt thudded hard in his chest and I could smell the fear rise in him. The body language of the rest of them as they came to indicated the same level of healthy fear.

  “Staying quiet keeps you alive,” Sheppard said quietly to the waking guards, crouching beside the hulking black and grey wolf that was Daniel. On cue, Kaylah and Daniel pulled their lips from their teeth in a silent snarl. “And I suspect you’d much rather be alive than a meal for these guys.” He patted Daniel’s shoulder as he stood. He was bluffing, of course. I was sure of that down to my bones. But the guards didn’t know that.

  Looking back at the rest of the pack, he jerked his head back toward the cave.

  We stalked closer, and the not-safe scent of dead things crept into the mix of blood, stone, and fur. The red on the edges of my vision threatened to cover all I saw, but the presence of the pack at my side and the weight of my alpha’s power were a blanket of relative safety.

  Growl and snarls drifted from the cave. Creatures who were just like the packmates moving alongside me were in pain, and angry. Red clouded my vision as rage slammed into me and a quiet growl burbled in my throat. Then, warmth spread over me and some of the red cleared. I looked to Sheppard, who met my gaze and nodded. The grey wolf that was Jonathan brushed alongside me, helping to ground me. It pushed some of the anger away, but that only made me aware of the fear that was balling into the pit of my stomach. I had no idea what I was doing here. I had no idea what I was going to do when I actually saw a vampire.