by J. L. Wilder
But they didn’t enter the woods. Instead, they cut around the outside of the garage until it stood between them and the house. A motorcycle stood in the shadows.
“Get on,” Weston said.
She stared from the bike back to him. “I don’t know how to ride this.” She had run away from the pack before she’d come of age. She’d never had a bike of her own, never learned how to ride.
“Get on the passenger seat,” he said, somewhat impatiently. “I’m driving.”
“You’re driving?” She was having trouble keeping up. “You’re coming with me?”
“Of course, I’m coming with you! You think I can stay there after I helped you escape? They’d throw me out in a heartbeat.”
She hadn’t expected this. “Weston—”
“Look, if you want to go off without me, that’s fine,” he said, his tone suddenly brusque. “But we can talk about that later. Right now, we have to get out of here before someone notices we’re missing. Get on the bike.”
She got on the bike.
Weston climbed on in front of her, and Charity wrapped her arms around his waist. She knew how to ride a bike as a passenger—she’d done it plenty of times in her childhood and her teenage years. But she had never done it with Weston. She leaned into him, welcoming his warmth, feeling more secure with his body pressed against her.
She definitely did not want to go off on her own.
She was overwhelmed with gratitude that he was coming with her. She could only hope that her surprise hadn’t turned him off the idea, that he hadn’t decided he didn’t want to stay with her anymore.
The bike rumbled to life. Weston wheeled away slowly, not accelerating. Charity supposed he was trying to keep things as quiet as possible until they got a little further from the house.
How long would they have before someone came looking for them? If Weston was supposed to be in charge of watching her all night, and if the others had gone to bed, they might have until morning. They could cover a lot of ground in that time. But then, that was only if they were lucky. It was also possible that someone would come to check on them at any minute and would discover that they’d gone missing.
Weston followed a dirt path that wove between the trees. Charity couldn’t even see where they were going, since he hadn’t engaged the headlight, but he seemed to know the way. Had this path been here when she was younger? She didn’t think so. Where did it come out?
She had her answer quickly. They emerged onto a stretch of two-lane highway that was completely devoid of cars. “Okay,” Weston said. “Hang on now. We’re going to give it some gas.”
“Where are we going, Weston?”
“South, for now.”
“But...where?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’re just going. We’ll figure it out as we go. Okay?”
It was a scary thought, but then, it wasn’t the first time Charity had run away from home without a clear plan. “Okay,” she agreed, wrapping her arms more tightly around him. As long as he stuck with her, this would be all right. And even if he did decide to leave her—
No. She wasn’t going to think like that.
Weston hit the accelerator and the bike leaped forward beneath them. Charity clung to him, surprised by the speed. Maybe it was just that it had been so long since she’d been on a motorcycle, but she didn’t think she’d ever ridden quite this fast before. The wind whipped her hair back from her face and stung her cheeks—she pressed her face into Weston’s back for protection—and Charity felt happier than she had in a long time.
Then she heard a sound that made her heart drop into her stomach.
It was the plaintive howl of a wolf.
And it was coming from somewhere behind them.
“Shit!” Weston yelled, and the bike accelerated even more. Charity felt a surge of terror. That howl could only mean one thing. Somewhere, not far from here, a wolf was distressed about something.
Maybe it was just a regular wild wolf.
But then, she didn’t think there were any wild wolves in these parts. Having a pack of shifters in the area tended to scare them off. Which meant that the cry had probably come from Hawk or one of his pack.
This meant that they probably knew Charity and Weston had escaped, and any hope of a head start was gone.
There was nothing she could do but hold on to Weston as tightly as she possibly could while he gunned the engine, doing his best to coax more speed from his bike, hoping against hope that he might be able to put a little more distance between them and Hawk.
A turnoff came up quickly on their left. Weston pulled in. Charity looked back and saw to her relief that there were no skid marks on the highway. They might still be trackable, of course—it was hard to be sure without going back and checking for scent or sign—but at least they hadn’t left a large visible trail right on the road itself, and there was something to be said for that.
He left the road quickly and pulled into the thicket of trees—and now, of course, they were leaving tire tracks in the dirt, and they would be easy to find. She was about to shake his shoulder, to point this out, but he brought the bike to a sudden halt and killed the engine.
“Do you hear anything?” he asked urgently.
She listened. She heard only the usual innocuous sounds of the woods. “No.”
“No bikes?”
“Nothing.”
“Okay, come on.” He hopped off the bike and grabbed a duffel bag that had been tied to the handlebars, which she hadn’t noticed until now.
She slid off the seat, landing lightly on the ground. “What’s going on? Where are we going?”
“We have to ditch the bike,” he said. “They’ll be looking for that. They’ll notice it’s missing right away. We’re going to have to escape on foot instead.”
“But...but we’ll never make it on foot,” she protested. She would know if anyone would that there was only so far you could get without a means of transportation. They would be caught and dragged back. And once they were recaptured, things would be far worse for both of them. Her only hope in that pack had been the fact that some of the members still liked her and wouldn’t want anything too awful to happen to her. She very much doubted they’d feel that way now. And Hawk would be far less lenient—with both her and Weston—than he had been before.
Weston took her hand, hiking the bag up onto one shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Less talking, more running.”
There was wisdom in that. She nodded and fell into a jog alongside him.
Every now and then they stopped, Weston cocking his head as if he was trying to hear something. Charity tried to listen too. The first three times this happened, they heard nothing, but on the fourth stop Charity distinctly heard, off in the distance, the sound of roaring motorbikes.
“Fucking hell,” Weston whispered. “Okay. Here we go.”
He led them to a tree, bent over, and made a step with his hand. Understanding, Charity stepped in and he boosted her up to grab the lowest branch. She hauled herself up and onto it.
“Keep going,” Weston called. “High as you can go.”
She kept climbing, and after a few moments, she became aware of the tree shaking below her as Weston began to haul himself up too. What this was all about, she wasn’t sure, but Weston did seem confident and that was good enough for her. She ascended until she could go no farther, until she was up among the highest branches of the tree and unsure of their ability to hold her weight.
Weston joined her. “Good,” he whispered. “Good. Now we’ll see.”
“See what?”
“If they manage to track the bike. What they do next. They won’t be able to see us up here, not from the ground. Too many leaves in the way. We’ll figure out what their next move is, and then we’ll know what ours should be.”
She nodded and wrapped both arms around the high, skinny trunk of the tree, giving thanks that she had no fear of heights. It would be awful to be up here if she did.
She nodded.
“Scared?”
“Yeah.”
He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close. “We’re safe right now,” he said. “I won’t deny we’re in a bad situation, but at the moment, we’re safe. They can’t do anything to us.”
She nodded, letting her head rest against his chest. This was so familiar. They had sat like this in the woods as teenagers, leaning into each other for comfort and support, escaping the problems of youth. She longed to let herself fall into that comfort now, to trust that Weston would be by her side no matter what. But circumstances had conspired to drive them apart once before. She didn’t want to let herself believe there was a future here only to have her heartbroken again.
Besides, he’d said nothing about wanting her back. Not in that way. He had aligned himself with her for mutual benefit, so that they could both escape from Hawk, but that was a far cry from love.
The bikes were getting closer. Suddenly, the flash of a headlight broke through the oppressive darkness, followed by two more. The Wolves.
“Shhh.” His arm moved from her waist to wrap around her torso, holding her in close like a safety belt. “Not a sound, now. Let’s just listen.”
So, they listened. Charity hoped desperately to see the three bikes pass them by, disappearing into the distance, but instead, she heard a yell. “There’s a road here!”
They had seen the turnoff. They were going to investigate it. Shit.
She was trembling now. Weston held her tighter. A gust of wind rustled the leaves of the tree that concealed them, and she hoped it was giving off a nice, ripe, oaky smell that obscured their own scents.
“Tire tread,” a voice said now. It was a bit quieter, not like the yell they’d heard originally, and so it was a bit harder to hear, but in the silence of the night they still made it out. That meant, Charity realized, that if she or Weston made any significant noise, the Wolves on the ground would be able to hear them. She tried to still her breathing and stuck her tongue in between her teeth to stop them from chattering.
“...definitely came this way...”
A rustling of branches in the far-off distance. Then— “Hawk! Look at this!”
“Will you be quiet?”
“It’s his, isn’t it? I can’t tell in this light.”
“It’s his all right. I wonder why he ditched it.”
“Maybe it broke down. Check the tires. Does it have a flat?”
“Nah, they’re good...”
“Did he leave the key?”
A long silence. Charity imagined them conducting an examination of the bike. “No,” someone said finally.
“Then it must have broken down,” Hawk’s voice said. “He would never leave his bike willingly. What I want to know is why he left at all.”
“What I want to know is how he left at all.” That was Gino. “We had orders.”
“I suspect those two questions might have the same answer,” Hawk said tightly.
Weston held Charity closer than ever. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest. To her surprise, her fear—still very much present and active—was combining with another feeling, one she hardly recognized, it had been away so long.
“This is good news,” Hawk said. His voice was even softer now. Charity could hardly hear him at all anymore. She strained her ears, trying to listen. “...must have gone off on foot. They’ll be much easier to follow.”
“What about our bikes?”
“Leave them. We’ll come back for them.”
“We can’t leave our bikes!” Gino sounded scandalized.
“I said leave them.” That was an order. Charity could imagine the waves of frustration rolling through the men on the ground. They would hate to obey. But they would be forced to. The bikes might be damaged or stolen by the time they returned. And the search they were on, the hunt to find Charity, it was strictly for Hawk’s benefit. They weren’t going to be allowed to mate with her if she was found.
But they had to obey orders.
It was too dark to see them, but they rustled the undergrowth as they moved, and it was clear what direction they’d decided to take their search. Charity and Weston stared down into the blackness below them until the sounds of movement had faded away to nothing.
She was afraid, for several moments, to speak. The inability to see the ground was frightening. What if the Wolves were still down there? What if they’d decided to go off a little way and hunker, waiting to see if anyone emerged? Weston must have been thinking along the same lines because he held still too, waiting.
Nothing. Not a sound.
“I think they’re gone,” he whispered finally.
“What do we do now?”
“Climb down. Can you?”
She responded by lowering herself slowly down the tree, trying hard not to move the branches as she transferred her weight from one to the next. It felt like forever, but eventually, she reached the ground.
A moment later, Weston was beside her. “Okay,” he breathed into her ear. “Step lightly now, not a sound. This way.”
She took his hand so as not to lose him in the darkness and followed carefully. They had to sacrifice speed for stealth, picking their way quietly through the trees, afraid to so much as step on a twig. But they were moving in the opposite direction from where Hawk and the Wolves had gone. Maybe if they were careful, they could get away.
Eventually, Weston picked up the pace a little. “Where are we going?” Charity asked him, still afraid to speak above a whisper.
“Just two more miles,” he said.
“What’s in two miles?”
“The bus station.”
Chapter Eleven
WESTON
He paid cash for the bus tickets, depleting his emergency reserve of funds considerably. There was nothing that could be done about it, though. The fact was that they had to get out of town, and the bus gave them their best chance of blending into a crowd. They boarded and sat in the back with their feet on the duffel bag to keep it from sliding around and their heads down to keep from being seen.
Weston let out a sigh of relief when the bus pulled out of the station. They merged onto the highway going south, away from the Hell’s Wolves’ cabin. The first stop, he knew, would come after about an hour, so he had a little time to decide whether he and Charity should disembark there and change lines or keep going.
Charity had slumped against his shoulder and was asleep within minutes. He couldn’t blame her, after the day they’d had. She must be experiencing the world’s most intense adrenaline crash. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. It was amazing how quickly the feelings he’d once had for her had started to resurrect themselves.
But could he really allow himself to be pulled back into a relationship with her?
That’s not the question, he thought wryly. The question is, can I resist her?
Many things about her were just as he remembered. She was clever and witty. She was strong—she hadn’t crumbled under the pressure of having been kidnapped back into the pack—and she was brave, willing to risk everything for Weston’s escape plan. All these were qualities he’d admired when they’d been younger.
But there was more to her now. There was a new quality, something more intense. It was nothing he could define in words, but his attraction to her definitely went beyond her personality now. It was as if something deep within her was calling to something deep within him, and it was a call he felt powerless to ignore.
I want her.
Standing in that tree and feeling her cling to him had been enough to almost drive him wild. The fear coursing through him at the time should have provided a distraction, but instead, it had only made the whole thing more intense.
I have to get it under control, he told himself firmly. I’m helping her get away. That’s all.
But of course, that wasn’t all. The two of them had a past. They had only b
een back in each other’s lives for a day and things were already starting to grow between them. He could tell by the way she looked at him sometimes, by the way she held onto him when she was afraid, that she felt something too.
God, what are we going to do?
All too soon, the bus came to a stop. Weston longed to stay where he was, to enjoy the feel of Charity’s body next to his, to close his eyes and rest for a while, but the very fact that he wanted that so badly made him feel as though it was predictable. He shook Charity’s shoulder.
She woke immediately. “Are we here?”
“We’re getting off,” he said.
She got to her feet and stepped into the aisle, and he followed her. They kept their eyes on their feet, not wanting to make eye contact with the driver at all. He wasn’t likely to remember them, Weston thought, but there was always a possibility. The bus was pretty empty at this time of night.
And what time was it, anyway? He’d intended to drive them down the highway until the sun started to rise, and then to hide in the woods during the day. But the original plan had been badly derailed, and now he was disoriented.
He didn’t dare ask the attendant inside the bus station for the time—it would draw too much attention to him, and to Charity. If the Wolves came this way looking for them, the attendant was more likely to remember a man who had asked him what time it was than a man who had left the premises. He would find the answer another way.
He led Charity out of the bus terminal and across the highway to a gas station. She followed without asking questions, which he appreciated. It wasn’t often that anyone surrendered the lead to Weston. Even Robbie, his best friend, usually put up an argument or questioned him when he asked for something. But Charity simply submitted to his leadership. It made the whole thing much easier.
“Okay,” he said quietly when they reached the gas station. “You go in first. I don’t want us to look like we’re together, so just go to the back and pretend to be looking at something. Use the restroom, maybe. I’m going to buy a few things. Once you see me check out and leave, wait about five minutes. Then you leave too. Meet me out here.”
