“You coming or what?” Brooklyn called, sounding impatient.
And so, I gave the vampires one last smile, turned, and joined the wolves. It had always been the wolves. They had called me to this place. And now, they were leading me away from it.
Chapter Thirteen
“So, where exactly are we going, Timberlyn?” Brooklyn asked, lounging back against Adolf, who was lying on his back staring up at the moon overhead, a hand resting on his full belly. We’d hunted and brought down a deer tonight, but I knew we wouldn’t always get lucky. I didn’t care if it was the only time we ate this good on the trip. I’d learned a valuable lesson tonight. As long as I was in wolf form, I could eat like a wolf. That meant the blood packs would last me that much longer. It also meant I had to carry them longer, but it was well worth the tradeoff.
Especially since eating with the wolves seemed to make them fully accept me as one of them—at last.
“Mr. Ravenwood said that they took me from someone ‘nearby’ to my parents,” I answered Brooklyn. “Which means Arkansas. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of places there for a pack to hide.”
“And fortunately, you can find anything,” Alarick said, wrapping his arms around me and burying his nose in my hair. I was sitting between his thighs, my back to his chest, his arms around me. Now that we were back together, I never wanted to be away from him again.
“Well, I don’t know about anything,” I said. “But I do seem to have a highly evolved internal compass and dreams that sometimes come true.”
“Have you dreamed about any other wolves?” Jose asked.
I shook my head. “No. I’m sorry. Not yet.”
He lay back on the ground, obviously disappointed.
Alarick brushed my hair aside and ran his lips across the skin at the nape of my neck, sending shivers spiraling through my entire body. “Want to turn in?” he murmured against my ear.
“Someone should keep watch,” Brooklyn said.
“Why?” I asked. “We haven’t crossed the border. We’re not doing anything illegal. And Mr. Ravenwood knows I’m going home to Arkansas for the break.”
“Yeah, well, what if one of your ‘friends’ told him we aren’t coming back?” Brooklyn asked. “I don’t want to be ambushed in the night by a bunch of psycho bloodsuckers.”
Alarick dropped his forehead against the top of my head. “She’s right,” he said. “I’ll keep watch.”
I wanted to protest, but I knew he was duty bound. His pack always came before his own preferences. I tried to hide my disappointment. We’d barely gotten back together before he got hurt, and we hadn’t slept together since before last summer. I’d been really looking forward to having some time alone to make up. But it didn’t look like it was happening tonight.
“I’ll take the next shift,” I said, standing and stretching. “Come wake me when you get tired.” I leaned down to plant a kiss on Alarick’s lips. “But one of these nights, you’re going to have to give it up, big man.”
He chuckled and swatted my bottom as I started for the tent. Brooklyn scoffed and rolled her eyes. I couldn’t tell if she was jealous that I’d gotten Alarick because he was the alpha, or if she really liked him. But she was obviously still annoyed that I’d ended up with him.
“Want to keep watch while I shift?” I asked her.
“Fine,” she said, pushing up and stomping after me. We’d decided to sleep as wolves when we were in the woods, since that made tents unnecessary, as well as keeping us in our strongest form in case anything went wrong. But I didn’t like undressing in front of the guys while they were in human form. Somehow, shifting back to human from a wolf didn’t make me feel as self-conscious as undressing in front of them.
“You know, you could have a mate,” I said as I undressed in the dark a little ways from the campfire.
Brooklyn sighed. “Alarick’s not your mate, Timberlyn. We’ve been over this.”
“I’m not talking about Alarick,” I said. “Remember when you said you could have a mate, even if they say only natural wolves can?”
“Yeah, what do I know?” she asked. “I was stupid to think that I was special. Obviously lots of girls can turn to wolves. Look at you, and now Lindy.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Lindy.”
Brooklyn sighed again. “What are you trying to say? Do you want me to apologize for being a bitch to you last year?”
“No,” I said. “Lindy was a human. She’s a created wolf. And she has a mate.”
Brooklyn was quiet for a long minute. “You know that’s why I was a bitch, right? Because I liked Vance. And now I’ll never get him. Because of you.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that,” I said. “But if you find your own mate, you won’t even remember what you saw in Vance. Your feelings for him will pale in comparison.”
“If you’re done changing, look out for me,” she said after a pause.
So, that conversation was apparently over. I gathered my clothes into a bundle while she changed, and we both shifted into wolves and carried our clothes back to the campsite.
We crossed the border in the morning and ran through most of the day, even though it was freakishly cold and hard going in Montana. We slept as wolves, all of us huddled together the next night. Then it was more running the day after that. I was beginning to regret bringing such a heavy pack. Like Adolf said, it weighed me down and made me slower. But I was grateful on the third day and night, when we didn’t catch anything but
