“Have you eaten in the last three days?” With my eyes closed so I couldn’t see his bleak expression, Blue’s rough voice sounded warmer, somehow.
“I had a granola bar in my desk. I’m not even hungry anymore, though.”
There was a pause. Then Gray said, “We’ll stop when we get off pack lands. Someplace safe.”
“We’re always on someone’s pack lands,” Blue muttered. “And we’re not the most popular people.”
“You’re not,” Gray said. “No one likes you.”
Blue gave him a long look. Then he twisted in his seat to look at me. “Do you need water?”
“Does it matter to you that you bring me to prison alive?” I asked.
“Yep,” Blue said. Then he added, “We’re sent to bring two shifters back to the prison, we bring two shifters. If it’s not you, it’s us going in.”
“Why would anyone sign on for a deal like that?” I demanded.
Blue and Gray exchanged a glance, but didn’t answer me.
Then Blue twisted in his seat, holding out a water bottle to me. “Drink up. It’ll help tide you over until we can stop.”
I reached out for the bottle, taking it with my cuffed hands awkwardly. I had to struggle to unscrew the plastic top.
“What are your names?” I asked.
Gray started to open his mouth, but Blue cut him off. “You don’t need to know our names.”
“Rules,” Gray explained, his voice conciliatory.
Blue snorted. “Common sense.”
Despite the rough way he spoke, he glanced back at me. I lowered the bottle and met his gaze. His icy blue eyes were cold, but beautiful, surrounded by thick, dark lashes.
He stared back at me, frowning slightly. I couldn’t look away from his eyes though, which seemed to hold me. Long seconds slipped by, and that strange phantom heat washed over my body again, until I bit my lower lip.
Gray dared look away from the road at us, and then he smacked Blue in the shoulder.
Blue startled, as if he’d been as lost as I’d been, and turned his frown on Gray.
“We’re off their pack lands,” Gray said, as if nothing had happened. Maybe nothing had happened; maybe it was all my imagination. “Keep an eye out for a diner off the highway.”
“You want to bring her into a diner?” Blue asked skeptically.
Gray didn’t look back, but I could tell he was talking to me when he asked, “Are you going to run?”
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” I said.
“That doesn’t always stop people,” Blue muttered.
To be a lone wolf was to succumb to madness.
Or so I’d always heard. Now I wondered if that was true, or if it was just another thing the packs said to keep us in line.
Gray arched an eyebrow. “Do you think we could take her down if she ran? Or are you scared of the five-foot-nothing half-starved girl?”
Blue scrubbed his hand over the scruff across his chiseled jaw. “Do you really expect me to fall for your bullshit?”
“Yep,” Gray said. “You usually do.”
There was a long pause. Blue glanced back toward me again. I wasn’t sure what he saw on my face, but he twisted back to face front, crossing his arms with a faint huff of irritation.
“Fine,” Blue mumbled. “I could go for a burger.”
“He’s really a nice guy,” Gray confided to me. “As long as you don’t run.”
“Don’t tell her I’m nice,” Blue said. “You’re never going to get used to this job, are you?”
“Hope not,” Gray said lightly.
It had the feeling of an old argument, and they dropped it as if it was.
“Take the next exit,” Blue said, tapping the back of his knuckles against the glass on his window as if to indicate the sign.
A few minutes later, we bounced across the gravel parking lot of a truck stop. Blue came back to open my door, and he sat on the edge of the bench seat. “Hands,” he said shortly, and I held out my cuffed wrists.
He caught the center of the cuffs and pulled them toward him, before he slipped the key into the lock. “Try to run, and I’ll kill you,” he warned me. “Despite what I said about keeping you alive, it really is just two bodies that I need to bring back.”
His words chilled me. I ducked my head to avoid his gaze, shocked at his threat. Part of me had thought he was…kind. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“Two?” I questioned, raising my chin.
“Yeah.” He didn’t offer any more explanation, but stood from the car. “Get out.”
I rubbed my wrists absently, although he hadn’t put on the cuffs too tight in the first place; it still chafed me to wear them. I hated the idea of being cuffed.
I wished I’d been born human. No matter how much we shifters believed we were special, I’d rather be free than special. If I were human, I wouldn’t be bound to my pack and to my family, no matter what they did to me.
“Are there packs in prison?” I asked.
Blue touched his finger to his lips, glancing around the parking lot, even though there was no one near us.
Then he leaned into me, and his breath against my ear sent a ripple of nerves down my spine. “Don’t talk about the packs, don’t talk about prison. For right now, we’re three humans getting a late night meal and not attracting attention. I won’t hesitate to drag your ass out of there, even if it means you do starve.”
I stared up at him. The way he spoke was always so mean, and yet there was something in the way he looked at me that made it feel like it was all an act.
“You got it?” he asked, his voice impatient.
“I’ve got it,” I said. “I’m not stupid.”
“Smart girls don’t end up in cuffs,” he said.
My jaw tightened.
“Follow your own advice,” Gray told him over the top of the car. “Come on. Let’s get her fed and get out of here.”
But Blue leaned into me, one more time. “You try to start something, you try to get help, and it’s not going
