I licked my upper lip, reluctant to confess. “I heard what you said. About what happens to runners.”
Blue and Gray exchanged a glance.
“She’s too tender-hearted for prison,” Gray said, his voice soft.
I thought for a second they’d let me run, and my heart leapt. Maybe there was some kind of plan we could all come up with together, something that would let me have my freedom without costing theirs.
“So am I,” Blue deadpanned, even though it hardly seemed true.
He holstered his gun and in one smooth move, was on top of me. When he caught my wrists and yanked them behind me, his touch still sent a shiver of desire through my body, no matter how rough it was. Maybe it was so strong in part because of how he touched me.
“It’ll be alright,” Gray promised me, but then the cuffs were cold against my skin, and dread settled into my stomach.
It wasn’t going to be alright.
From the day I was born, a helpless girl to be married and mated at the convenience in my pack, it was never going to end alright.
In the car, Reed glanced at me skeptically, then shook his head.
There was silence in the car, the only sound the hum of the tires over the road, and then it began to rain, big drops that splattered the windshield and drummed against the roof. Every time Reed or I said something, we got nothing but silence in turn, or a brusque warning from Blue to shut up.
I’d thought they’d appreciate what I’d done, at least, but they didn’t. Gray turned the heat on full blast, though it did little to ease the tension of my muscles rippling with constant shivers from my cold, wet clothes.
After a while, Reed bumped his shoulder against mine. Just the heat of his body against mine was comforting.
“I bet you wish now you’d just let me kill them,” he said. “We’ll see how you feel about that soft heart of yours in the long run.”
I stared out the window, looking away from him.
The miles spun away under the wheels, bringing me closer and closer to the end of the road.
Chapter Six
Gray was the one to get me out of the backseat. He opened my door and helped me out, his hand hovering near my shoulder but not touching me, as if he was keen not to hurt me. That seemed funny, given the circumstances.
I gazed around at the moonlit space around me. We were in a concrete loading dock, basically, a narrow stretch surrounded by high barbed wire fences. In front of me was a brick building. I glanced around frantically, my nostrils flaring as I tried to capture every scent, tried to figure out this place I found myself in.
Softly, in my ear, Gray murmured, “My real name is Jude.”
I glanced over my shoulder at him, my lips parting. I’d felt betrayed by him, and yet somehow, that he gave me his name seemed like…everything. Not just an acknowledgment of what I’d done, but a promise for the future. Like I’d see him again.
Or maybe I just desperately wanted some hope to cling to.
Grey gave me a wink, and then he nodded to the female guard who came toward me. They’d already dropped Reed off at another checkpoint.
“Good luck,” he said, his voice dry.
When Blue and Gray drove away, and Reed was gone to the men’s side somewhere, I felt alone.
The next several weeks passed in a monotonous blur that all blended together. Blue hadn’t lied when they said no one would hurt me here. I was in a cell block that was all thrown-away girls, kept far away from more hardened inmates and from any males.
The heat faded away without anyone near me to trigger it, the way those three maddening men in the car had teased my body with their very existence.
A week or so into my time there—time that stretched endlessly in front of me—I got a roommate, a fresh arrival with bruises across her face and spirit in her eyes anyway.
In this place where a lot of people already seemed to feel like they’d given up, she and I soon became fast friends, and some of my loneliness faded. We had nothing to do but read, to work out in the little gym we were given access to, to walk in our yard. From there, we could just glimpse the men’s yard in the distance, and I always wondered if Reed was out there somewhere, if one day I’d feel him looking back at me, even through the distance.
And then one day, months later, everything changed.
In the middle of the night, during the midnight shift change, a few young women ran into the cell block and began to unlock doors. “Get up,” the girl at the door shouted at me as she swung the door open. “If you want to be free.”
Some of the girls hesitated.
My new roommate and I didn’t.
Even though fear tightened my stomach, I left everything behind. I tried to get the other girls to come out of their cells, the ones who were reluctant.
“It’s the Freed,” I promised them. “It’s our chance.”
But some of them had packs that had promised to come for them, or end dates on their sentences, so not all of them came. In the end, I couldn’t hesitate.
I knew what I wanted.
Those of us who were leaving passed through the loading dock and clambered into the truck that waited there.
My roommate grabbed my hand and held it tight, her fingers laced around mine. The two of us traded a tentative smile, even though I was sure her heart was beating just as frantically as mine was.
The truck lurched off into what I hoped would be a new future.
Chapter Seven
We drove long enough that we knew we’d escaped the prison, at least.
When the doors were finally opened, we stepped out
