Page 114 of Knot All that Glitters: Part 1

It’s hard to find your way through a city at night when you can’t stop crying. Seriously, the amount of tears coming out of me makes me wonder just how much moisture is left in me. I imagine I’ll wake up tomorrow looking like one of those corn husk dolls. Dried out and wrinkled.

I’m on foot because I don’t know how to drive. If my father wasn’t such an asshole, I would have stolen a car and used it to get me as far from them as I could. But then I would guess that they have trackers in all their cars. So it would have been pointless.

I left my phone along with all of my other stuff at their house. Well, the stuff I brought with me when I left my home for them. When I thought we were going to actually be together.

It wasn’t much. Some clothes. My laptop. My journals. Those I regret. They’re filled with my innermost thoughts, my secret yearnings, all the things I couldn’t say or do thanks to my father’s commands. I don’t feel great about leaving them behindwhere the Calloways can scour them for information, things to use against my father, against me.

I don’t care so much about my father, but I don’t want them to see those parts of me. It makes me far too vulnerable. Even more so than I already am.

But the bag they’re still stowed away in was too heavy when I tried to heft it over my shoulder. I have to hurry and I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I was carrying an extra fifty pounds of notebooks. So I left them.

BunBun, though. He’s with me, stuffed into the pocket of my jacket, ears flopping with every step.

I would never leave him behind.

I also swiped up the cash Creed has a habit of dropping on his dresser when he comes home at the end of the day and empties his pockets. It’s not much, but it’s something. Maybe enough that if I can find a taxi, I can have them take me to The Market, where I can beg Sadie Falcone for help.

Before I left the house, I called for a ride share, said I wanted to go to Ren’s. Then I called for a second in a different app and pointed to a hotel downtown. With any luck, they’ll head to those two places, hoping to find me. But I won’t be there.

Ren will have to forgive me for sending angry alphas to her, but I know she can handle them. That girl is pure fire. She’ll be fine. Besides, her mother is a beta with an iron will and her little sister is sure to be an alpha. The three of them will be just fine.

That just means I can’t call Florence and tell her where I am or what I’m doing. I don’t want them to bark at her for answers and for her to spill. She’d have no choice.

The rain has stopped, thankfully, but the air is chilly and damp. I’m bundled up as best as I can be, in clothes that belong to me. Nothing from the Calloway pack. Their scents still linger on my skin, calming me. Though they shouldn’t, not now that Iknow the truth. Now that I know I was nothing but a game to them.

I try to keep my pace at a jog, glancing behind me every so often. I’ve never been so glad about my father’s insistence that I keep a healthy exercise routine. Sure, I hated running, hated the long hours on the treadmill, or running that marathon two years ago to support lone alpha rights. But now the conditioning is serving me well.

I want to put as much space between me and them as quickly as I can, but I don’t want to burn myself out, either. I need to have energy for if they find me, so I can fight them. Or try to slip away from them again.

Who am I kidding? If they find me, I’m screwed. By now, they’ll have realized that I know what they’ve been up to. If they find me, the kid gloves will be off. They’ll bark at me to keep me under their control, a tool to be used.

Always an object, never a person.

My heart cracks a little more. Right now it’s being held together with little more than scotch tape. It’s a wonder that it’s still holding together at all. Though I suppose it shattered completely there on the grass of the Calloway’s backyard. I only managed to put it back together by sheer force of will and a refusal to let them win.

To let my father win.

Because the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that he had something to do with this.

Another of his lessons.

Another way to break me, keep me compliant and silent and the little mouse Hale calls me.

He probably worked it out with them well before they approached me to snuff out any lingering hope I had for a pack. Frederick Bell undoubtedly sniffed out my longing for one, and that just wouldn’t do.

What better way to turn me off on the idea than to give me to a pack, make me fall in love with them and then tell me it’s only ever been a game to them?

Yeah, that ripped my heart right out of my chest and stomped all over it. Now I have no desire to find a pack at all. Maybe that will change in the future, but right now I just can’t fucking fathom it.

The longer I run, the hotter I get. Which makes sense only… this doesn’t feel normal. I don’t think. Sweat dots my brow even in the chilly early winter air. My body feels overheated, with a hell of a lot of that warmth pooling low in my belly, but I’m also wracked by chills, my body shuddering with them with every step I take.

I’m sick, I realize. I have a fever. Probably from spending hours in cold November rain. Or maybe it’s just heartbreak.

But either way, it’s not safe for me to be out here on the streets. It’ll only make it worse. I need to get somewhere safe. Which means I need to call for help. Because as I look around, I realize I have no clue where the fuck I am.

Unfortunately, there’s only one person whose number I know by heart, who I also trust. I just need to reach out to her, and hope and pray that she’s not currently battling the Calloway pack.

Hell, maybe they haven’t even noticed I’m gone yet. With any luck, they’ll just think I’m taking advantage of their heatless water tank and the never ending supply of hot water. Would they even come after me if they realized I was gone? If they realized I know what they’ve been doing?

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