“Help me, please!” I beg.
Something slams into my side, and I lose the connection. As the real world comes back into view, Cade and I are on the ground. My hands burn from the fall, the asphalt taking a layer of skin off my palm. My ribs are on fire, making it hard to breathe.
As we roll to a stop, I glance up and see we ran straight into the path of a car. The driver is already getting out, her face ashen.
Sawyer is with us in seconds, telling the lady we’re OK, and dragging us up. Jackson too.
“Keep moving,” Sawyer urges, his voice snapping. He doesn’t ask if either of us is hurt. There will be time to take stock of any injuries later. For now, we need to get the hell out of town.
We reach the end of the building, and everyone slows their pace. Sawyer's pacing in front of us, his body language tenser than I have ever seen. “One of us needs to get the truck,” he says. “Running on foot isn’t going to work.”
“You have to shift,” I say.
“No,” Cade says.
“You have to.”
He grabs me by the shoulders and gives me a little shake. “And what about you? You can’t shift.”
“The four of you can get away.”
His eyes narrow, and I feel the anger coming from him. “I’m tired of going over this. We’re not leaving without you. There is no getting away. We go together,or we don’t go at all. Now, if you have an actual plan, let’s hear it.”
“I’ll go,” Wyatt says. Everyone protests, but he holds up a hand. “I can get the car and bring it around.”
“And just sneak past a bunch of maniac hunters?” Jackson shakes his head. “You that eager to die?”
“Course not, but what choice do we have? They are in town. And they’re coming for us. We have to take a risk, or we're all going to die here.”
“They’ll scent you. They probably already have our trail.” Cade grabs his arm, giving him a shake. “I’m not sending you out there on a suicide mission.”
Wyatt pulls away from him. “That’s not your decision to make.”
I close my eyes. I’m not letting this happen. There is no way Wyatt can get past those wolves. “Just… Just wait a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute. They’re getting closer by the second.”
I hold up my hand, silencing him. “We need to be scentless, right? They won’t know where we are then.”
Sawyer cocks a brow at me. “It’s not like we can just turn it on and off, Halle.”
Frustration rolls through me. “I know that. Just be quiet for a second.”
He clamps his mouth shut, and I feel the eyes of everyone on me as I reach inside my mind. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I think about removing my scent and changing my appearance. I concentrate hard on it, finding that little glow of light inside my mind. Iopen it up, thinking over and over about these two things.
The power flows through me, hot like burning embers over my skin, and my legs feel weak as I stumble.
Cade wraps his arms around me. We’re on the ground, the sidewalk beneath us. “Shit,” he mutters, his eyes flaring.
“Did it work?” My voice rasps.
Sawyer pulls out a tissue and hands it to Cade, who wipes under my nose. There is blood there again, just like the last time I tried to use my magic by breaking through my blocks.
“You look… different, Halle. It’s weird.”
It worked. I grab a strand of my hair, expecting to see red, but it’s brown. I did it!
“Can you scent me?”