Page 61 of Untamed

“They never are.” He’s silent for a little while until he says, “Kinsey, if it wasn’t clear earlier, I love you. So if you’re thrust out, I’m coming with you. I don’t care about all the horror stories. We’re together.”

My chest expands. I squeeze my eyes shut as if I can hide away in this moment forever. Acceptance and love. What a beautiful combination. “I love you, too, but we’re not going Feral.” I shiver as scenes from the movie they showed us in class crawls through my mind. I steel my shoulders. I won’t go down without a fight. “Get some sleep,” I tell him. “I’ll be here in the morning.”

We hang up the phone, and I force myself off the bed to grab his shirt that I keep in my closet. I pull it over my pillow and lie my cheek against the soft material, pretending I’m sleeping with him.

If I was the same Kinsey who came here, I’d want to rip my own throat out for this, but so much has changed since then.

By not being a part of the pack, I never fully accepted my wolf, and now I embrace every part of me. Every fucked-up, needy, obsessive part. If I want to pretend I’m sleeping with my fated mate, I will.

Luckily, swimming in his shirt and using the other as a pillow helps me doze much more easily. Soon, sleep takes me, forcing me into a dreamless slumber.

* * *

Fallingasleep went a lot more peacefully than being jolted awake by my door slamming open. I sit up in bed, gasping as Ms. Ebon runs into the room. Her long, black hair falls over her shoulders in disarray. “Kinsey, you have to leave. Run. Now.”

“What?”

Ms. Ebon grabs my arms, shaking me. “Run!” she urges, yanking me to my feet. “Lydia ran a paternity test, and it didn’t come out favorable. She’s coming for you now, you need to run.”

Panic grips me. My heart is in my throat. Ms. Ebon leaves me standing in the middle of the room as she marches to the window and throws it open.

“Keep running, don’t look back. Don’t go to Lunar.”

“My paternity test?”

Ms. Ebon isn’t giving in to any of my questions. “Please, Kinsey,” she seethes. “Run!”

She pushes me toward the open window. My limbs shake as I crawl onto the sill. Jonah did this before—shifted and then leapt from it, landing on all fours. I peer down at the grass below, wondering how in the hell I’m going to follow in his footsteps.

The fear in my heart forces my wolf to the forefront. She’s less scared than me, twisting my torso, fracturing my bones until she’s soaring through the air, landing on all four paws. She stumbles but gains her footing underneath her as she surges forward.

Breaking into a sprint, she paws at the ground, kicking up dirt and grass behind her as she races across the lawn, entering the forest. She leaps over fallen trees and dodges large trunks with a focus only known to my animal side.

When she’s several miles away, her wolf hearing picks up on an alarm ringing from the school, and I can imagine it was raised by Lydia Greystone when she discovered I wasn’t there.

She ran my paternity test. That bitch.

My wolf stumbles.Run now. Think later, she grunts, and I quiet my mind as she leads me to freedom. All I have is my animal sense of direction and instinct to go on. I don’t know if they’ll chase after me, but she keeps running until she needs to rest. She finds a stream that she laps hungrily from, the cool water refreshing the dryness in her throat.

She stays alert, ears perking at every sound in the distance. Eventually, she sits back and allows me to think again. We work together as we sort through the mess in my head.

He’s not my dad?

If she’s telling the truth, I counter, not sure if it’s wolf-me or human-me talking. There’s not supposed to be a distinction, so I go with it anyway.

The adrenaline coursing through me never wavers. I left with nothing, not even my mate’s shirt to crawl into. A whimper works its way up my wolf’s throat. Jonah. When he finds out—

No, he said it was forever.

My wolf shakes her head, fur billowing around her. It’s as if she’s trying to focus my attention but I can’t. My mind is everywhere.

My parents.Pressing fear threatens to take me under. My wolf gets to her feet, sniffing in both directions. I have my doubts that she can take us there, but she starts off anyway. She doesn’t race through the forest this time—she jogs, staying in the dense trees even though she can hear a road in the distance. It would make life easier, but it’s much more of a risk.

She runs for hours, and eventually, she picks up on that familiar pack scent. It feels a little like going into the hornet’s nest, but if they’ve found out that my father isn’t really my father, then they’ll go to my parents next.

She sniffs until she singles out the scent of my childhood home and then takes off in that direction. A wolf howls in the distance, and she stumbles to the ground, the sound calling to her.

Little Mate.

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