Page 59 of Secrets and S'mores
A few minutes later, Hazel bursts through the front door. She wraps me in a tight hug and I feel my head clearing. Slate enters behind her.
“Okay, what happened?” he asks.
Guilt eats away at me. I could have prevented this.
“We were out in the woods, and we dozed off. When I woke up, she was gone.” My throat is raw, each word scratching. “I tracked her to the creek.”
“Oh, Onyx,” Hazel says, her hold tightening again.
Slate lets out a growl. “How could you have let this happen?”
“Slate,” Hazel says softly. “That’s not fair.”
“It was his job to watch her. We shouldn't have let them leave the cabin.”
Anger cuts through my haze of anxiety. It hones my mind and gives me something to focus on. Shrugging Hazel off, I stand to face my best friend. “You wanted her to leave so you should be happy.”
“I wanted our pack safe and her to be safe too, and that would all be possible if you weren’t too busy thinking with your dick.”
I swing at him before my brain registers the decision. My fist connects with his jaw and he reels back. A split second later and he’s on me, pressing me to the wood floor. The ringing pain in the back of my skull feels deserved. This is my fault.
His voice is dark and dominant. “Do not do that again, understood? You’re not helping her right now.”
My brain finally regains control and I stop struggling. The realization I just punched my Alpha horrifies me. I was thinking of him as my childhood friend, not my leader. He lets me sit up and I keep my gaze on the ground in submission.
“Understood.”
“You two fighting really doesn’t help the situation,” Hazel says, crossing her arms. “We have to figure out what to do about this.”
“I’m going to get her,” I say without thinking.
“You can’t do that.” It’s Hazel who stops me and I blink at her in surprise. “They’ll treat you like anenemy, even if it’s Sienna who catches you. She needs her pack to like her, and killing someone they see as an enemy would help her. I don’t trust her to uphold our alliance right now.”
“She’s right,” Slate adds. “We have to be smart about this.”
“I can’t-” I start to argue.
“I’ll get Hawthorne and Jasper. We can get a hold of Sienna and sort this out.” Slate heads to the door.
“Just hang tight. It’ll be okay,” Hazel says, smiling sadly.
Cedar watches from the hallway. I brush past him and head to the bathroom. It takes a while for him to go back to bed and fall asleep. It’s just past two in the morning when I sneak out and head toward the parking lot.
While I’d prefer to shift and run, carrying clothing in my mouth is hard enough. I can’t carry any weapons. For once, I’m grateful to be the son of the Delta, because I know the codes for all the locks in the training building.
I’m able to slip on a tactical vest and a couple of guns loaded with wolfsbane. To be safe, I also tuck in four small daggers. My black hoodie goes over the top so I can appear somewhat peaceful.
I grab the keys from the sun visor of my dad’s beat up pickup truck and promise myself I’ll save up and buy myself a decent vehicle soon. The gravel crunches on the drive out, but I timed my escape to when patrol is on the north side of our commune andshouldn’t hear it. Even if they do, it’ll be too late to stop me.
This is reckless, but I don’t care. No one else is going to help. They’ll put our pack first. But I can’t live without her.
Pulling off the freeway, I park on the road that leads to Granite Ridge’s pack buildings. I’m not sure how far it is to their buildings, so I stop closer to the freeway than I would have liked. It’ll be a farther distance for our escape, but it’s just as likely we will ditch the vehicle and run as wolves across the border.
I leave the truck unlocked with the keys ready, in case Ember is the one to reach it first.
The march toward Granite Ridge feels like miles and my heart races the entire time. There’s no way to know what I’ll find, except that Ember is there.
Cinder block buildings rise up in uniform lines. Two dozen identical houses line a street with a large and luxurious modern ranch at the end. The Alpha’s house. Everything is quiet and I can’t even hear a patrol. It’s been at least three hours since Ember returned home, and it seems that everyone has gone to sleep.
