Chapter 3 – One Hour

(Angelique)

The bell over the door is still swinging when my knees give out.

I catch the edge of the booth before I hit the floor.

There's broken glass and debris everywhere.

The pitcher, two plates, the tray. Damaged stock comes out of my wages. That's the thought my brain hands me.

Not he's here. Not he found me. Not Brynn. Not my son.

I'm going to have to pay for the dishes.

I almost laugh. What comes out instead is worse.

My throat throbs where his hand was.

Four points of pressure already going purple above my collar, and a thin sting under my jaw where his claw opened me up the second I said the word son.

And lower, god help me, I'm still wet.

Still aching.

My body took one touch from him and lit up like the last five years never happened.

And it has the nerve to keep glowing now, with his threats hanging in the air and his soon-to-be Luna's name sitting in my mouth like a stone.

Every cell of me craves him.

My wolf isn't snarling anymore.

She's lying down with her belly up, pleased as anything, and I want to reach into my own chest and shake her.

He's going to make us a pet, I tell her. Not a mate. A pet. He's marrying Brynn. We’ll be his sex slave.

She doesn't care.

He touched us.

To her that's the only fact in the world that matters.

One hour.

I run the drill in my head.

The one I do before sleep so I'll be ready, every night for five years.

Cash from the coffee tin.

The go-bag under Zack's bed.

The back roads with no cameras.

Grab my son, point the car at the horizon, don't stop until the gas does.

I've done it before. I can do it-

No.

I can't.

I did it before, and it cost me a fake funeral, a tooth I bought off a man who didn't ask questions, a witch's herbs every single morning, and a town so small and so human that nobody would ever think to look here.

And he still walked into my life on a Tuesday and ordered eggs.

You don't outrun something that patient.

You don't outrun a wolf that already has your scent in his nose.

He told me himself, in that awful, level voice, you're being watched.

And I believe him, because the alternative is a version of Rene Beck who bluffs, and that man died somewhere in the last five years too.

Zack's still at Mrs. Acheson's.

Sick.

Waiting for me to come back like I always come back.

I press the heels of my hands into my eyes until I see static, and then I make myself stop, because crying is a luxury and the meter's running.

The kitchen door swings open.

"Angelique."

Parker.

He'd have heard the crash, the men leaving, Linda’s gone the color of a dishrag behind the pass.

He crosses the room and crouches in front of me, and I drag my face into something that isn't coming apart, because that's the job.

"I'm fine. I'll cover the broken dishes."

Fuck. I can’t afford any of it.

He isn't looking at the mess on the floor.

He's looking at my throat.

At the bruises climbing out of my collar, the red line under my jaw.

And something moves across his face that I’ve never once seen there in the years of him being the nearest thing to family I've got.

Not worry.

This is colder.

"Who did this." Flat. Not a question.

"A customer. It's handled. He's gone."

"Angelique."

He says my name carefully, like he's doing everything in his power to stay calm.

"There were four of them. Big one who was obviously the Alpha. Give me his name."

"It doesn't matter, Parker, it's-"

"The name."

"I don't see how that-"

"The name."

And here's the thing I'll come back to later, once I have room in my skull for anything that isn't run.

I never told him they were wolves.

Linda felt danger the way humans do.

Blind, twitchy, hair-on-the-neck.

But Parker watched four men in good suits walk into a roadhouse, and he knew which one to be afraid of.

He's crouched here asking me for a name like the name is going to mean something to him.

Like he's bracing to recognize it.

"Beck," I hear myself say. "Rene Beck."

Parker goes very still.

I've watched this man break up a knife fight without putting his coffee down.

I've watched him stare a biker twice his size back onto his bike and out the parking lot.

I’ve never seen him look like he looks right now.

Like the name landed somewhere private and did damage.

"Say it again," he says quietly.

"Rene Beck. He's..."

My voice cracks and then refuses to do anything for a second.

"He's the reason I'm here, Parker. He's the reason for all of it."

Parker doesn't answer.

He's gone somewhere behind his eyes, and when he comes back, when he finally lifts his head to look at me, my whole body locks up cold.

Because Parker's eyes aren't brown anymore.