Sarah, who’d spun around in her chair, whirled toward me.
Combined with Liam’s lethal gaze, Lucas’s accusation chilled the blood racing through my veins. “Wh-what?”
He ran!
Liam’s voice resonated so shrilly inside my skull that I gripped my forehead, digging my fingertips into my temples. “Wh-who?” I stammered.
Your cousin! Rainwater mixed with sweat dripped from his matted hair into the collar of his black V-neck.
“Why are you screaming at me?”
“Because it’s your fault,” Liam growled.
Matt folded his arms in front of his huge chest. “Everest left Aidan a voicemail telling him what a prick he was to have sold him out.”
I sensed two large bodies coming up behind me. I could smell August. I assumed the other one was Cole. Were they cornering me?
I squared my shoulders, trying to inject bravado into my posture. Bravado I wasn’t feeling. “What does Everest’s voicemail have to do with me?” I asked, voice faltering.
“He said you texted him that we were coming,” Matt said.
I reeled, but then I grabbed my phone, unlocked it, and shoved it in front of Liam’s face. “Check it. Check my messages. I never sent Everest a thing.”
He stared at the bobbing phone.
“Check. It. Liam!”
He grabbed it, fingers moving deftly over the screen. I waited. Waited for him to see that he had it all wrong. But then… then his eyes blazed, and my heart stopped.
He snorted, the sound so ungentle. “Your message is right there, Ness.” He flipped my phone around and leveled it in front of my face. “Right… fucking… there.”
My gaze raced over the bright screen, soaked up the black letters: Liam is coming for you. Aidan told him where you were hiding. Run!
The words smeared together. “I didn’t-” I looked over my phone at Liam. “I didn’t write that. Someone-I didn’t-” Tears rolled down my cheeks.
Nostrils flaring, he shook his head and thrust the phone into my numb fingers. “Don’t lie to me, Ness.” His labored breaths punched my throbbing forehead.
“I’m not lying.”
“Hey, could you guys take this outside?” Kelly asked, darting wary glances at her customers.
Is that why you were with me? To get insider information? His words were ringed with a mixture of bitterness and dejection.
“No.” Each one of my breaths snagged in my throat. “No! Someone hacked my phone and sent him that message.” I wheeled around toward Cole. “That’s easy to do, right?”
“It is,” Cole said, but his narrowed eyes told me that, like the others, he believed I was trying to cover up my tracks by pinning it on a hacker.
“If I’d sent him a message, you really think I would’ve kept a trace of it on my phone? You really think I would’ve shown it to you? How dumb do you all think I am exactly?” I croaked, looking at Liam, then at Matt, then at Lucas. I didn’t bother turning around to check if Cole and August, too, were glaring. I sensed the weight of their stares on my back.
“You didn’t raise your hand yesterday,” Lucas said.
Wariness spread over Matt’s face like ink.
“So that automatically makes me a traitor?” My voice shook with tremors. My entire body shook with tremors. “Liam?” I didn’t care what the others thought. As long as he-
He lowered his gaze to the floor. “You’ve backstabbed the pack before, Ness.”
Overwhelmed by anger and disappointment, I pursed my lips and backed up but collided into a body. Hands set on my shoulders, tried to pin me in place. I brushed them off as though they were cobwebs, then grabbed my bag, dug out my wallet, and tossed a bill on the table to cover my half-eaten lunch.
“For the record, I’m glad Everest got away,” I spat out as I elbowed my way past Liam and Matt.
“Ness!” Sarah called, but I didn’t stop.
I dove into the crashing rain, slamming the door of Tracy’s behind me, and sprinted across streets without looking for cars. Humorlessly, I felt like if a car hit me, I’d inflict more damage to it than it would to me.
You’ve backstabbed the pack before.
Liam’s words played on a loop inside my head.
Like cement, disgust poured through me, drying between my ribs until their cage became a solid wall. My eyesight sharpened. My wolf was coming out. I raced faster down the drab streets, zigzagging through bobbing umbrellas and shoving past hooded passersby. I didn’t apologize. I couldn’t apologize. My teeth had extended into fangs. I was shifting, and I was still in the middle of town.
I waded through the storm-soaked streets faster, slowing only when I came upon an alley. I couldn’t repress the need to shift. Didn’t care to. I ran past corroded metal bins overflowing with the sour reek of food waste, relief flooding me when I noted that the alley spilled onto a parking lot edged with pines. Behind one of the bins, I pulled off my necklace and stashed it inside my bag before stripping out of my clothes. They were so waterlogged that peeling them off was a feat. Especially when my fingers began receding into stumps. I managed to kick off my jeans just as my knee joints snapped inward and forced me onto all fours.
I gritted my jaw as my wolf magic swept through me in fierce, raw waves, transforming my feeble human body into a resilient mound of white fur and taut muscles. When the change was complete, I sprang out from behind the bin, ducking behind parked cars, checking for humans.
I could hear their hearts beat in the buildings surrounding me; I could hear the timbre of their voices vibrate behind the lit windows; I could hear toilets flush, a baby wail, a young girl hum a slow tune, car tires squeal, raindrops ping off car hoods. The world turned so cacophonous and sharp it transmuted my lupine body into a livewire.
I dashed and zigzagged until my paws hit soft earth. And then I increased my speed. For a moment I was disoriented, but did it matter? I wasn’t running toward something; I was running away from someone.
Away from Liam.
My fur rippled with a full-body shiver. I’d thought a Kolane could be a decent and unprejudiced man, but he’d trusted Aidan Michaels over me. Hadn’t even given me the benefit of the doubt.
Thank God my body had locked Liam’s out last night. If I’d lost my virginity to him- I couldn’t even finish that terrible thought, so I shoved it out of my mind and focused on not losing my footing on the dicey mud and slick grass. I let the awareness of my surroundings flood me, fill me.
Alone, I ran until the sky turned the deepest shade of night, until my lungs contracted so violently I had to stop to catch my breath. I found shelter under a stone ledge. The rain fell so fiercely it curtained off the forest. Even with my heightened senses, I could barely see three feet in front of me. I didn’t care, though.
I lay down with my head in between my forepaws and watched the ruined world fall apart around me.
Again…
I must’ve fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, something was prodding my ribs. I jerked awake and bounced onto my paws, spine snapping into alignment and teeth gnashing in a menacing growl.
A mountain of chocolate-brown fur stood inches from me. It’s me, Ness.
The flash of green around the wolf’s pin-sized pupils made my defensive stance slacken.
August?