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Hours later,Quinn was back in her motel room. Even though her parents had basically required her to come along on the trip with them, since they needed all the people they could muster to protest triad marriage, they’d made her pay for her own motel room.
She didn’t really mind, though. For once she had some peace and quiet where she could sit and think without her parents constantly telling her what to do and how to feel.
She flopped on the queen bed and turned on the TV, where a woman with an enormous fake smile was selling jewelry. Quinn stretched, wriggling her fingers and toes, even the ones in the splint.
As the woman went on about 14 karat gold, Quinn looked at the splint on her arm. As soon as they’d left the protest, they’d found a doctor two hours away who refused to treat shifters and had taken her there.
The list of doctors who refused to treat shifters was on the website that she ran, of course, and as her parents had consulted it, Quinn had felt a little sick. She’d been the one to put that list together. When she’d done all that research, she’d thought she was just doing her job — it hadn’t really sunk in that these were doctors who only wanted to help a certain kind of sick person.
Now, the thought revolted her.
The doctor had recognized her parents right away and promptly declared her wrist badly sprained, even signing a statement to that effect for her father. Then he’d wrapped her up in a splint and sent her on her way.
Quinn tore the splint off in one quick motion, moving her wrist freely. There was no way it was sprained, and the knowledge of what her parents had done — and what they were going to do with that signed piece of paper — made her furious.
The saleswoman on TV droned on and on, and Quinn got up and started pacing. The discarded splint was in the middle of the floor, and she kicked it, making it bounce off the far wall.
Sure, shifters were different. And maybe her parents were right that shifters and humans should live in different places and not interact with each other too much.
They did turn into animals, after all, and the thought of a triad was pretty weird.
They were still people, though.
Hadn’t the lawyer proven that? He’d protected her when none of the humans she’d thought were her friends did.
Not to mention the way he kissed his mate made her feel funny inside. She didn’t know that she’d ever seen someone so desperately in love, to the point that it almost made her teeth hurt. Her own parents had barely glanced at each other before collecting their followers and heading out.
She sat on the bed.
I’ve got to get myself out of this mess, she thought. I can’t go on living and working for my parents.
Then, a thought came to her.
I could call George.I bet he’d help me.
She’d found her older brother’s information online a few weeks before. It hadn’t been hard, she’d just had to hide it from her parents. Quinn walked quickly to her backpack, pulled out a thick fantasy novel, and pulled her brother’s number from page 337.
Then she held it in her hand for a long time, just looking at the numbers.
They wouldn’t forgive me, she thought. They’d cut me off, just like they did to him. I’d be out in the streets.
She put the phone number back in the book and stashed it away again.
