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“I’m not mating you. Can’t you get that through your head?”
“Two weeks, love. Two weeks to change your mind.” He was smiling, but the look was not sweet or warm, and the implied threat was there. Do it, or else.
“Or what?” she asked, glowering at him.
He shrugged and headed for the door. Once he walked outside, she stood in the entryway and watched him join his kin. He talked to them casually, his voice so low she couldn’t hear his words, even with her enhanced wolf hearing. They weren’t making a move to get into the car. Damn the lot of them.
Already snow was accumulating on the cobblestone drive, which made her feel the urgency of leaving now. While Baird and his kin kept talking, Calla grabbed her bags.
She tried to ignore them, tried not to pay attention to the way her skin felt icy with concern as she packed her luggage in her car. If he wanted to show her how much he cared, he could have packed her car for her. Which she wouldn’t have wanted. But he was showing his alpha side—he wanted his way in this and wouldn’t help her do anything that wasn’t what he wished of her.
She locked her place up, hoping no one would break into it while she was gone—just to prove she shouldn’t have run off to stay with the MacNeills. The whole time, the wolves watched her, trying to unnerve her. She was pissed off at them, but worried too. She wasn’t any match for four male wolves if they decided to force the issue of her returning to Baird. And she didn’t trust them in the least.
When they still didn’t move their vehicle, she pulled out her cell phone and said to them, “Please move your car so I can leave.” Or she’d call the police, she implied with her tone of voice. Even though she knew that if she did, Baird would leave well before the police arrived, and she’d be stuck staying behind to give a full report. That could make her even later if the weather slowed her down. Besides, in the long run, wolves had to handle wolves. Incarcerating a lupus garou wasn’t safe for their kind.
“We’re getting married,” Baird said. “You’ll see. And everything will be like it was before.”
Over her dead body. Though she didn’t want to say it in case that was exactly what he was thinking.
They could never go back to the way it was.
To her relief, Baird and his kin all piled into their car and left, yet she couldn’t help but be troubled by his veiled threat. What did he plan to do if she didn’t go back to him?
She glanced down at her car, the tires nestled in deep snow, and realized that it wasn’t that the snow had reached so high on the tires, but that they were no longer inflated. If his kin had cut her tires while she and Baird were inside, she would kill Baird, since he was their pack leader and ultimately responsible for his pack mates’ deeds.
She hurried to the garage, located her tire pump, and then began filling the first tire with air. To her guarded relief, it began to expand. She suspected they’d just let the air out of the tires to show her she wasn’t going to have an easy time of it if she didn’t agree to be Baird’s mate.
With the clock ticking, she was getting further behind in trying to beat the brunt of the storm. She stored her tire pump, got into the car, and traveled in the direction of Argent Castle, hoping she hadn’t forgotten anything.
Trying to get her mind off Baird, she thought about how thrilled she was that the MacNeill gray-wolf-pack leaders, Ian and Julia, had hired her to help plan their first mated Christmas celebration, which would be a mix of Scottish and American traditions. The only damper on Calla’s plans was her concern that Guthrie, one of Ian’s younger quadruplet brothers and the financial manager for the pack, would contest any expenditure she suggested. At least, Julia had warned her about that possibility.
Calla should have been more worried about the weather. It had only been lightly snowing when she left, but by the time she was nearing the castle, she could barely see in the blinding blizzard. The snow blew sideways across the narrow road, and she soon lost track of where the road ended and the land dropped off. Snowplows wouldn’t be out until later on the more isolated country roads, including this one that led to Argent Castle.
Driving at a wolf’s crawl, she squinted to discern where the road was. Snow and ice clung to branches on the fir trees on either side of the pavement. A haze of grayish white cloaked the area, lending a somber cast to the evergreens. Visibility was limited to only a couple of feet ahead of her.
Despite the trouble Baird had caused her, she’d still left home three hours early. It should have taken her only an hour and a half to reach Argent Castle. She thought she had only a little more than five miles to go, as long as she didn’t accidentally drive off the road and get stuck. Her tires slipped again. She gripped her steering wheel harder, her skin prickling with tension. The roads were worsening, getting icier with every mile, and she was afraid she would slide right off the asphalt at any moment. As soon as she had that notion, a herd of red deer bolted across the road.
“Damn!” Her heart nearly stopped as she slammed on her brakes.
Her car slid on the ice, her heart jumping into her throat. Steering away or toward the slide had no effect. Braking made it worse.
The car sailed off the road into the deep ditch. Teeth gritted, she braced for impact. The car crashed into a tree with a jolt. The dead stop forced her to jerk forward, her seat belt catching her. Thankfully, she hadn’t hit the tree hard enough to do herself any injury.
She gunned the engine in reverse, hoping for a miracle. With a whirring, grinding noise, the tires spun around and around. Ticked off to the max, she peered out through the fogged-up windows. Her vehicle was buried in a snowdrift, the cold, wet flakes reaching to just below her door handle. Great. She tried reversing again. Her tires continued to spin, and the front bumper felt like it was hung up on something because it moved a little, but wouldn’t budge any farther.
As early as the sun set in winter, darkness would descend soon. Only another half hour or so, which was the problem with winter in Scotland. As soon as three thirty arrived, the sun would vanish. She shut off her engine. Without the heater running, the temperature in the interior of the car quickly plummeted. She looked around in the backseat to see if she had anything she could use for traction.
A blanket. Not that she wanted to ruin it, but she always kept one in the car during the winter for emergencies, and this constituted an emergency.
