Come home.
You don’t have a home without me. Look at you, playing farmgirl in the mud. They’ll be bored of you by Christmas.
The voice again. Helpful as ever.
Shut up, I tell it.
He takes another step down the incline toward us. His hand grazes around my upper arm, just above the elbow. “There we go,” he says. “Let’s just?—”
“HEEEELP! ASSAULT! ASSAULT!”
This is the biggest, ugliest, most operatic sound my body has produced at the very top of my lungs, combined with an omega whine, pitched to carry directly up the hill to every last head at the festival.
I have never seen anyone back up so fast. He lurches back a full step, and his easy, reasonable face drops clean off to show pure, naked panic. He definitely was not expecting that.
Up the slope, shouting breaks out. Shapes begin breaking off from the crowd at the fence line, starting down toward us.
Derek makes it half a stride before Maren appears out of nowhere and puts one foot into his path. He goes down full length, hard, face into the wet grass. He comes up filthy and swearing and runs without one look back. I’ll give him this much: for a man in good shoes, he vanishes into the brush along the creek impressively fast.
And a second later, I can distinguish Bram, Reed and Ash cutting down through the crowd at a dead sprint.
Reed gets to me first by a stride. He gets his hands on my shoulders, my face. “Luna. Beautiful, I knew it was you, I knew it.” His eyes go over me, quick and scared. “What’s going on? Are you hurt?”
“Derek,” I get out. “He—he was right here, he—”
“Did he touch you?” Bram, right behind him now, hands already coming up to my arms, my shoulders, fast and careful at once, turning me a little to look me over. Ash a half-step off his shoulder, very still, eyes going up the slope.
“Yes—he tried to grab me, but I’m fine, I’m okay—anyway, he bolted and I bet has to get his car so, “
That’s all it takes. Ash and Reed are already moving, the two of them tearing up the slope through the parting crowd, Reed half a step out front, Ash eating the distance behind him.
And then there’s a hand, light, at the center of my back.
“I’ve got you,” Bram says. “You’re safe now.”
42
Bram
Her scent’s coming off her wrong. The honey’s gone dark and sour at the edges, all fear, and it drops a growl so low in my chest I have to swallow the whole thing down. She doesn’t need my temper stacked on top of everything else. So I keep my palm flat between her shoulder blades and let her feel the weight of it, nothing more.
It’s just the three of us now, down where the grass goes long at the bottom of the slope. Luna folded into my side. Maren a step off, mud drying on the toe of one boot.
Luna turns to her, and it comes out in a rush.
“Thanks, Mar.” Both her hands find the front of Maren’s coat and fist there. “If you hadn’t been here, I don’t even want to think about how that would’ve gone... What he would’ve done...”
Maren pulls her in and holds the back of her head. “Of course, babe. Always.”
I owe this woman more than I’ve got words for.
“Maren.” I wait until she looks at me over the top of Luna’s head. “Thank you so much for being there for her.”
She holds my eye a second, then smiles. “Well, somebody’s got to watch her back when you’re not looking.”
That pulls a breath out of Luna, half a laugh riding the end of it. I take it as a sign she’s climbing back up to herself, and I steer the two of them up the rise toward the lights.
“Let’s get something hot into you, somewhere more comfortable than a wet field,” I say. “I’ll text Ash and Reed so they can find us.”
