Page 101 of Wild Thorns

I read it three times, and tried not to cry. I failed. He had to have put it there sometime during the night. I folded it carefully and slipped it into my pocket, next to Tara's charm.

The road out of Magnolia Creek was lined with oaks draped in Spanish moss. The morning light filtered through in patches of gold and green, making everything look like a painting.

But it looked different now.

That curve in the road, was that where they'd chased the creature before it reached my yard? That patch of darker earth beneath the old oak, had something died there, something I'd never know about?

I passed the gas station where I'd stopped my first week here, and the attendant waved. He was human. Probably. Maybe.

How many people in this town knew? How many were like the brothers, hiding something beneath their skin? The woman at the grocery store with her too-sharp smile. The old man who sat on the bench outside the post office, watching everyone who passed with eyes that never seemed to blink.

Magnolia Creek had felt like a haven when I'd arrived. A sleepy Southern town where nothing bad could find me.

Now it felt like a place with teeth. Beautiful teeth, hidden behind Spanish moss and magnolia blossoms, but teeth nonetheless.

I gripped the steering wheel tighter and pressed the accelerator.

The miles rolled by beneath my tires. The sun climbed higher. The ache in my chest didn't fade, but it became something I could carry, something I could set aside long enough to focus on the road ahead.

Jasper's note crinkled in my pocket every time I shifted.

I miss you already.

Eight hours to Nashville.

Eight hours to figure out how to explain any of this without sounding completely unhinged.

Eight hours to decide if I was running away, or just running toward something I couldn't see yet.

We'll be here when you get back.

I drove toward Tara, leaving Magnolia Creek and the brothers and all the questions I wasn't ready to answer behind me.

For now.

Just for now.

Chapter twenty-seven

Looking For Me

Lake Pontchartrain disappeared in my rearview mirror. Purple sky at my back, Magnolia Creek fading into memory.

Time to think without three impossibly beautiful men watching my every breath.

Time to feel like myself again. Just Serena. Alone with the highway and her thoughts.

No pack dynamics. No supernatural revelations still settling into my bones like sediment in disturbed water. No bone-deep awareness of three men who'd somehow become essential to my existence in ways I still couldn't fully articulate.

The morning sun climbed higher as I crossed the Causeway and headed toward the Mississippi. the air through my cracked window thick with mud and magnolia.

I stopped at a gas station just outside Pearl River.

The hand-painted sign read "Thibodaux's: Gas, Gator, Groceries" and featured an alligator wearing what appeared to be a chef's hat. Someone had added a speech bubble in white paint: Best boudin or your money back, chère! The parking lot was mostly empty except for a rusted pickup truck and a motorcycle that had seen better decades.

The bell above the door jangled as I entered. An elderly woman behind the counter looked up from her crossword puzzle, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. Her face was deeply lined, dark skin weathered by decades of Louisiana sun, but her eyes were sharp and bright.

"Mornin', chère. You need anything, you just holler."