Page 77 of Fang Fatale

She doesn't move away.

Neither do I.

"Then what?" she whispers.

"We keep moving until he can't find us."

It's only half true.

Mason is still out there.

The night is far from over.

But standing here in the darkness, her hand still warm in mine, I realize I let go first.

Professionalism restored.

Unfortunately.

CHAPTER 12

BIRDIE

For the first time in years, I wake up without the taste of my own pulse in my mouth.

It feels... wrong. That's the word for it. Suspicious, like the world has rounded a sharp corner and I'm the only idiot who didn't see the dead end coming. I roll into consciousness with a knot in my neck, a hundred invisible hands dragging me upward. Sunlight squints through thin curtains, the color of lemon rind against the wall's flaked paint. A bookcase sinks under the weight of battered paperbacks, spines splitting like tired lips. Something in the air smells faintly of sage, and outside, a bird wails like a horror movie violin. If there are monsters pacing the roof, they're at least being polite about it.

I flex my toes, testing for movement or, you know, broken bones. A dull ache lumbers through my body, but the thousand pinpricks of adrenaline and terror have burned away, replaced by a cottony exhaustion that makes my bones feel less like Birdie and more like marshmallow.

I'm in a bed. A real one, tastefully swaddled in a wool blanket that I immediately suspect is older than me.

I reach up to flatten my hair and meet, unexpectedly, something strange.

A braid.

Not my usual lazy plait, but a neat rope that bisects the back of my head and then, somewhere behind my right ear, takes a hard left turn into absolute chaos.

I rub the line of it between my fingers, feeling the little bumps and knots, and for one illustrious moment I'm consumed by embarrassment for whoever left this atrocity on my scalp.

It shouldn't make me smile.

It absolutely does.

Which is concerning, because somewhere between almost being murdered and waking up looking like I'd lost a fight with a craft store, I've apparently become the sort of woman who gets sentimental over terrible braids.

Then the embarrassment gives way to curiosity, and the curiosity gives way to a kind of giddy horror, like realizing you've been walking around all day with spinach in your teeth.

I sit up.

Immediately regret it, because my whole spine lodges an official complaint. But the room obliges by not spinning or collapsing; this safe house is built from sterner stuff than I am.

The last twenty-four hours come crowding back.

Phantom Ridge.

Mason Weir.

The wolves.