Page 34 of UNAwere

‘Don’t you fucking dare call for his help,’ she snarls.

‘Where are you taking me?’ I whisper.

‘We’ve just got someone who wants to talk to you.’

I prod the lump on my top lip with my tongue, closing my eyes when I taste blood. My heart is racing, and I feel sick. I don’t know what to do. I’ve always been terrible at confrontation. I’ve always been an awful fighter.

I don’t have anything on me. Not my bag, my phone… Briggs surely already knows I’m missing. Surely, he’s already racing after us.

I think about what I can do to help him find me more easily. Heck, what do Weres use for tracking? Then it hits me like a truck. Scent. He’ll smell me. All I have to do is leave a trail.

‘Can I wind the window down?’ I ask. ‘I feel like I can’t breathe.’

‘No.’

‘I think I’m gonna be sick.’ I rock back and forth, groaning, hoping my acting skills are up to par.

The man driving lets out a short curse, and my window is suddenly lowered. I pretend to hurl out the window, ducking my head low, until the beanie is flying off my head. And then I rest against the seat, panting, eyes closed.

‘Disgusting,’ the woman mutters.

We drive for a little longer. Sunlight flashes through the trees in a continuous, agonising rhythm and it’s so over-stimulating, I squeeze my eyes shut tighter. It’s a mercy when the man pulls the car off the side of the highway and down a dirt road that seems to lead into a gulley filled with trees. I lean out the open window again and pretend to throw up once more, spitting and spluttering. It’s not a beanie, but it is my DNA, and it should be enough scent for Briggs to go off. The road weaves between them until we’re pulling up at a small house.

He kills the engine and gets out, and the woman follows suit. They come around to my door and open it, pulling me to my feet.

‘No funny stuff,’ the woman warns, her nails lengthening enough to cut into my arm.

I follow them inside the house, trying to stay calm. The house seems nice enough. With a small lounge room that holds leather chairs, a coffee table, a bookshelf, and dusty fake flower arrangements. I’m sat down onto on one of the sectionals.

‘Paula? Brady? Is that you two?’ comes a voice.

‘Yes, Lucia.’

An older woman rounds the corner of the hallway and smiles warmly when she sees me. She looks like a grandmother, her floral apron stained with red splotches, her grey-white hair pinned back.

‘Is this the alliance gift?’ she asks.

‘We believe so,’ the woman, Paula, says.

Lucia gives me a once-over, her wrinkled face studying mine. ‘How can you be sure?’

‘She was with Warner’s best bodyguard,’ the man says.

Lucia harrumphs. ‘That’s decent evidence. But not enough. She could be anything. A decoy. A whore.’

My brows shoot upwards. Hearing “whore” come out of a sweet old lady’s mouth was not on my bingo card for today.

‘We’ve followed them for two days. She’s definitely not his whore. Smell her. She doesn’t reek of sex.’

‘But she reeks of him.’ Lucia’s eyes harden on the woman standing behind me, and I feel my heart stutter in my chest. ‘She also reeks as if she’s been marking him.’

The man gasps. ‘Oh, Lucia, I’m sorry, we were mistaken, we—’

‘Enough.’ The old woman holds up a hand. ‘I don’t want to hear your pitiful excuses.’ Her eyes go to me, and a smile slowly spreads across her thin lips. ‘We can still use this one to draw out the true alliance gift.’

‘I haven’t marked anyone,’ I say quickly. ‘I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I don’t even think I know how to mark someone.’

Lucia bends towards me, her eyes on my face. ‘Are you sure, child? The closer I get to you, the more I smell him.’