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Like a girl? “Bitch, it’s on.”
I ran towards him, and when I was only a few feet away, I leapt into the air, driving my feet into his chest with a powerful kick that sent us both sprawling to the tarmac on our backs. He let out a wheeze, and I kicked my feet up, landing back in a crouch.
I thought perhaps I’d bested him, but a moment later he was behind me, pinning one of my arms behind me and using the other to drive me face first into the asphalt. I hit the tarmac hard. “Son of a bi—”
“Language,” he warned, straightening my other arm to the point of breaking.
I’d had my arm broken recently. Too recently. Brokk couldn’t have known he had grabbed the same limb The Doctor had mangled, but all the same, the memories came pouring back.
“Twenty-one hours,” I choked out. “It takes twenty-one hours.” I fought against the sob building in my throat, and this time I won, swallowing it down like a lump.
“What?”
Though I hadn’t intended to use my own breakdown against Brokk, his grip loosened nonetheless. Returning to a state of battle-hardened clarity, I blinked away my tears and jerked my arm free from his grasp. Rolling onto my back with him straddling my sides, I grabbed him by the neck and pulled him down, careful to use an angle that wouldn’t break his bones. This was a tussle, after all, not a war. I flipped him backwards and used the pull of his weight to take me with him, so I landed in a sitting position on his chest with his arms pinned beneath my knees.
“Yield,” I told him.
“Make it look good.”
I punched him one last time, a hard shot across the cheek that barely avoided his pretty aquiline nose. Didn’t want to send him home to Kellen too deformed. Brokk groaned. “Okay. Yes. Yield.”
Climbing to my feet, I considered leaving him lying on the tarmac, but thought better of it and offered him a hand up.
“Good fight. Sorry if I ruined your suit.” I smiled at him, and he rubbed his tender cheek before smiling back, though it seemed to hurt him.
“You’re better than most give you credit for, Your Majesty. You are, indeed, something special. It’s no wonder he’s so interested.”
I nodded and brushed gravel from my palms onto my jeans. “Well, he’s immortal. He can wait a few more days.”
“Indeed, I believe he can. Take heed, though, this journey of yours is likely to be filled with perils.”
“It’s a good thing I wasn’t hoping for a nice, relaxing vacation then, isn’t it?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Canadian stereotypes tended to really bother me.
I didn’t grow up in an igloo, or say aboot. I certainly wasn’t all that polit
e—though I think that might have been more of a personal failing on my part. I barely watched hockey. Basically, I often sneered at the jokes people told when they discovered I was raised in the Great White North.
But one of them was true.
Canada was cold.
Like, really cold.
And it wasn’t winter yet.
After spending the day on the plane parked at a small rural airport outside Steinbach, we emerged into the Manitoba night and were greeted by a blast of chilly air. Summers were humid and stifling, but the transition from summer to winter seemed to bypass autumn entirely some years, giving the air a frosty, unpleasant quality.
I was grateful for my strange body temperature, because even though I could feel the cold it didn’t bother me too much. Desmond ran so hot I doubted he would notice, and Holden didn’t get cold either. We were the perfect travelers for the climate.
The rental car I’d ordered before leaving New Jersey was parked near the plane with the keys in the glove box as I’d requested. It was only an hour drive from Steinbach to Elmwood, which meant we’d arrive right around dinnertime.
Before leaving the airport, I called Grandmere’s house. After a half-dozen rings it went to voicemail.
Don’t panic, I reminded myself. She has Callum’s wolves with her.
