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Before I could answer, though, Darius put some chocolate bars on the register. “Her mate, so eyes down.” Darius sneered at him. My face flushed; the poor guy only asked an innocent question. The man dropped his gaze and quickly started scanning.
“Why are you so nervous?” I asked Darius when I noticed him looking around again.
“Because you’re with me,” he said before stopping as he stared out the window at something, cutting off what he was about to say.
“So?” I asked, and he looked down at me.
“Usually, I don’t bring Kalen or Lycus in here without Tobias. I should have brought someone else with me. You’re too exposed,” he said, and my brows furrowed.
“Exposed to what?” I asked, looking around at the empty store before turning my gaze to the man serving us. He smiled at me before dropping his head when Darius’s hand fell on my shoulder as he tugged me back against him, wrapping his arm around my waist.
“You won’t like it if I have to warn you again about looking at her. Fucking do your job,” Darius growled. He scanned faster while my face flushed at how rude Darius was to him.
Getting to the car, Darius placed everything in the trunk before walking me to my side of the door and waiting for me to get in before walking to the driver’s side.
When he got in, he put a chocolate bar on my lap, and I stared at him.
“Lycus said you would crave sweet stuff?”
I shrugged before opening it.What girl turns down chocolate? Not this one, that’s for sure. “Exactly why is Lycus googling about keepers’ shredding?” I asked him.
“Because I asked him to,” Darius said, starting the car.
“And did you have to be so mean to that poor guy? He looked like he was about to wet his pants the second time you snapped at him,” I told him, biting into the chocolate bar.
“He is a vampiric fae, Aleera.”
“So?”
Darius tilted his head to look at me before looking at my lap. “Remember Tobias when I found you?” Darius asked, and my smile fell. My face heated, remembering how crazed he became.
“Exactly, I don’t want him taking a bite out of what is mine,” Darius said, pulling onto the road before slamming on the brakes. I lurched forward in my seat and nearly smashed into the dash when Darius’s hand flung out, shoving me back before I head-butted it. My breathing ragged when a dark-haired middle-aged man walked out in front of the car.
Chapter 68
Darius growled, and theman just stared through the windshield at us for a second before walking off and watching us leave. I shook my head and turned to Darius, who was watching the man in the rear vision mirror.
“I need to get you home,” he muttered.
“Gosh, he came out of nowhere.”
“They always do,” Darius muttered, and I peered over at him, wondering what he meant. He never elaborated on his words but kept glancing in all the mirrors as he drove. Finishing my chocolate bar, I pouted, and Darius laughed.
“I got you more in the bag in the trunk,” Darius chuckled. We were about ten minutes from home and had been driving on a backroad for about five minutes already.
“Maybe Lycus was right about that one,” I said before suddenly everything exploded, and I was tossed forward in my seat. One minute we were driving; the next, we crashed into a wall.
The front of the car smashed into a shield. The windows exploded on impact, and I remembered the sound of groaning metal and felt the glass rain shards on my face before everything went black.
Dazedly I blinked to find the car upside down on the roof. I groaned, my head throbbing, and I stupidly unclipped my belt, falling headfirst onto the roof lining. Blood trickled down my face as I tried to see what had happened when I noticed Darius hanging limply from his seat. Blood gushed from a massive gaping wound across his forehead.
“Darius?” I called, shaking his arm, but he was unconscious. Crawling out of the wreck, glass stabbed into my hands. I stumbled over to his side and opened the door. I kept trying to wake him, but he was knocked out and bleeding profusely. I unclipped his seat belt, worried about a car slamming into us, and he fell from his seat with a groan. The smell of gas filled the air, and I shook him, trying to rouse him awake.
“Darius!” I hissed nervously, looking around for what we had run into, but I found nothing besides the clearing, the forest, and a clear road ahead.
Grabbing his arms, I pulled him out, dragging him to the side of the road to a small clearing among the trees before fumbling in his pockets for his phone. Then a thought came to me.I could run!Yet as I looked at Darius unconscious and thought of the others back home, I dismissed the idea before clutching my head that throbbed as if someone had smashed it with a sledgehammer.
My vision blurred as I tried to unlock his phone to call one of the others when I heard a series of whooshing noises. Blinking, I tried to clear my vision. The shimmer of portals glistened in the distance, blobs of black spilling out. A gasp escaped my lips when I heard the snarls, and my head twisted around to see twenty different portals suddenly open up in the clearing and on the road.
