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How could he go about his day, his life, making her pancakes and apologizing for his creamer when he was keeping her a prisoner?
“Need something?” he asked, seeming to notice her quiet contemplation.
“To go home.” She hated the resignation in her voice.
He nodded like he understood, stuck his hands in his pockets, and went back to his woodworking. Violet glowered at his back, then at his protein coffee creamer, which was probably going to be gross, but mixed it into her drink anyway and went back to leafing through his sketches. He was a psycho, no doubt, but she could appreciate good work, and they were beautiful pieces. Intricate yet simple. Masterful.
“Catch you later, Violet,” Jack offered as he passed her to head to a door on the side of the shop. She started at the sound of her name. “Mikel told me—” He stopped for a second close to the bench where she sat, staring at her for a few seconds before he blinked and went on his way.
“Dude,” Violet heard him say, head dipped like she was reading though she watched him stop by Mikel, “she smells like a freaking buffet. You haven’t…sealed the deal yet? You take her out in public, and it’s going to be a brawl.”
Mikel looked up from the sanding he’d been doing, his eyes catching directly on hers. Violet shot her gaze back down to the book quickly. Whatever he said in response was low enough she didn’t hear anything but the buzz of his deep voice.
She spent the rest of the morning trying to keepsealing the dealand the fact that these freaks could apparentlysmellher off her mind.
“Mating you means fucking you, marking you with my bite,”he’d said. She glanced up to see him running a handsaw back and forth over a long, thick plank of light wood. Mikel’s skin slightly shone with sweat, arms bulging under his dark-gray T-shirt. It was some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, she was sure, that made her stomach and lower prickle with interest at the sight.
Mikel was attractive; she could admit that. Never in a million years would he be the person she’d approach at a club—he was older and just huge anda guy. Something about him struck her as not being the type to be into her anyway. The memory of him pressed against her, half-hard, last night said otherwise, as did the hot drag of his lips and tongue on her neck. Violet stopped herself. So, he was an attractive psycho, but hewasstill a psycho and potentially a werewolf. Her mind balked and skittered away from that, and she let it.
It was too much to confront.
She’d read the book twice. Bored, she searched the bench foranythingelse to entertain herself. Her gaze fell on a cup holder full of the long, flat pencils they sold at the hardware store, a few markers, ink pens, and a screwdriver. Her eyes settled on it and an idea struck. One glance up told her Mikel was still busy with his work. Violet was quick to reach for it, to bring it into her lap then look down at the sketch book like she had never moved to start. A few, long minutes later, when she was sure he hadn’t seen her, she reached down and worked it into the hoodie pocket. For the first time all day, she smiled.
IT HAD BEENa long day of watching Mikel in his shop andwaiting—the highlight being snagging a pair of scissors in the kitchen and cutting up thereal shirthe’d bought her to match her crop top. He’d eyed it darkly and said nothing, but Violetknewshe’d gotten under his skin.
She was positively cheery now, carefully wiggling the screwdriver back and forth under the window handle, which was loose, wobbly after twenty minutes of careful, quiet prying. She was going home. Her car was still out there in the woods; she only had to find it, and the nightmare would be over.
The handle gave way with a loud crack.
“Shit,” she hissed, rushing quickly across the floor to lie down in the bed, screwdriver pressed under the pillow out of sight. She closed her eyes, tried to slow her racing heart, and strained to listen.
It could have been minutes or hours later when, finally, she decided she was in the clear. Hoodie on and boots laced, she breathed a long sigh of relief and elation when the window slid up. She climbed out and jumped feet first into the night.
His house was cute, a neat red brick against the backdrop of vast green forest. Violet looked around for her bearings. It felt like a week ago that Mikel had carried her through the streets slung over his shoulder. She had no reference point, no idea where to go except into the trees to try to find the small road in the forest where she’d last seen her car.
It might be better to wait, a small voice warned. Keep the window a secret, get to know the town or find a map, then try when she was better prepared. The thought had barely formed when it was banished by the memory of the mansion, vast and cold, and the thought of Lila there, alone, missing her. Resolved, she shoved her hands in the pocket of the hoodie and headed into the thick trees.
THE FIRST STRETCHwas easy. It might have been half an hour; it might have been two. The air was cold, crisp, and it was dark under the canopy of the trees, but somehow less foreboding than she’d thought.
Violet strode with purpose, fortified by freedom and the certainty that soon, the world would start to make sense again—no more werewolf descendants and no more confusing, alluring, annoying Mikel.
When she passed the same mushroom-shaped rock for the third time, some of that hope started to dim. A fine shiver had started in her core and was fast spreading. Her lips were cold, chapped by the wind, and the woods were bigger than she’d imagined and much harder to navigate.
Lila, she reminded herself when she tripped on another root, jarring her still healing ribs.
She had to get home for Lila; her sister was seventeen and too young to be left alone to her father’s games, to that big empty house on the hill where the ghost of their mother had never resolved to leave. Violet ran the back of her hand over her eyes, ignoring the tears that shone on her skin in the moonlight.
Her fucking car was out here, and shewouldfind it, even if she were hopelessly lost. Violet banished the panicked voice quickly, pressing her hands together to try to rub some warmth back into them. Twigs cracked and leaves rustled while the tall trees around her swayed. The sounds of the forest had stopped, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand hours ago. It was never quiet, but as she started determinedly in what she thought was a direction she hadn’t tried yet, the feeling of being watched gnawed at the pit of her stomach.
It’s nothing. It’s probably Mikel.
Something moved in her peripheral vision, and she found herself hoping desperately it was the second one. Her feet picked up speed, and once she was power walking, her adrenaline spiked and demanded she run.Chased, her blood insisted, she was being chased…hunted. The forest turned ominous around her, and she could hear it now, a crunch of leaves here, the snap of many twigs there, getting closer.
She tripped on the brush, barely catching herself before she fell, stumbling up to carry on, heart hammering—
“Hey.”
His hand over her mouth stifled the scream. Violet looked up, chest heaving and her body shaking, into Mikel’s gold-ringed eyes. His face was a grim mask, jaw tight, yet she still sagged against him in relief, and he still let her.
