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My head rested on Dastien’s chest, and I let his steady heartbeat soothe me. He knew he was probably listening in to my thoughts, but I didn’t care.
What the hell were we going to do now? Everything was such a mess.
After a while, he pulled me out of the chair. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“You can play ‘what if’ all day long, thinking up all kinds of scenarios to torture yourself, but it’s not going to do any good. Do you trust me?”
“Always,” I said as I looked into his amber eyes. It was the truth. I trusted him with everything that I was.
“Then come with on.” He pulled me up. “Let’s shift. We’re going for a run.”
It’d been days since I’d had time to shift. My wolf was aching to get free. “Okay. Where are we going?”
“You’ll see. Just shift, and follow me.”
In a blink of eye, his form changed. He stuck his wolfy tongue out at me, and I shook my head. I circled my finger in the air. “Turn around.”
The sound he made might’ve been a laugh, but I couldn’t be sure.
As I traded my skin for fur, all my worries melted away.
This was a fantastic idea.
Chapter Fourteen
Wind whipped against my fur as I ran through the forest. There were so many scents to chase. So many things to see. Dastien herded me where he wanted to go, with a nip here and a chase there. Finally, the forest opened up and we were standing in the middle of a clearing.
Our land. He’d taken us to our land.
Wolf-Dastien ran off behind a tree and appeared a minute later dressed in a pair of sweats. “There are clothes for you back there.”
I followed where he pointed. A plastic crate sat half hidden in the bushes behind a patch of trees. Supplies were stashed everywhere around campus—generic sweat pants, T-shirts, water, and granola bars—but I didn’t know Dastien had stashed some here.
Ever since I’d stopped fighting my shift, it had quit hurting. Now it was a sweet release. My muscles rippled, bones moving so quickly, that one moment I was wolf and the next, human.
I flipped open the top of the crate. Inside were a bunch of clothes and some swimsuits. Although if Dastien thought I was ever swimming in that pond, he was going to be sorely disappointed. I found a pair of smaller sweatpants and a T-shirt and slipped them on.
Dastien waited by the pond. “I thought we weren’t allowed to leave campus.”
He shrugged. “Eh. Who needs rules anyhow?”
I shook my head. We were so getting our asses reamed for leaving, but he was right. I needed a break from it all. Ever since my birthday, it was like the hits just hadn’t stopped coming. There hadn’t been any room to relax.
If I didn’t take a little time for myself, I might crack. I rubbed my temples as a headache po
unded. It was only just after lunchtime, and I was already exhausted. I could’ve gone back to bed right then and slept for another million years. It wasn’t just the physical exhaustion of the fight yesterday, but the emotional drain. Telling Claudia that her whole coven had been murdered by Luciana had been worse than I thought. The only good thing was that at least she had someone to lean on. Lucas seemed like a good guy. And if he was anything like Dastien and Donovan, he’d treat her like his queen.
I leaned into Dastien as he wrapped his arms around me. Being here—standing next to the pond with him—made me nervous. What I’d seen in my vision wasn’t going to happen. We hadn’t talked about it and I wasn’t wearing a white dress… But still, nerves creeped in.
“Are you okay?”
It was probably stupid to mention, but I couldn’t help it. “In my vision, we—”
“No. Don’t worry about the vision. I haven’t had an Orangina in days, no matter how much I want one.” He tickled my side, and I squirmed away, laughing. “That proves we can change what you saw.”
He moved to the ground, pulling me down with him. The grass dampened the back of my sweatpants as we sat cross-legged, knees touching. The tension in his shoulders told me he wanted to talk about something serious. I was worried I couldn’t take much more today, but he wouldn’t have brought me all the way here if it wasn’t important.
