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For once, my sister listened, throwing her leg out of the hotel room window. I helped Dylan out to her, and he slipped off the frame and into her waiting arms. Dylan looked back at me with wide, expectant eyes, and my heart twisted.
“Run with him,” I said, handing her down the car keys. “Get to the car if you can and get out of here. If not… go to the forest.”
There were woods beyond the motel and strip malls that surrounded us, although I hoped the forest wasn’t as spare and stingy as it looked around here. The forest was life.
“Amelia, no,” Rose whispered, and Dylan didn’t say anything, but his eyes had gone wide. I would bet that once again, he couldn’t speak at all.
“I can’t leave Aiden alone. Run, Rose. Please.”
She stared up at me for a long second, then jerked her head in a nod. She turned and ran. Dylan’s little head bobbed up and down, his legs stiff and rigid instead of swaying as she carried him. My heart twisted, but as long as I’d been with Nathan, I’d had to prioritize his safety over his feelings.
And now nothing had changed.
I ran back into the motel room.
Aiden twisted at the noise behind him, his jaw tight and his face pale as if he expected an attackt. He relaxed when he saw me, but only for a fraction of a second. “Get out of here!”
“Sorry, you’re stuck with me,” I said. “I’m not as useless as I used to be.”
He shook his head, but I was already moving toward the door. We needed a distraction while Rose and Dylan escaped.
I threw the door open and stepped out onto the sidewalk, my fists rising.
But there was no one there except for a family packing their bags into their trunk a few doors down. They looked at me, then glanced away.
My nostrils flared. A wolf had been here, but the scent barely seemed to linger on the cement. I turned to Aiden, because if he hadn’t scented it too, I could’ve believed I was just dreaming.
Because that scent had been… familiar.
Though I couldn’t quite place it.
“Let’s get out of here,” I told Aiden, and he gave me a quick nod of agreement.
Rose and Dylan had made it to the car. Rose had already locked the doors when we ran up, and she looked up at me with terror in her eyes for a split second before she recognized us. She looked young like this, all wide-eyed and wild. But she’d still have done anything to protect Dylan, and Aiden had been ready to die to slow down any threat. The feeling that swelled in my chest was affection and fear, pride and pain, all mixed up.
“It’s safe,” I called, and the next thing I knew, she was throwing open her car door and stumbling into my arms.
Rose squeezed me hard, wordlessly.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “There was another wolf, but it’s gone now. We just need to move again.”
“It’s not just that,” Rose whispered, the way she always did when she was trying not to cry.
I pulled back to look at her, and she stiffened, pulling out of my arms.
“You tried to protect me,” she said. “You could’ve run with Dylan. You chose me.”
“You’re still my sister,” I said. I wanted to pull her into my arms and hug her again, but I couldn’t. It was too much. I still couldn’t forgive her. And yet…. “You’re always my sister.”
She made a desperate gulp of a breath that was on the verge of being a sob.
But my siblings were my siblings, so we all got into the car and pretended there was nothing else to say.
CHAPTER4
Amelia
Even though therewere usually wide strips of neutral territory along the highways, we still flipped carefully through the red book. It was a guide to safe neutral territory.
