AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A nod was all I needed.
Heart pounding, I allowed Melony to draw me away from the bar.
This was it. It was time.
I was getting my son back.
* * *
“Isn’t this just perfect?” Melony chattered as she led me down a long, dim hallway.
I grimaced.
Perfect wasn’t the word I would have used.
“Is this where you’ve been staying?” I asked, stepping around a puddle of standing water in the dip of the carpet. The overhead light flickered on and off ominously, like it was part of a horror movie set.
Anger raged through me. Had she been keeping my son in this filthy place? He could be sick just from breathing in the air. It was thick with the scent of stale humidity, all mildew and mold.
“It’s not the nicest, I know,” Melony admitted. Big fucking understatement. It must have been the cheapest, jankiest hotel on the entire Strip. “But it doesn’t matter where we are, does it? We could be poor, homeless, starving, and we’d still have our love.” She cast a glance back at me, and I was quick to hide the disgust on my face. “That’s what being mates is all about.”
I forced a smile that probably made me look more constipated than overjoyed.
What she said was true, in a way. Felicity and I would never be starving or homeless. I’d never let it happen. With the pack’s investments, we weren’t even in any danger of ever being poor. But if the worst happened, something so cataclysmic that all my best-laid plans turned to ash and we ended up out on the streets, I knew we’d get through it.
We’d gotten through everything else so far, and we were getting through this.
But by God, the universe saw fit to really make me work for it.
“I’m surprised it took you so long to find me, you know.” Melony sounded genuinely disappointed. “I mean, in the end, I had to find you.”
“I tried.” Another truth. “But I couldn’t track your scent. The trail kept going cold.”
“Oh. That.” She giggled. “It’s because of my new perfume. I bought it special, just for this. I have to reapply it pretty often, but it masks my natural scent. I didn’t want to be followed while I was here.”
Perfume. Special perfume that blocked out her scent. No wonder her trail had kept going cold. Where had she even gotten something like that? And more importantly—
“Followed by who?” I asked. Not me, if she’d been hoping I would find her.
Quincy, maybe? Samuel? Someone else?
Melony didn’t answer. We stopped in front of a door, and she let go of my hand. There were scuff marks around the lock like someone had tried to break into it at some point. I hoped it wasn’t recent.
“Is Ry—I mean, is Grayson in here, then?” I asked.
Melony laughed and pulled out a key. “Where else would he be, silly?”
She unlocked the door and walked inside, leaving me to follow her in.
“Make yourself comfortable,” she said. “I’ll go get our baby boy.”
The stink of mildew was even stronger in here. She’d left the television on. Wheel of Fortune played on the screen. An elderly woman in neon yellow bike shorts and a lime green fanny pack jumped up and down, clapping her hands as the wheel spun round and round.
Apart from Melony and me, the room was empty.
“You’ve been leaving him alone in here?” I asked as she stepped into the bathroom.
Where had she been keeping him? In the goddamn bathtub?
