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Harlow tried not to think about the situation in which she had placed herself. As she slid into the passenger seat and reached across to open the driver’s side door from the inside, she realized that she no longer had a home. The protected dwelling in which she was living was for pack members only. She’d also said her goodbyes at the Golden Acorn.
Harlow drove off, motivated mostly by rage and not sure what she was going to do. She just needed to get away from this place.
Chapter 22
Harlow
She fumed the whole way to the plaza. How could Atlas and Colt allow Lauren to get so out of hand? She was the pack member, but that should come with even greater responsibility!
The car increased velocity almost as if by its own will. After everything she had told them and everything Lauren had put Colt through, how could they believe her over Harlow? There was no sense to it.
Speeding around a curve, Harlow narrowly missed a collision with an oncoming driver. She overcorrected, hitting a patch of loose gravel and sliding toward the side of the road. She arrived at the store shaken and guided her car into a parking spot.
Harlow sighed and rested her head against the seat cushion. Closing her eyes, she tried to take some deep breaths and remind herself to stay calm. Her confrontation with Lauren couldn’t get further out of hand. If she didn’t get accepted into the Gravecrest pack, she would be left with nowhere to go—again.
Thinking of her resources, Harlow’s concern deepened. She had built her finances back up and had enough money to get back on the road if she needed to, but was that what it would always be like? She didn’t want her life to be an endless cycle of travel from town to town until someone hunted her down or she became the cause of strife in a new community.
She rubbed her face and looked up, noticing for the first time that someone had blocked her into her spot. It didn’t matter much before she went shopping, but if they didn’t move before she came back out, she would have to call security and have them page the person, who would be annoyed, and Harlow didn’t have the energy to spend on another confrontation.
Opting to solve the problem sooner rather than later, she honked her horn and waited for the other driver to move, expecting a rude gesture or some such expression of attitude. Instead of moving or showing any sign of having heard her, another car pulled up behind the first and stopped.
Harlow’s heart skipped a beat. She couldn’t see very well through the glare of the bright pole lights, but she saw no silhouetted gesticulations and heard no honking to suggest that the driver of the second car was perturbed in the least.
This was either the weirdest parking situation Harlow had ever been in or something bad—very bad. Either way, she wasn’t going to wait for a third car to pull up and make it a circus. She unclipped her seat belt, got out of the car, and began walking as quickly as possible in the opposite direction, prepared to make a break for it if things went south.
As she passed between other parked cars to head for the store and call for help if need be, several other drivers blocked her path. Harlow’s stomach sank as Vincent and his father emerged from one of the vehicles.
Turning to run, she noticed the presence of several other men, some of whom she recognized from the Hollow Grove pack. Nothing could have prepared her for an attack from her own family. Of course, even if she had been prepared, she had no way to fight off this many.
Anger grew inside her. What right did they have to corner her this way? They had rejected her. What more could they want?
She turned to face Vincent. “What’s this about?” she asked, attempting to remain calm.
Ignoring her question, Vincent smirked. “I’ve had a lot of trouble locating you.” He sneered. “Few can evade me that easily. I even had to get outside help.”
Harlow glared at him. “That seems excessive. Why go to all the trouble?”
“How did you do it?” Vincent asked.
“Do what, get away from you? Clearly, I didn’t, not that you would even listen if I told you.”
“Hmm. Not like you to be hateful. Having a hard time with the new pack, darling?”
“Not at all, sweetie. Fitting right in. But you know how deceptive that can be. How’s Isla?”
Vincent snorted. “Perfect. Everything I hoped she’d be. Everything you couldn’t be.”
Tears stung the backs of Harlow’s eyes and clogged her throat. She had done her best not to think of everything Vincent had taken from her on the night he betrayed her trust, but it all came back to her now. She had given up everything because of him—her home, her future—and now he blamed it all on her.
Misreading her emotional state, Vincent pounced on the only ammunition he had. “You could never have been to me what Isla is. She’s a queen. You’re a mongrel.”
Harlow swallowed her wistfulness. “Call off your dogs, Vincent. Let me go home.”
“Home?” Sweeping his arms around him in a gesture of incredulity, Vincent gave a snarl that sounded like a coarse laugh. “You call this home? Impossible! Your home is at Hollow Grove.”
It was Harlow’s turn to be incredulous. “How can you say that? I may have run away, but you decided I wasn’t good for the pack the first time you cheated on me. Why shouldn’t I make my home somewhere else?”
Throwing her hands up in the air, Harlow tried to walk between two of Vincent’s Hunters. “Why do you want to keep me in Hollow Grove? What do you want?” she demanded.
