Chapter 20: 0020
Lorelei POV
"RUN!!!"
Thirty minutes ago, I had been sitting quietly in the backseat of the car, my gaze fixed out the window while my mind kept replaying the kiss over and over again.
The kiss that had completely blindsided me.
Why had she done that?
Did she actually like me?
I mean... you don’t just kiss someone like that without feelings involved, right?
Or maybe you do.
"You okay back there?" Cole asked, snapping me out of my thoughts as he glanced at me through the rearview mirror.
"Yeah," I replied quietly, still not wanting to have an actual conversation with him because I didn’t fully trust him yet.
It was really late now, and the road outside was almost completely dark.
I had been forcing myself to stay awake the entire drive because I was terrified we would get caught, but now we were already out of pack territory, which meant we were finally getting closer to safety.
At least, that’s what I thought.
I leaned my head against the window and finally let my eyes drift shut, only to be violently jolted awake by a loud bang.
The car swerved sharply, tires screeching against the road.
Cole cursed loudly, but I barely caught any of the words because my head had slammed hard against the window, sending stars exploding across my vision.
"What’s happening?" I gasped, gripping the seat tightly.
"Rogues!" Cole shouted, and my entire body instantly went cold. "Stay down!"
Panic slammed into me so fast it almost stole my breath.
What were we going to do?
My body started trembling as bright headlights suddenly flooded the car from the front.
Two vehicles blocked the road ahead of us.
Cole immediately tried to reverse, but another car cut us off from behind, trapping us completely.
"Hold on!" Cole yelled.
Before I could even react, he slammed his foot against the accelerator, trying to ram through the blockade, but something massive suddenly crashed into the driver’s side door hard enough to shatter the glass instantly.
Then the entire car lifted off the ground and, to my horror, we started flipping violently through the darkness, spinning and tumbling like a toy thrown by an angry child.
I screamed.
Or maybe I didn’t.
I honestly couldn’t tell anymore because the only thing I could hear was the deafening sound of metal crushing around us.
When the world finally stopped moving, I was upside down, hanging from my seatbelt with blood dripping into my eyes.
"Cole?" I whispered, but there was no answer.
Forcing myself to look up, I realized the driver’s seat was empty.
The entire door on his side was gone.
"Cole!" I screamed louder, panic clawing its way up my throat as tears immediately burned my eyes.
Then my nose picked up the heavy scent of gasoline.
My stomach dropped.
That was when I noticed the faint crackling coming from the side of the wrecked car and the burning rubber curling into the air. In that moment, I knew if I didn’t get out soon, this entire thing could explode with me still trapped inside.
Fuck.
Forcing myself to stay calm, I fumbled desperately with the seatbelt. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely find the release button. When it finally clicked, I dropped hard onto the crushed ceiling with a painful gasp as agony shot straight through my shoulder.
For a second, my vision blurred.
But I forced it down and scrambled toward the shattered windshield, ignoring the glass slicing into my palms as I dragged myself out of the wreckage.
The cold night air slammed into me the second I hit the road, bringing only a brief moment of relief before panic swallowed me again.
"Cole!" I cried out, stumbling forward blindly.
A sudden movement to my left made me freeze.
Through the blinding glare of the rogue vehicles’ headlights, I finally saw Cole.
He wasn’t dead.
But with the way he was fighting, he might not stay alive much longer.
He had already shifted into his massive gray wolf, his jaws clamped around the throat of a dark, mangled rogue while blood soaked into his fur. But there were too many of them.
Three more wolves circled him like vultures waiting for the perfect opening.
And because I couldn’t shift, all I could do was stand there frozen in terror.
Then one of the rogues suddenly turned toward me.
Its yellowed fangs pulled back as saliva dripped from its mouth, and pure horror locked my body in place.
Cole noticed immediately.
A deafening, desperate howl ripped out of him as he threw his entire weight into the nearest wolf, violently knocking it aside to clear a path between us.
His eyes locked onto mine.
"RUN!!"
The scream tore through the chaos hard enough to snap me out of my paralysis, and suddenly my feet were moving before my brain could even catch up.
I ran without looking back. Behind me, I heard snarls and growls as Cole tried to hold them back.
The forest was a wall of absolute darkness, swallowing me whole. Branches whipped across my face, scratching my cheeks and tearing at my clothes, but I barely felt the sting.
The only thing that existed was the frantic, terrifying rhythm of my own breathing and the heavy thud of my heart slamming against my ribs.
Left, right, straight ahead. I didn’t even know where I was going. I just knew I had to put as much distance between myself and those fangs as humanly possible.
Suddenly, a new sound cut through the noise of the brush.
The unmistakable sound of four paws hitting the damp earth, closing in fast.
"No, no, no," I whimpered, forcing my legs to move faster.
"Where are you, little missy?" the rogue growled loudly, sending a shiver down my spine. "We just want to play."
The faster I ran, the faster its pace became.
"Don’t make this harder than it needs to be," the voice rasped again, closer this time. "Your protector is a little busy dying."
"Shut up!" I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t waste the breath.
The forest floor suddenly dipped beneath me. My toe caught on a root, and I tripped forward hard.
A gasp tore from my throat as I rolled onto my back, pain shooting through my body. I quickly scrambled to my hands and knees, then crawled behind a tree and clamped a hand over my mouth, terrified of making a sound.
My entire body trembled violently.
I hoped that with my wolf suppressed, my scent would be too faint to track.
Then suddenly, everything went silent.
Slowly I peeked around the tree, my brow knitting together when I realized the rogue was gone.
Where had it gone?
My hand tightened against my racing heart.
Then a branch snapped right in front of me.
My head jerked up and my eyes widened as they locked onto a pair of yellow eyes glowing in the darkness.
Slowly, its lips curled into a sickening smile.
"Found you."
