CHAPTER NINE
As much as she hated to close the chapter on her first-ever naked cuddle, Sheena had no choice but to shimmy out from under Austin’s stocky body when Lance knocked on the motel room’s door later. Fortunately, Austin slept as soundly as a gargoyle in daytime and was undisturbed. She opened it a crack and whispered to Lance, “Give me a minute.”
“You alone?” Blue’s lieutenant asked.
“Uh. No.”
“Anyone I need to worry about?”
“No, it’s…” Sheena cringed. She didn’t know if there was a protocol for discussing who was in one’s bed, and then she realized that whatever rules there were for Coyotes probably wouldn’t overlap much with human etiquette. She was just going to have to go with her gut. Her gut said to go ahead and yank the Band-Aid off, already. “Um. It’s Austin. He’s asleep.”
Lance didn’t say anything. His flinty eyes narrowed. Lips flattened. Forehead creased.
She took a deep breath to brace herself for the lecture, but, surprisingly, he only nodded and took a step back from the door. “Better hurry. I can feel your energy pinging around. The coyote in you wants to shift.”
She was agitated, but that was normal for her on full-moon nights. What wasn’t normal was for anyone to notice and call her out on it. “You don’t feel it?” she asked, head slanted in confusion.
“Sure.”
“You don’t act like it.”
He shrugged. “I’m a dominant Coyote.”
Apparently, that was that.
“Okay, then.” She closed the door softly and moved about the room, slipping her track suit back on and rooting through her bag for sandals. She tugged the elastic out of her ponytail, grimacing at how quickly her hair poofed, but in her four-footed body, nobody would care if she had frizz. It might even keep her warmer out in the cold desert night.
She turned the television way down and jotted a note for Austin:
Back after sunrise. Will understand if you’re already gone.
He was a cowboy. He had to work before the sun was high and punishing, but she hoped to catch him before he left—to extract a promise from him that he’d be back later. Maybe she was pathetic and clingy, but she was starting to grow used to being comfortable, and she didn’t know if she could be so at ease if he wasn’t sitting beside her.
She’d padded back to the door with the room key in hand but turned back when her waving earring brushed her jaw.
“Oh.”
She took off her jewelry and left it on the nightstand beside the note.
“Okay,” she said to Lance as she closed the door behind her.
He gestured toward his truck, a big truck that, if not for the running boards, a lady would have needed a step stool to climb up into.
As though he’d read her mind, he said, “I have a travel trailer I have to tow sometimes. Need horsepower.”
“I don’t think I know anyone in Sacramento who has a pickup.” She scrambled up into the passenger’s side and notched her hair behind her ears. “Where are we going?”
“Coyote running grounds are about ten miles from here. Corner of a ranch Blue leased out.”
“Oh.”
Lance got them on the road.
Sheena twined her fingers on her lap, looking ahead. She’d expected to feel more agitated around Lance. After all, he was from what her father would have considered an enemy pack, and a close friend to Blue. While she was nervous, she didn’t think it had anything to do with his affiliations. She was more wigged out by the fact that he was male and dominant, but she suspected any sane dog would have been nervous in her situation.
As he picked up speed on a back road, she cleared her throat. “Do you think I could use your phone? I want to check if there are voicemails Diana hasn’t picked up yet. I left my phone in California because I heard that, even when it’s turned off, people can track the GPS signal.”
“Go ahead.” He grabbed his phone out of the cup holder and swiped his thumb across the home button before handing it to her.
She held her breath as she dialed in to her voicemail box and entered her passcode, hoping the automated voice would tell her, “No new messages,” because that would mean the world she’d left behind wasn’t crumbling.
Yet.
Four new messages.
Her stomach lurched.
The first was from her mother, delivered in whispered tones like always, so she wouldn’t be overheard. “I hoped you’d be back by now. I guess you’ll be back soon. Of course you will. Tell me what lies to tell.”
Sighing, Sheena deleted it and cued up the next message.
That was from her mother, too, left the previous night. Her voice was breathy, slurred.
“He thinks I know where you are. I don’t know where you are. I should know where my daughter is. It’s all my fault.”
It wasn’t her fault. Any of it.
The third message was from her mother, too, and she sounded even more slurred than in the last one: “Maybe I should have run, too. I had a chance to, you know, but I was… I don’t know what I was. I chose wrong, thinking that… Where are you? He’s telling everyone you…went to Europe with his sister, but they’re going to figure out that’s a lie. You don’t go anywhere without me.” She hung up.
Mom. Gods.
The last message was from her father’s number. He didn’t say anything. There were a few seconds of silence before the system reported, “End of message.”
He didn’t need to say anything. His attention was frightening enough.
The guilt stabbing at her hurt even more than the sting of the Coyote teeth that had turned her into what she was.
Licking her parched lips, Sheena handed the phone back to Lance. “Thank you.”
He grunted.
She twined her fingers atop her lap and bobbed her knee with impatience.
Feeling small and powerless wasn’t new for her, but never before had that poisonous mix come with generous portions of shame, too. She shouldn’t have left her mother there, even for a day, not even to play hero.
“You’re not going to jump out of this moving truck, are you?” Lance asked. “Let me know, because I’ll slow down.”
“Why would you ask that?”
“Scent.”
“Oh.” Her knee bobbed faster. “I’m fine.”
“I could hear her, you know.”
“Of course you could, because you were born like that. See, smell, hear better than the rest of us, hmm?”
“That’s usually a good thing. You make it sound like it’s not.”
“It is. I’m sorry.” She used her hands to press her knee down. It just wouldn’t stop. She’d feel better once she shifted into her coyote body and could shut off a few of her more human emotions for a few hours, but that would just be a temporary respite. She wasn’t going to forget what she’d left behind. When she’d decided to run and tell Blue what was happening, she’d thought she was doing the heroic thing, but maybe she was just like those superheroes in movies who solved problems and destroyed entire cities in the process. She hadn’t considered the extent of the collateral damage.
“I have to go back now. I can’t just…” The other knee started bobbing, too. “She won’t leave, will she? I don’t think she’s going to leave, and what if things are about to get really bad?”
“Look, I don’t know what Blue has planned yet, but I can tell you this. She has to choose to go. My mother left Sparks last month, and my aunt with her. Wasn’t easy, but we made it happen. Their husbands stayed back to smooth things over. It’s not ideal, but no one’s coming after them.”
“But they weren’t married to the alpha.”
“No, but they were on his shit list because of Kenny and me. To spite us, Randall didn’t want to let them leave, and of course we weren’t allowed back in the territory to go fetch them. Still got them out. We’ll figure out a way to get our fathers out eventually. They can take care of themselves for the time being.”
“You make that sound so easy.”
“Not easy.” He turned off onto an unpaved road and turned on his lights. It was spooky out there with the dry desert foliage and night creeping up from the horizon. “We made getting our mothers a priority and got it done at the first good opportunity. She has to want to leave. Does she?”
Sheena hated to admit she didn’t really know, so she didn’t. She stared through the windshield at the narrow path and the taillights of another Coyote’s vehicle up ahead.
Her mother was punishing herself, and as long as she felt her husband was owed repayment, she wasn’t going to go anywhere. After all, he’d let her keep Sheena. She’d probably be paying for that for the rest of her life.
That’s not fair.
In Maria, Sheena had started to open her eyes and clear her head, but her recovery was far from over. She’d have to try to continue it back in Sacramento. Maybe she’d backslide, but that was a risk she’d have to take. The price of running was sometimes dearest for the people left behind.
Maybe it had been for the best that she and Austin hadn’t made love. Saying goodbye to him would have been that much harder. She was already too attached and didn’t think that would ever change. She’d heard that was the worst part about being a shapeshifter.
They got attached when they didn’t expect to.