The damn traffic inside the town of Somewhere was crawling. It was just before midday on Friday in a college town, and it was like frozen molasses on an iceberg in the middle of January.

Kate was still squirming beside him, in pain, alternately reaching for his hand and dropping it to wriggle in the seat. Dammit. He just wanted to fix this for her. But the fucking traffic… He laid on the horn when the car in front of him didn’t respond to a green light. Damn kids texting. He blew around them, pulling into the turn lane, and zipped through the intersection.

Don’t have time for this.

“So, your alpha thinks you’re disobeying him,” he tried to say without grinding his teeth. “And he just decides to turn his magick on you?”

“Yeah.” She took his hand again, gripping it tight. The pain seemed to lessen the farther they got, but he had to be in a vehicle, too, to maintain this kind of pressure on her.

“And you’re not engaged to Julian?”

“No.”

Ryan released a breath and squeezed her hand back. He felt more relaxed whenever they were touching. This was all kinds of fucked up. He couldn’t do this. Couldn’t be with her. Not yet. But he couldn’t leave her. Couldn’t let her alpha hurt her like this.

“You didn’t have to pretend to be engaged to Julian, y’know,” he said, his voice dark and gravelly. “I would have come for you.”

She rolled her head to one side and looked at him through long, curling lashes. “It’s good to hear you say that.”

They finally got out of the crowded interior town area, and he could pick up some speed. They were driving north, out of town, the way that Ryan and Bracken and Beau had come in to town only the previous day. So much had happened in that one day…

“I don’t understand this,” he said. “The way I feel about you. No one prepared me for this.”

“It’s okay, Ryan.”

“But I feel like you belong to me.”

“Me, too.”

“How is that possible?”

She blinked, slowly, like there was still a little pain in her body. “It’s Fate, Ryan. There’s nothing to figure out.” She ran her thumb over the veins in his hand. “I choose you. I don’t know what it will look like, but you’re the one I belong with. I know that much.”

He shifted in his seat, a little bit of discomfort rolling through him. Could he really say that he was choosing her when he had every intention of not bonding with her for at least five years? Would she choose that?

Now that he’d felt the pressure of her body on his, smelled her desire for him, and protected her from her grandfather…he couldn’t imagine choosing five years of pack leadership over the beautiful, fearless woman beside him.

His wolf couldn’t either.

Once out of the city limits, he climbed his speed up to highway levels and set the cruise control. He felt bad about borrowing Dee’s truck without asking her first, but she’d understand. She’d want him to protect his mate.

He would text her as soon as they stopped.

“It’s better now, isn’t it?” he asked, feeling Kate relax beside him.

“It is.” She adjusted herself in the seat and released his hand, pulling at the shorts.

“There’s a band in those, y’know, to tighten the waist.” He gestured at the clothing, which was hanging off her. She practically had to hold them up to keep them on.

Kate pulled the waistband out, moving her fingers along the edges, and Ryan couldn’t help the eyeful he got of soft flesh and her natural thatch of hair. It took him a moment to force himself to look away. Dammit, she was mouthwatering. And boner-inducing.

But they were in a car, and her grandfather was behind them somewhere, and he needed to get his erections under control. I’m not a damn teenager.

“Where?” she asked, continuing to move her fingers along the waistband.

He reached for the fabric without thinking about it and felt along for the telltale bump that would indicate the start of the little rope. But his fingers were so close to…to her skin, to the core of her, to…

It would be so easy, so simple, to dip his fingers into her. To lift her leg just enough that he could open her. To pull those shorts down and have her scent on his fingers.

Dammit. He was hard as stone.

Ryan let the band snap back. “Can’t find it.”

“It’s okay.” She grasped his fingers and held them between both of her hands, resting them against the console. “We’ll only be in the truck.”

He tried to smile, but couldn’t. Yes, she was safe. Yes, her alpha’s range had lessened enough that she wasn’t in writhing pain. But they were on the road. On the run. He had no idea where he was going, or why, or even how they’d find her appropriate clothes. And it felt like his whole world had been upended.

“If it happens again, now that we’re in the truck on the road, you should shift into your wolf,” he said, gripping her hand tight. “I don’t like the idea of him hurting you like that.”

“I want to be here with you, Ryan.” Her smile was sad, almost resigned. “It’s worth a little pain. This is what I’ve wanted since we first met.”

He quirked a brow up. “It is?”

Kate nodded, glancing out the window at a big white cross that seemed to pop up out of nowhere. She seemed so at peace, even though she was essentially running for her life. Was it because she was with him? Was it really that easy?

“I know something’s holding you back,” she said. “I can’t believe it’s just the alphas-have-to-be-single stuff, because that’s just ridiculous.”

He snorted. “It’s not ridiculous in my pack. It’s how we’ve always had to do things.”

“But that’s—”

“Don’t.” He released her hand, and immediately felt the loss of her touch. But he needed to think clearly. “Don’t downplay what I have to do to keep my pack together.”

“Keep your pack together?” Kate shook her head. “Why do you have to do anything to keep your pack together? They’re family. What are they going to do?”

“Split off from the main pack. Or split right down the middle into four or five different tiny packs. That’s what happens when there’s pack violence.” He rubbed his hand against the rough material of his jeans, part of him feeling like he needed to get her touch off his skin so he could think clearly. But she just kept reaching for him, which put her hand dangerously close to his half-mast erection. He put her hands back on her side of the console. “Just… hold on for a second while I think.”

“What do you need to think about?”

“I have to figure out where we’re going, first of all.” He glanced down at his phone, which lay at her feet. The way back to Durant was easy. He wasn’t worried about getting lost. But he still had responsibilities—which he’d conveniently forgotten the moment he smelled the sex between her legs and lost his damn mind.

This was a prime example of why alphas were supposed to be single.

“Aren’t we going to your home?” she asked, a little bit of a pout in her tone. “I don’t know where else I can go. I need you more than I’ve ever needed anyone, Ryan.”

“Dammit, don’t say that,” he hissed out. “I can’t think straight when you say things like that.”

“What? Like I need you? Like I want you?” She moved closer, leaning in like she might try to jump over the console and onto his lap. That would just be too much.

“You have to let me think.”

“Fine.” She backed away, slipping back into the confines of her seatbelt and looking away from him. “You take the time you need, Ryan. I’ll be here.”

She curled up against the window and they rode in silence for a long time. Ryan didn’t know what to say or do. Everything was swirling out of control. He’d made an instinctive choice to save her back in Somewhere—one that had set them on this path. Now, it was his job to fix it.

Kate’s eyes started to flutter, but she sat up when his phone started buzzing against the floorboard. She picked it up from where it had fallen and looked at the front. “Bracken,” she said, almost reservedly. “You want to take it?”

“I have to,” he said, reaching for it. She swiped the call on and held it to his ear so he could keep both hands on the wheel. He’d just been about to ask…wow.

“You coming?” Bracken asked, through the phone.

“Um…” Ryan didn’t dare lie to his alpha. Bracken knew him too well. “Coming to…?”

“The alpha council meeting.”

“Right.” Ryan glanced over at Kate. He couldn’t afford to tell his alpha about her, just in case anyone else was around. He couldn’t give away their location like that. “Say, speaking of alphas…”

“Yes?”

“Is Phillip Quade around?”

There was a long pause, some shuffling on the other end of the line, and then Bracken came back with, “No. Why? Do you have some news about his granddaughter?”

Ryan couldn’t help the stifled laugh. Do I have news…Ha! “Well… that depends on what you mean by news.”

“Well, what she thought of our—” Bracken began, but Ryan cut him off quick.

“She’s right here with me,” Ryan butted in.

“I hear a truck engine. Where are you, exactly?”

He looked out the window. They’d passed a road sign with Tyler on it not long ago, but it was still a good hour away. He had no idea where they were. “On the road.”

“Well, are you coming back for the alpha—” His uncle stopped talking, and when he spoke again, his voice was barely audible. “Phillip Quade just walked in.”

Kate let out an audible sigh of relief, and he did as well. The El Paso alpha wasn’t chasing them anymore. Maybe they couldn’t go back to Somewhere, Texas, but they didn’t have to run aimlessly through the countryside to escape the old man.

“I’m not going to ask you a third time, Ryan.” His alpha’s voice was hard and cold.

“Quade came after her, Brack,” he bit out, trying to keep his cool. “He attacked her. Used his alpha magick on her.”

“What? What in the hell?”

“Don’t.” Ryan glanced at Kate as the phone faltered. She’d heard it, too. The undercurrent of I’m going to kill him. “They don’t know where we are, and for now, I just need to get her somewhere safe.”

“I’m going to have to tell Aaron.”

“Please do.”

The phone trembled, and Ryan reached over to touch Kate’s thigh, trying to reassure her that everything would be all right. Aaron VonBrandt was a safe alpha. He would help them, and so would Bracken.

“Call me when you stop. I want to know where you get to.”

“Will do.” Ryan nodded at Kate and she pulled the phone away. His hand was still on her thigh and he gave her leg a squeeze before releasing it. “It’s going to be okay, Kate. I promise.”

“I know.” She let out a long, labored breath, and tucked the phone into the cup holder. “At least he’s not coming after me.”

Yet, Ryan thought to himself, but he couldn’t say the words. Every single part of him wanted to pull off to the side of the road and comfort her. Help her feel that release of tension that he knew she needed. He needed it, too, and he recognized the look.

They continued to drive, and he continued to smell her and be hard and restrain himself from reaching into her shorts and claiming her with his fingers. But that’s what he wanted to do—what his wolf wanted him to do—and there was no getting around it. He wasn’t a reluctant participant in this mating. He genuinely wanted her. Whatever magick had pushed them together, it had broken through his resolve.

But that didn’t mean it would win.