Page 39 of Bound to the Wolf
Twenty minutes later, her faith in humanity, such as it was, was reinstated when an old, beat-up red pickup truck pulled to a stop beside them and a woman rolled down her window. The truck had a dented rear quarter panel and a cracked taillight held together with packing tape, and the engine idled with a low, uneven rattle.
“Are you two all right?” The woman was older with dark skin, wearing a baseball cap for a team Delainey didn’t recognize. She was eyeing them like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but there was more concern on her face than fear. Her arm rested on the open window frame, a silver watch loose on her wrist, and the truck’s bench seat behind her was piled with folded tarps and a plastic crate of gardening tools.
They had been walking for days. Why hadn’t Delainey used that time to come up with a story? She said the first thing that came to mind and hoped it made some sort of sense.
“We were on a camping adventure day trip. We got separated from our group two days ago. We were near Hobson when we left. Can you take us into town?” She sounded a little panicked, which wasn’t much of a lie.
What if they weren’t anywhere near Hobson? What if this woman didn’t know what town she was talking about? Any town would do, as long as she could get access to a phone.
The woman kept looking at them like she expected Delainey to break and tell her the truth. “You walked all the way out here from Hobson? In those clothes?”
Delainey looked down at her jeans and t-shirt and gym shoes, dirty now, but they had served her well enough. Her curls were flattened on one side and frizzing wildly on the other, and she could see the mud ground into the knees of her jeans and the raw scrape on the heel of her left hand from where she’d fallen days ago. She shrugged. Reece kept his mouth shut.
At least he was smart enough to let her do the talking.
“How far did we walk?” Delainey asked.
Please don’t be ridiculous,she silently prayed.
“About forty miles. But I’m heading that way anyway,” the woman said. “Why didn’t you use your phone to call for help?”
Right. Phones. Delainey stalled.
“It was part of the camp policy,” Reece said, stepping up beside Delainey so the woman could see him more clearly through the passenger window. “Only our guides had phones, so we could reconnect with nature.”
If anything, the woman looked more disbelieving. “You can get in the back. Is there any particular place you want me to drop you?”
“Are you going by the university?”
“I can do that.”
Delainey and Reece got into the back of the truck and stayed low as the woman drove them down the bumpy, rattling roadinto Hobson. The truck bed was ridged metal with no liner, and every pothole sent a jolt through Delainey’s tailbone. An hour later, the truck came to a stop, and they hopped out in front of the university welcome sign.
“Do you need me to call anybody for you?” the woman asked. Delainey realized she hadn’t even gotten her name, but she waved her off.
“We’ll be good from here. Thank you so much.”
The woman nodded at the thanks and drove away.
If anything, Reece now looked even more tense. “We need to go to the pack,” he said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Delainey shot back, already turning on her heel toward the sidewalk that ran east along the university’s wrought-iron perimeter fence. “We’re four blocks away from the coven house.” She held up her hands and jiggled the manacles. “We’re going to need their help to get these off.”
For once, Reece didn’t argue.
Chapter
Eighteen
Delainey stumbled through the kitchen door, and Reece bumped into her. The coven house was chaos.
The kitchen didn’t look as if it had been cleaned in days.
Okay, dishes piled in the sink weren’t exactly out of the norm, but the counters hadn’t been swept, and neither had the floors.
It smelled like burnt coffee and herbs and a faint tang of sourdough. A stockpot sat on the back burner with something dried and crusted around the rim, and the windowsill above the sink was crowded with protection stones that had been shoved aside to make room for a stack of unopened mail. It felt so much like coming home that Delainey wanted to collapse to the floor in a tight little ball and never move again.
Her legs went a little weak. She stumbled forward until she could put her hands on the countertop of the kitchen island and squeeze her stinging eyes shut, feeling the adrenaline that had kept her going over the last few days drain out of her like she’d become a sieve.
