Twisted (Editing)

Chapter 13

Author's Note: This part is by far the longest in the story so far. 

I came to in the back of my dad's car. I bolted up. "Where are we going?"

"We're getting out of this town, I'll explain later."

"What about our stuff?"

"We'll send movers to get it later. I grabbed you some clothes, some shoes and we took our passports. We're leaving the country this time. The company will let us go back to the London division if we ask."

"Mom, Dad, I need to explain what the hell happened? Did he hold you at gunpoint? Threaten you?"

"We didn't expect that they would act so quickly. We thought we could lie low until you were done with school." My Dad was hitting speeds of eighty, ninety.

"Dad slow down!"

"I can't! We have to get out of here before they realize what we're trying to do."

For some odd reason that I can't describe, I felt it before I saw it. It was like a vibration in the air or a change in the smell. Something told me that they were coming.

"Watch out!"

The car veered to a stop as we hit a blockade. Police cars and the same black vans lined the road. "Tell me what's going on."

"We have to focus on getting out," my mom said.

"We're stuck so it looks like we have time."

"Everything that man said was true and he did, in fact, inject you with a wolfsbane antidote. They can smell you from a mile away."

"Smell me? This is craziness-"

My mom turned around and looked me square in the eyes. Her expression told me that she believed every word of what she said. The blockade, the break-in, the injection...it was too much to process. Werewolves weren't real. They weren't--they were parts of fantasy novels and urban legends and fanfiction. They belonged on twilight and not in my life. A police officer spoke into a megaphone. "Andrew and Alia Walker. By poisoning your daughter you violated the Pack Protection Treaty and by failing to register as a single werewolf you violated article 13 of the American werewolf constitution. These crimes are punishable by life in prison."

I buried my face in my hands. "I don't understand what's going on."

"But we're prepared to offer you amnesty to all these crimes if you let your daughter go to her mate willingly."

"Mate? Like a friend?"

"Don't do it, Imani," my Dad said.

"They're going to kill you if I don't go."

"You don't want to go into that world. There's a reason we left."

I felt like it was all a bad dream and any second I might wake up, but I wasn't waking up. So it was true--I was a werewolf. That sounded so wrong to me, so epically stupid. Yet here I was on the road, with a blockade in front of me, with orders to walk out of the car and go to my mate, whoever he was. I scanned the crowd, looking for the boy or man that I was being ordered to go to save my parents. My eyes hardened and locked on a shaking and familiar boy.

Jonah.

His hands trembled and he scratched at his mother and father. It was a pitiful sight. Somehow I caused this, though I wasn't sure how. "Don't do it, Imani. Please," my mother begged.

I shut her pleas out and opened the car door. Slowly, I crossed the road towards them. I reassured myself that it was all for the better good. I was saving my parents. My legs felt weak and I had to force myself to keep going. I was saving them, I repeated over and over again. I was saving them. I tried desperately to drown out my mother's screams. She shrieked again and again for me to come back. I kept walking, forward and forward. "Thank the moon goddess," Jonah's mother said. Hands pushed me forward, into his arms. His claws dug into my skin. I could still smell that sweet smell that I knew now was not cologne. My heart pumped in my chest. Was he feral? Was he going to rip my throat out?