Wolf's Kin (Monstrous Hearts #3)

Chapter Ten

It was a picturesque inn they'd found, a historic country house with the interior transformed into modern-day suites, and their room was very nice. Big windows filled the air with warm, buttery light. Fresh flowers added color and sweetness. Outside, trucks rumbled on the highway. The smells of hash browns and coffee drifted over from the diner next door. In the face of such a simple morning, the events of last night bewildered like a bad dream, and Alice wished she could set them aside as such.

She knew her battered body needed rest; her ribs had stopped shifting with each breath, but they still ached, and some of the bruises on her skin were as big as her palm. Yet every time she closed her eyes, images rose up savage as teeth, and her exhaustion threatened to shatter into something frantic.

The sound of the lock turning in the door broke through her grey thoughts, and she glanced up as Colton stepped inside. He seemed miles away from the vicious creature of the night before, instead just one man among many in his simple shirt, jeans, and boots. In the bright sunlight, his eyes looked very sharp and the fresh stubble on his jaw very dark.

Then she realized he had a white bakery bag, the bottom already stained with grease. "Donuts?" she said, surprised to feel herself smile.

He nodded. "Thought you might be hungry."

Lingering tension filled his movements as he sat beside her on the bed, but his attention felt easy, comfortable. He really didn't seem to think she'd done anything stupid last night.

When she made no move to open the bag, he said, "How are you?"

"My ribs feel better." Her fingers drifted to his t-shirt, all too aware of the fresh scars hidden beneath. "What about you? Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine." Terse words, yet they held an expectant undertone, a readiness to answer anything else she asked. When she merely nodded, surprise flickered in his eyes. "No more questions?"

She shook her head, quiet until his hand caught hers, gentle against the bruises on her knuckles. "I thought you hated explaining things."

"I do. But I like your curiosity."

It coaxed another dim smile out of her. "I'm just really tired. Maybe I'll try to sleep."

He studied her intently, but nodded. "Rest as long as you want. We're safe here. I took care of everything from last night."

In bed, the heaviness of her eyelids spread to the rest of her body. This time, a thick numbness protected her from the torment of memory, pulling her down into darkness until it felt like her limbs were trapped in tar.

The oak trees appeared first. Ancient specimens, bleached as exposed bone, the bark on their trunks so withered that it seemed like wrinkled faces peered at her. Such attention felt suffocating, and she turned away, looking up at a sky as black as pitch. No sun. No moon. Nothing that could guide her out of this grim forest. She was in the shadow world.

Despite the eerie stillness, familiarity gnawed at her heart. The red, uneven earth erupting in rock and root, the gasps of space between the shrubs and sticks that tangled together in untamed masses... this wasn't a forest she had ever raced through as a wolf. Instead, it lived in her nightmares, preserved itself in her memories.

This was where her mother had left her.

Light winked. Then she realized she was looking at the side mirror of a car, fractured yet held in place by plants that had grown over the roof. The car itself was hardly more than a shell—paint worn away and windows punctured through with vines—and yet she still knew it. Of course she did; she had screamed in it for days, had bitten at the fabric seats like an animal.