Off the Beaten Path by Cari Z

Author:Cari Z [Z, Cari]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9781635338980
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2017-09-18T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Henry

EVERYTHING SMELLED like blood.

It smeared the air, tainting it with its filth even through the plastic surrounding Wilson. Werewolf blood smelled different from human blood, which I was far more familiar with, but the iron was the same. That and the tang that stuck in the back of your throat, making you feel like you were on the verge of vomiting. I hated the smell, but I was used to it by now. I could barely escape it even when I was off duty—it made sense I would be surrounded by it now. Only it was accompanied with the ozone scent of snow, car exhaust, and very faintly, wrongly, the smell of Ward. I didn’t like smelling him and blood at the same time, and yet I knew he was one of the only things helping me hold on to the tenuous thread of control I was maintaining right then.

John had noticed my partial shift, I was sure of it, documenting how long I stayed like this. I should have changed back all the way just to lessen the impact his observations would have on me, but I couldn’t. It felt too much like taking off my armor, and right then I needed that barrier more than ever.

Wilson was cooling in my arms. I sat with him in the back seat of the Jeep, and Ward kept craning around to look at us, check on me. I didn’t look at him, but I could feel the pressure of his gaze like a stroke on the shoulder, or a brief tangle of our fingers.

“Do you want me to call Sam?” he asked at last.

Oh, right. It was a good idea. Someone should. My phone… was in my pocket. I’d have to let go of Wilson to get it. I couldn’t quite make myself do that yet.

“Use mine.” John handed Ward an iPhone, and I listened absently to my sister’s concerned voice over the speaker, her brief silence when Ward told her what I’d done, her questions about when we’d be back. An hour. Maybe less.

Then Wilson would go in the ground. The grave was probably already being dug. It was a holdover from our earliest experiences as werewolves, the necessity of burying a body fast. You didn’t want to leave the dead ones around for other creatures to feed on, nothing that could potentially allow the mutation to spread. Wolves were buried deep, or burned. I shut my eyes and pulled Wilson a little closer.

I hated feeling this way about him, like it had gutted me. I didn’t want to be gutted by the death of someone I’d known for less than a year when I was still a teenager. My mother had felt sorry for him, one of the only survivors of a disbanded pack, so awkward and so angry to be with us. I hadn’t liked him back then, and the feeling had been mutual. When he’d failed to come back from his shift and my mother had let him go, I’d actually been pleased.

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