Chase Me , Alpha

Chapter 21

My body warred with the emptiness surrounding me.  Clayton was gone, he was gone, and it was so painful to feel I found myself wishing more for death than that desolation.  And then, to my sickening disbelief, I felt the warring emotions from my new mark, trying to take over my natural instinct.

Dalton said it was because Clayton had been my real mate, that eventually, after enough time, it would pass, but I never wanted it to.  I’d take this terrible feeling of being empty than not feeling anything for him at all.

I was pacing inside of my room, locked in.  On the first night Dalton had forced me into the same bed as him, and he hadn’t touched me even though I was nearly trembling from the terror that he might.  But when he woke up to me trying to kill him with his own pillow, I was handcuffed to the headboard at night.  When I unlocked it with a bobby pin and twenty minutes of cursing, and tried running out the front door, they just put me in my own room, child proofed it, and locked the door.

It was about two in the morning, and I hadn’t slept in sixty seven hours.  My wolf kept me awake, feeding me energy so my human side didn’t crumble.  I felt he exhaustion, though.  It was so deep set that it was hard to ignore.

It’d been four days.  Four days since that monster sunk his teeth into my neck, and I hadn’t found a single way out of this damn place.  Four damn days, and I was going insane.

They gave me everything.  Clothes, and jewelry, and delicious food and people trying to be my friend and a beautiful TV.  I haven’t changed from a pair of sleep shorts and a shirt since I was bitten and had peeled that dress off of myself the moment I was alone.  I hadn’t worn a piece of jewelry although Dalton insisted, so then I flushed all the earrings, but the necklaces clogged the toilet. I also threw my bedside table at the TV and shattered it, sworn at every person who tried talking to me, and even got one of them to almost kill me.  Dalton was super excited about that one.

I sat at the edge of my bed and stared at the moon out the closed window.  Clayton had to be out there somewhere, still looking.  He had to have taken what I told him, about the house and the trains, and somehow he’ll narrow it down to this one house.  I’ll be fine.

Oh god.

Although—I hadn’t tried the window yet.  I leapt from the bed and raced to the window, lifting it easily.  I was on the second floor of the old Victorian, too high to jump and land safely.  At best I’d walk away with a sprained ankle, but I was in a crazy town of psycho werewolves, and I was basically human.  I needed both feet at the extreme least.

So I pulled myself so that I was sitting on the window sill, feet inside, and grabbed onto the edge of the roof.  I lifted so my feet were on the sill, then jumped, thankful the roof tiles were grooved and offered some traction as I hauled myself up.

In the front of the house there was a lower hanging, so I carefully walked, trying not to make too much sound and wake the occupants of the house.  I lowered myself onto the overhang, and then from there carefully onto the grass.  I was barefoot—they didn’t give me shoes to try and dissuade me from running—and the grass was cool from the dew.

I took off quickly, heart in my ears, and went straight into the woods.  It’s easy to track me on a road, harder to do in the woods.  I retraced my steps, doubled back on my scent, made several false trails until I figured it was enough of a distraction.

It’d been about an hour, and I could hear their howls in the background.  They were coming for me, but Clayton was out there, if I could get another mile closer to him, if I could just—

My neck ached and my gut was pulling me back.  It felt wrong, deep down, to be leaving Dalton.  Very wrong, going against all of my instinct.  My wolf was craving him, and my mind was craving Clayton, and for a moment I had to rest against a tree, trying to catch my bearings and move forwards.