Impending Mate, The Moltiare Collection: Bk2 (Sample)(Available on Amazon/SW)

Chapter 4 (Aaron)

“What are the ‘goods’?”

I turned to look back at Allison, who stood impatiently in the doorway, arms crossed and a sour look on her face. Her face was red with frustration as I turned the light on in the front entry way of the house, and I could tell that she didn’t know why I had bothered entering in the first place. In her mind, she needed to get out of this town as quickly as possible and I was only slowing her down.

She rolled her eyes when I only raised a brow, “Whatever you said to whats-her-face.”

“Cinnamon Rolls.” I gave a tight smile as I turned towards the basement, “Jess snacks on them when she isn’t feeling well.”

A moment of pain crossed into her eyes before she shook it off and continued glaring at me, but that was fine. She could give me any look she wanted as long as she was no longer arguing about whether I was going with her. Not that I would have allowed her the choice in the end anyhow.

My wolf was snapping in the back of my mind, calling out phrases such as Mate! Mine! and Protect!. The pull was too strong now for me to let her go, even if I had wanted to, and the human part of my mind felt the strong need to coddle her, to hold her until the pain that creased on her forehead faded, but I couldn’t. The walls she had built around her were too high for me to simply jump over.

I passed a breath through my nose as I opened the basement door and reached for the bag setting just before the stairs. Fifteen or so steps down was the room that I slept in for the past year and a half, the one that I had refused to vacate, knowing that two floors above me, Allison tossed and turned from her nightmares.

It wasn’t as if the bad dreams were a secret, not to me at least, but my ears were tuned in more to her suffering, even as quiet as she tried to keep it. There were things about her that went well beyond what Jess or Ethan wanted or could see, and I knew that Allison liked it that way. After all, if Jess could hear her wake up in the middle of the night, choking on her own fears, it would only worry her more that she was already.

“Great.” She muttered as I turned back towards her, “You packed.”

I shrugged, “I like to keep a few things handy. Just in case.”

She snorted, “Like what?”

“Cash,” I answered simply and watched her eyes flicker over the bag, “and a few other things that could help keep you out of trouble.”

“What makes you think I’m getting into trouble?” her eyes narrowed as I moved past her and towards the key hooks that were hanging by the front door.

Now that earned her a laugh, “You were made for trouble, Allison. All forms of it.”

I didn’t look back, but I could see her reflection just over my shoulder in the glass of the front door. The childish, tongue out expression had a grin pulling at my lips as I took the keys to Marie’s SUV in my hand. Maybe this experience wouldn’t be nearly as terrible as she thought it would be.

“We’re taking her car?” I heard her asked from behind me as I turned off the lights in the house and stepped back outside. I looked back in time to see a look of regret on her face before she noticed that I was watching.

“It’ll be easier to cross the borders in a vehicle,” The driver’s side door eased open when I pulled at the handle. Marie forgot to lock it before she left with Natalius, causing my eyes to sweep over the backseat and make sure it was empty, “and if we take the highway, no one will catch our scent leaving the city.”

“What about the back roads?”

I shook my head, “They’ll recognize the scent of Marie’s car. There are too many scents on the highway. Too many for them to sift through anyway.”