Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 84465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
“But what about—” I started, but Gabriel rounded on me.
“No! Whatever you’re thinking, Zoe, the answer is fucking no!” He took a deep breath, obviously trying to calm himself and gave me a level look. “I told you once before that I like you—hell, maybe I even love you. I sure as fuck know Christopher does.” He shot his brother a glance. “But I don’t love you enough to get killed for you—or to let all three of us get killed. The Pack Master has given me orders to deliver you to Moncrieff and that’s what I’m going to do. And that’s the last fucking thing I want to hear about it!”
Then he turned around and started the sedan. He drove out of the small station throwing up a rooster tail of dust behind us and leaving Christopher and me to sit in silence as we contemplated his words.
That had been hours ago, near the beginning of our trip, and by now I had nearly given up hope of getting away. Christopher had given me several longing looks but I could tell he wasn’t willing to go against his Alpha. As strong as Gabriel’s allegiance to his father was, that was how strongly Christopher felt about his older brother. He might disagree with Gabriel, but he wouldn’t defy him.
So I was stuck and there was no getting out of this. I was going to be delivered to Pack Master Moncrieff and live the rest of my life in sexual bondage to a sadistic man old enough to be my grandfather.
If Gabriel could find the way there, that was.
“I don’t think this is the right road,” he snapped at Christopher, pulling me out of my maudlin thoughts. “Check the fucking GPS on the phone again—we’re getting too close to the border!”
“I’m telling you, this is the way it said to go!” Christopher glanced at his phone and tapped the screen several times. He grimaced. “I’ve got no fucking signal out here.”
“Well then—”
But just then a long, wavering siren interrupted Gabriel’s words. He glanced in the rearview mirror and pounded his fist on the steering wheel.
“Fuck!”
Christopher looked too.
“It’s the cops. How fast are you going? You’d better pull over.”
“What—so Zoe can tell them she’s being ‘trafficked’ and get us sent to fucking jail?” Gabriel demanded.
“She won’t say that? Will you?” Christopher turned to look at me.
“Yes, I will.” I lifted my chin. “If this is my only way out of a life of being held captive and raped every day by a nasty old man, I absolutely will tell the police I’m being trafficked! And I’m going to tell them about how your father killed my Dad and kidnapped me and my mom! It’s all coming out so you’d better get ready to go to jail—both of you!”
Christopher looked so stricken that for a moment I almost felt sorry, but I reminded myself that I was all alone in this. Nobody else was going to help me so I had to help myself.
“See?” Gabriel shot me a black look in the rearview mirror. “We can’t afford to let them pull us over.”
And with that, he put his foot down and the sedan shot forward, the needle climbing past seventy miles per hour, then eighty, then ninety, then over a hundred…
“Shit, Gabe! You’re going to get us killed!” Christopher exclaimed, his eyes going wide as he stared at the speedometer.
“Fuck it. Maybe we’d all be better of dead, anyway,” Gabriel growled. There was a fatalistic look in his silver eyes as he pressed the gas petal even harder and the siren behind us began to grow fainter.
But suddenly, I began to hear a second siren—and it didn’t seem to be coming from behind.
“Madre de Dios! What the fuck is that? Are there two of them now?” Gabriel demanded.
“Look out!” Christopher threw out an arm to point at the windshield. Coming straight at us, out of the heat haze of the desert was another cop car, lights flashing and sirens wailing.
“Hang on, I’m going around them.”
Gabriel twisted the wheel recklessly and I was thrown to the other side of the back seat, since I had foolishly taken off my seatbelt. I’m not sure what happened next, because I was face down in the seat cushion, but I could hear my stepbrothers shouting in the front seat.
“Watch out!” Christopher shouted.
“Another one!” Gabriel responded.
The car took another violent turn and then the ride got extremely bumpy—we were off the road and into the desert.
But the sedan wasn’t built for off-roading like the big, jacked-up pickup trucks most of the Alphas drove on the Compound. I heard a grinding noise and there was a huge bump that lifted me bodily off the seat and slammed me back down again. Then the car came to an abrupt, jerking halt that spilled me into the floorboard, face down.