She frowns and looks around, realizing that I’m right. “Come on,” she says, yanking me closer to her. We turn around and head back toward Ambrose’s house.
She doesn’t let go of my arm as we practically run back to the house.
“Maybe you should shift,” I say.
She shakes her head. “Then I can’t communicate as easily with you. I will as soon as I see a threat.”
I nod, remembering that she can shift within a split second.
A question pops into my head I realize I should have asked sooner. It should have been a priority over everything else.
“Why is it so important to break the curse at this full moon? Why can’t it wait?”
“Vampires.”
“Huh?”
Rowena shifts, and then I see them—Draven, Nikolai, and Vespera. Their gazes are brimming with cold, piercing, lethal intent. Their lips are pressed together as their eyes narrow in on me with a deadly promise—to kill me.
Chapter 39
Lumi
They linger in the shadows of the trees. They can’t step into the sunlight, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t do some damage from where they are.
“Who did you hurt?” I ask, terrified they’ve gone on a killing spree while Ambrose and I were in bed together, completely oblivious to the pain our pack was enduring.
“No one, yet,” Draven answers, looking directly at me.
Rowena growls in their direction, putting her body between me and them.
Shift, dammit, shift.
“Call your bodyguard-dog off, Lumi, and no one gets hurt,” Draven says.
There is no way I’m going to be able to get Rowena to stop protecting me. I just need to shift; then, we can make a run for it. The vampires might be faster, but not when they can only step into the shadows. We’d have an easy escape.
I close my eyes, relax my body, and try to take myself back to that place I was last night. To the woods with Ambrose. To that peace. To that connection to my wolf underneath everything else.
I feel her stirring. I feel her wanting to come out. But it’s not enough. Nothing changes. I don’t shift. I can’t bring her to the surface. I don’t know how. I might not ever know how, not even to save my own life.
“Rowena, we have to make a run for it. Back to Ambrose’s house.”
Rowena turns her head back to me and shakes her head no.
I frown, she doesn’t think I can make it.
“As long as we stay in the sunlight, they can’t touch us. We just have to make it back to the house.”
She considers my words and then motions with her head toward her back. She wants me to climb on.
I hate it, but if it’s the only way she will run and save herself, then I don’t have a choice. I climb onto her back, gripping the gold fur there. She turns, and we are running back toward Ambrose’s house.
I can hear the swift movement of the vampires behind us, but they can’t reach us. It was stupid of them to try to attack us during the day. There’s not enough shade for them.
Faster and faster, Rowena runs. I’m pretty sure she’s faster than Ambrose; it’s incredible to watch. I can see Ambrose’s house on the hill come into view. We are so close.
“Stop!” I scream when I spot her.
