Page 48 of A Token of Blood and Betrayal

He chuckled.“It’s always been easy to get under your skin.”

“Oh, now you’re calling me easy?”

“I’m calling you impossible.”He took his attention away from the road again, looked at me, and God, that smile.It wasn’t fair how easily it stripped away my resolve.It felt too good to do this, to let my defenses fall and just be here with him.

My shoulder rammed into the door again.

Okay, maybe nothere.

“If you moved closer to me, you wouldn’t bruise that arm.”

I immediately stopped rubbing my shoulder.“You’re not very appreciative of someone who keeps saving your life.”

His hand went to his heart.“Using my confessions against me.You’re vicious, Ms.Rain—”

His voice went tight at the end of that sentence.The smile fled from his face.He placed both hands back on the steering wheel and focused straight ahead.

A knot tightened in my stomach, and I focused on the windshield too.A handful of seconds passed, then Blake reached for one of the two phones in the dashboard cubby.

He lifted the phone to his ear.Didn’t say anything.

Pack business.Had to be.

“Understood.”He tossed the phone back into the cubby.I kept my attention on the dark clouds in the distance.A thunderstorm.How appropriate.

“I’m not going on pack business with you,” I said.He’d taken me once before.He’d ended up shifting to kill a moonsick wolf and her brother.

“I know.”His hands tightened and loosened on the wheel.Tightened and loosened again.He drove maybe a quarter mile farther before he cursed.

“I can’t drive you to The Rain.I can’t take you with me.”He shook his head, slowed the truck, then shifted into park on the roadside.“You’re going to have to drive home.”

It took a second for one specific detail of that plan to sink in.

“Drive… this?”I laughed.“No way.”

“It’s just like driving any other truck.”

“It’s not.If I hit a bump wrong, it’ll shatter into a billion tiny pieces.”

“A billion is overkill,” he said.“And the pieces would be bigger than that.”

“You would no longer have sides on the bed.”

“I’ve reattached them before.”

My eyes widened.

“Kidding,” he said.“She’s fine as long as you don’t turn off the engine, and Nichlathan can’t get to you when you’re moving.Don’t stop until you get to The Rain, and when you do get there, park inside the Null.”

“So you want me to ram your truck into my hotel.”

“That’s not—”

“The Null ends on the front porch.”

“Take the access road around,” he said.

“Road?You mean that overgrown trail that your Jaguar barely made it down?This won’t make it ten feet.”