Page 4 of Contested Crown

He glanced at me in the mirror, but then his eyes turned back to his own skin. He pressed a finger to his collarbone, where a single tattoo spiraled. It looked like a thorny vine, spinning underneath his finger.

The rest of his chest was blank. Even as the tattoos slithered up his stomach from the waist of his jeans, they simply added to the existing vine, until it covered half his chest.

“We have to go.” I yanked my duffel bag off the side table, stuffing clothes scattered over the bed inside. A shirt had somehow made its way over the lamp on my side of the bed, and I grabbed it along with the flip phone I’d been using as a burner. I strode into the bathroom, collecting our toothbrushes and the meager toiletries we had scrounged from other motels.

A small container of lotion from a motel outside of Pineridge Springs, a couple of bottles of conditioner from the seasonal motel we’d broken into near Deerview City—all of it was evidence of the loose circle we were making around Los Santos, getting closer, without ever touching the city itself.

When I came back into the room, Cade was sitting cross-legged on the bed, his palm open, the magic missing from his chest and circling his hand, tracing over each finger, one after the other. I crouched down in front of him, placing my hands on his thighs.

The heat of his skin made my hands tingle even through layers of jean fabric, and his muscles trembled under my hands. I wished this was any situation other than what it was because I wanted to explore that shiver. But I knew better. I knew what he was hiding from.

“Cade, did you hear me? We have to go. Now. House Morrison is right outside.” I waited for his eyes to catch mine, and when they finally did, they were dull, lifeless. The blue was cracked and empty. “Also, I may have pissed off the local alpha. She gave us an hour. But if House Morrison is here?—”

“Maybe they will end this.” Cade flopped back on the bed, covering his face with his hands.

Growling, I pushed away, snagging his bag and shoving everything I could see into it. I found one of his white T-shirts thrown over the back of a chair and tossed it on his chest.

“Put that on. We need to go now.”

“What’s the point?” Cade asked, his voice muffled by his hands. “Why bother running?”

“Whybotherrunning?” I turned to him, the fury in my blood at the truncated fight rising. “Because I don’t want to die in some rent-by-the-hour motel in Dos Lunas! Because I can’t take on a House Morrison mage by myself when I can’t shift! Because the father-daughter dance is almost done, and the alpha wasn’t kidding! I have not survived eleven years just to die here becauseyouare throwing a temper tantrum.”

“A temper tantrum?” Cade pushed himself up on his elbows, then struggled to his feet. His chest rose and fell, teeth bared. He crossed the room in three long steps, grabbing hold of my sweatshirt in one hand, dragging me down to his level. “My house has been taken from me. I have been sentenced to death by the king of House Bartlett. It turns out that the man I trusted the most has spent every minute since hekilled my parentsstrategizing about how best to take over my birthright. I have no allies, no help, no money, and I have been stripped of my magic. This is hopeless.”

For a half second, I could feel the shift under my skin, my fury pulling it forward. The wolf in me wanted out, to kill him, to protect him, it didn’t matter. Still, even the pressure of what he was saying didn’t manage to free my wolf from the muzzle Leon’s drug had wrapped around it.

“You havenohelp?Noallies?” I covered his hand with mine, squeezing once before releasing him. “What the hell do you think I am? I am here, risking my life for you, Cade Bartlett.”

Cade waved me off, dropping his hand to his side. His shoulders slumped, gaze falling to the floor.

“I don’t know why you bother. I don’t deserve the crown. You’re right. I didn’t earn it.” Cade turned, the line of his back curving as his head dropped even further. “You should run. I’ve no idea what House Morrison is doing here, but I doubt they’re interested in some werewolf with no name.”

I rolled my eyes up, staring at the ceiling for two heartbeats. Just long enough to trace the crack that ran from the ceiling fan to the corner of the room. The words hurt, even though he’d been edging up to saying them for so long I felt like I already knew the argument by heart.

Part of me knew exactly what he was doing. He was trying to get me to abandon him. He was pushing me away with just as much force as he had at House Bartlett’s massive estate. Only this time, it wasn’t all ballrooms and fancy dinners. This time, it was both of our lives.

But something kept me tied to him, like I was still wearing his collar around my neck. No matter how far I went, some part of me still belonged to him. What did that mean, that even now, I still wished I was wearing it?

“We don’t have time for this.” I walked past him, grabbing the T-shirt and shoving it onto his head, lifting one of his arms and maneuvering it through the armhole, dressing him like a two-year-old reluctant to go to preschool.

I turned away, letting him untangle himself and straighten the shirt. My eyes traced over every surface of the motel room—round table with a single chair, crappy TV mounted to the wall so we couldn’t steal it, queen-sized bed, two side tables.

We had only been in the motel for two days, just long enough that our things had begun to grow over the furniture, like moss sprouting on anything still.

“Did you leave anything in the dressers?” I demanded. Cade shrugged, and I pointed. “Check. I don’t want to leave them anything they can track us with.”

With a huff of annoyance, Cade walked over to the dresser, opening all the drawers and gesturing his hand at the emptiness inside. I walked over to his bedside table and found a notepad inside. Cade had scribbled on it, writing I didn’t understand.

It circled around itself, eating its own tail like a tattoo missing from his chest. When I brushed my thumb across it, I expected it to move, but the ballpoint ink stayed firm.

I tossed it and the pen he’d been using into his bag, then continued my search. Under the bed, I found his shoes but also a newspaper. Frowning, I pulled it out.

“We don’t need to take that,” Cade said.

It was from a few weeks prior, the headline announcing the coronation of the new king of House Bartlett. The photo of Leon was regal. He wore formal blue robes, the crown on his forehead gleaming gold, topped with heavy rubies. He was smiling, framed on either side by an unhappy-looking Sonja and a neutral Petrona.

Cade had written something in the margins of the article, more of the mage language I didn’t read.