Page 10 of X-Clan The Origin

We’re on the ground, I realized.He… he landed the plane. He actually landed the plane!

His purr morphed into another growl as he fought with the controls to come to a stop, the severe grating sound unlike anything I’d ever heard.

And then we paused, everything falling still.

An exhale whooshed from my lungs, my mind fighting to catch up to everything that had just happened.

Jonas was still strapped into the pilot’s chair—I had no idea when he’d buckled himself in, but he was secure and facing forward.

The pilot was dead.

And we—I peered out the windows—seemed to be at an old airport. Or at least on a very long runway with posts that reminded me of those lights that used to flicker at night to designate the landing strip. Only it was early morning with the sun still rising, illuminating everything in its path.

Including a long building that resembled an airport with its gates and ramps.

Behind it appeared to be trees, but I could smell the Infected. Their rotting flesh left a stench in the air that my wolf immediately noticed, causing my mouth to go dry.

Where are we?

It wasn’t Atlanta. And we’d only been in the air for maybe twenty minutes at the most.

Were we in Asheville?

Charlotte?

Somewhere in South Carolina?

Jonas moved from the front of the cabin, his icy gaze immediately finding mine as he evaluated me. He’d lost his leather jacket at some point, leaving him in a white shirt and jeans. Given it was probably a hundred degrees outside, that seemed more appropriate.

But he wasn’t sweating.

He was just bulging with adrenaline, his Alpha wolf pulsing close to his skin. He didn’t speak, just studied my throat, my chest, my waist, and then my face, and nodded. “We need to move,” he said, pulling off his shirt.

My eyebrows lifted. “What are you doing?”

“Shifting,” he replied, all traces of his purr gone.

I must have been imagining it.

Jonas’s hand went to his belt, his muscles rippling. “You need to shift, Riley.”

I blinked at him. “What?”

“We need torun,” he explained. “In wolf form. Straight into the woods. We’ll make it to the base on foot.”

My lips parted. “What?”

I wasn’t an idiot. I’d heard him just fine.

But shifting? Now? While on the verge of going into heat? Not only did that mean leaving my suppressants here—I couldn’t carry my bag while in wolf form—but it also meant metabolizing what little serum I had left in my body. “No. I can’t shift.”

He paused, the top button of his pants undone. “Excuse me?”

“There has to be another way. We have our bags. I can’t… We can’t… There has to be another way.”

Jonas stared at me for a beat. “Get up.”

“Jonas.”