Page 49 of Rest In Knotty Pieces

It’s tempting, but again, I shake my head.

“All right, what about a camping trip? Bonnie Sanderson leads people through the mountains. We’d be outside, in the sun, moving through the world, no people.”

I stare at him, thinking it over. I could run, if I had to.

In the end, I shake my head.

“Oh, okay,” he says, disappointed. “So, you want to stay here, then?”

I watch his face, studying the uncertainty written there. I wait until he’s looking at me, then I nod my head.

“Staying here is what is going to make you happy?”

I nod without hesitation.

Sage smiles. It’s a smile that does something to me. I made this alpha happy, I made that smile. My fingers tangle with his of their own volition.

I sit stiffly for a long time, but gradually relax and eventually let my head rest on his shoulder. He doesn’t talk.

Neither do I.

We just exist.

Roseland

They look exactly like what they claim to be, but I don’t believe it for a second. The guy adjusts his pack and whines to the female. They are both alphas, but they are wearing suppressant patches and pretending to be betas. It’s not an unheard-of thing; it’s just another part of the puzzle that doesn’t work.

“I just don’t know how we missed the road. You know what the wilderness needs?”

“What?” the female says with barely concealed impatience.

“Signs.”

She groans. “Adams, can you just shut up for five minutes? You are giving me a headache.”

They are supposed to be a newlywed couple, so why is she calling him Adams?

“Well, I mean, if there were signs, we wouldn’t have gotten lost. We would be sitting in our tent, naked, in a post-coital glow.”

“You glow. I get a kind of weak shimmer,” the female says. She scans the forest in a very paranoid manner.

“Sipping wine coolers and eating bougie cheese on fancy cardboard biscuits.”

“Now, that would get a glow.”

They continue with such inane conversation right out of the area. I linger, watching them.

“What do you think? Shall we kill them?”

I whirl, shoving Daega up against a tree.

“We don’t kill people,” I snarl, scanning the area to make sure he’s alone.

“You don’t.”

I lick my lips, trying not to be charmed and amused by this omega who has worked his way under my skin.

“Let’s wait and see.”