Authors: Lexi Lewis
Either the beeping of the microwave or the smell of warm noodles and chicken was enough to wake her, and when Karic came back into the living room, carrying two bowls of General Tso's over chow mein, he was surprised to see amber eyes trained on him.
“Oh,” he said, and then rolled his eyes at how very stupid that sounded. “I mean, hi. It's good to see you're awake. Do you remember me?”
She hesitated and then nodded. “This is your house?”
“Yeah. I didn't know where you were going, and since you passed out and I wasn't about to leave you on the side of the road to be found by some crazy stranger, it seemed like the best thing to just bring you here.”
“Thank you,” she said softly, wincing as she went to sit up. “Fuck, what an awful night.”
“Coulda been worse,” Karic pointed out. “You could have drowned.”
She shot him a pointed look. “I feel like I did.”
His cheeks colored as he realized that she was still soaking wet and he hadn't offered to do anything about that yet. “Right. God, I'm sorry. It's late, and I was at work forever, so my brain isn't…right. Um…” What was the
matter
with him? He dealt with people all day and didn't get flustered like this, but he was just going to chalk it up to exhaustion. Not to say that she wasn't pretty because she was. Her dark hair was curling around her face where it had escaped from the bun, and in the light of the living room, Karic could see that she had creamy skin and a smattering of freckles that went across her nose and cheeks. She looked so young, and the compulsion to ask her what she was running from was strong. Instead he got himself together and focused on the matter at hand. “I'll show you to the bathroom. You can have a shower and get the river water off, and I'll set some of my things out for you to wear.”
“They…might not fit,” she offered, wrinkling her nose.
Karic grinned. “No, I've got just the thing. C'mon.” He set the food down on the coffee table and watched as she got up from the couch, making a face when she stumbled, favoring her right leg. “Your ankle?”
“Yeah, I really think I messed it up when I slipped into the river.”
“Well, let's work on getting you dry, and then I'll take a look at it, okay? For now…” He went over and offered her his arm, bracing her as they made their way up the stairs. “I'm Karic, by the way. I don't know if you remember me mentioning that.”
She nodded. “I do. I'm…Camilla. I…thank you. For not just leaving me there on the side of the road. And for being so nice to some girl you don't know.”
Karic shrugged. “It's no problem, really. Apparently I've got a white-knight complex, and I can't say no to a damsel in distress. Or anything in distress, really.”
“That's not a bad quality to have,” Camilla pointed out.
“Yeah, well. It's gotten me into trouble sometimes.” He flipped the light on in the bathroom and stepped back from her. “Can you manage from here, do you think?”
Camilla nodded, looking around. “I think so. If you hear something crash, then it's me, falling over.”
“I'll be sure to come save you before you drown in the shower,” Karic said with an easy smile. “You go ahead and get in. I'll leave some clothes outside the door. Feel free to use anything you find in there, too. There'll be some food waiting when you get out.” From the way Camilla's stomach growled at that, she approved.
“Thank you. Really,” she said again, meeting his eyes.
“You're welcome. Really. Just holler if you need something.” And he went into his room, leaving her to it while he hunted down clothes for her.
It was getting hard to breathe, and Camilla cursed herself for not planning this better. The night was pitch black, the inky darkness seeming to close in around her. The heavy clouds in the sky obscured any light from the moon or stars that might have lit her path as she ran, so she had to trust her balance and her memory in order to keep moving. She knew these woods well enough, having spent her whole life that she could remember in this area, but the darkness twisted trees and roots into things that seemed to lurk, waiting to trip her up and send her sprawling. It was at least six miles from the large manor like house the pride lived in to the main road, and she had no way of knowing how many of those miles she had already gone.
If she had been smart, she would have stopped to at least get her keys before bolting from the house in the dead of night. She could have driven this distance in a matter of minutes, avoided the woods all together, and been in another state by morning. But she hadn't wanted to risk the sound of her ancient car starting alerting anyone to the fact that she was sneaking out because things would have been so much worse than they already were if they found out that she had plans to leave. It was safer to travel the woods anyway. Anyone could have seen her on the road, but very few actually made their way through the woods at night, especially when the air was heavy with the smell of an approaching rainstorm. So this was the best plan.
It had taken months for her to save up enough money to be able to escape since the leader of the pride didn't allow her to work more than a couple of hours a day. He got antsy when she was too far from him and even made her call in sick a few times a month just because he didn't want her to leave. Honestly it was a wonder she'd kept the job for as long as she had.
All of that was going to be a thing of the past now, though. She would get away. She would go somewhere where people weren't as aware of shifters as they were here, somewhere where she could hide what she was, blend into the background and not be used like a tool anymore. Camilla didn't really know how she was going to make that happen, but there had to be a way.
All she knew was that once she reached the river, she would be safe.
The Abrams River divided the smaller, outlying part of the city from the main part where she could buy a train ticket or a bus ticket and get further away. Once she was across the bridge, she could make her way to the nearest station, but it seemed like that was going to be easier said than done. Overhead, thunder rolled and a fork of lightning flashed, illuminating the area around her for one breath catching moment that made her heart race. She knew that there was no way that any of the members of her pride were lurking nearby; none of them would risk getting caught out in this, and it was late enough that they were all heading to sleep anyway, but in the dark, she couldn't be sure that she was safe.
“Hate the dark.
Really
hate the dark,” she huffed, panting as she kept running. It would have been so much easier to do this if she could just shift, spilt her skin and let the lioness out to run wild through these woods, but she was carrying a bag with all the things she couldn't bear to leave behind in it, and that would mean taking her clothes off, which would only be a hindrance in this case. Although, when the sky opened up and it started to rain on her, she was seriously considering it all the same. And didn't it just figure that it would start raining now? She had the worst fucking luck.
The night seemed to get darker as she moved through the trees, and she had to slow down, both because her heart was pounding dangerously fast in her chest and because the ground was getting wet and muddy, leaves growing slick underfoot and wet earth threatening to suck her shoes from her feet. She would have expected the trees to delay the rain soaking things so fast, but apparently there were enough gaps that the water found its way through. The last thing she needed was to slip and hurt herself, end up with a twisted ankle or something that would just slow her down or get her caught, so she had to be careful as she picked her way over roots and past branches that scratched at her cheeks as she continued on. She was getting soaked as she moved, and Camilla knew she was going to be a muddy mess when she finally made it to town. It would be abundantly clear that she was running from something, and she could only hope that if someone found her, they would be kind enough to let her keep moving.
Just keep going,
she urged herself silently.
You can do this. You have to do this.
Shifter or not, Camilla was not built for this kind of thing with her short, chubby legs and full figure. She managed to run faster and get tired less easily when she shifted, but exercise didn't come naturally to her in her human form. But the thought of being caught and dragged back to Paul made her keep going as fast as she dared.
Paul.
He was the leader of their makeshift pride, put together from other lion shifters who had made their way into the town, some of them cast off from other prides for various offenses, and given their allegiance to Paul. He was in his early forties, tall, handsome, perpetually charming. Paul had a way of making sure that you were going to be loyal to him, subtly manipulating you until you did what he wanted and sometimes even thought it was what
you
wanted all along. And of course, he’d had
her
.
Camilla had been a member of the pride for as long as she could remember, and no one had ever told her how she had come to be there. She was twenty-one now, and all she knew was the pride. All she knew was standing next to the throne-like chair that Paul had set up for himself in the room that served as the pride's meeting place when they needed to have discussions or when someone new wanted to join the pride.
It was her hands. There was something about them that made her unique, made her able to see things that people wouldn't want her to see. And she had been trained to whisper those things into Paul's ear so that he could use them to his advantage.
Camilla was sick of it. People had gotten hurt because of what she could do. People had been killed for thinking disloyal thoughts about Paul. They had been silenced before they could tell whatever secrets they knew, and it was all her fault. Sometimes she woke in the middle of the night, a scream trying to fight its way free of her from the images of the people she had wronged that flickered behind her eyes.
“Never again,” she huffed as she ran. “No. Fucking.
More
.”
She could see light ahead of her, the trees growing sparser on either side as she followed a makeshift path, feet slipping slightly. Camilla had never been this deep into the woods before, so she could only hope that she was heading in the right direction. The lights she was seeing could have been streetlights or the lights on the bridge, and a heady anxiety filled her at the thought that her freedom could be so close.
She'd never been across the river. Sometimes members of the pride went out to get things since most of the stores were on that side, but they never took her. They never let her go anywhere other than to school when she was younger and to work now. And even then there was always someone nearby watching, making sure she didn't get any ideas about her own freedom.
A branch or something snapped to her left, and it broke her concentration, making her snap her head to the side, heart racing. Nothing moved except the trees, branches pushed this way and that by the wind that was starting to pick up. Shadows moved in the distance, and Camilla forced herself not to stand there staring. If she had to, she would just shift. It would be awkward as all hell when she had to shift back later and didn't have her clothes or anything, but she would rather deal with that than be dragged back to the house.
No, she had to keep moving.
Unfortunately for her, not knowing this terrain well was more than just a minor hindrance, and the rain didn't help. The bridge was wide, made to be traversable by car or on foot, but she was coming at it from the wrong angle. As the trees thinned out more, she could see that she was meant to have veered left more. There was no way to reach the bridge from where she was standing, and the ground seemed to arch downwards at an angle that led straight to the river.
The Abrams wasn’t particularly dirty or deep, but she didn't really want to end up pitching headfirst into it either way. Her clothing was already soaked to her skin, and with each rumble of thunder overhead, the rain only seemed to come down harder. A flash of lightning blinded her momentarily, and she moved her foot to step back, to turn around so she could head in the other direction and make it to the bridge, but the ground was too slippery and before she even had time to brace herself she found herself losing her footing.
Camilla couldn't help the scream that burst from her as she fell, slipping and sliding down the muddy slope, headed straight for the water. It was all she could do to hold onto her bag because she knew she was going in, and the last thing she wanted was to lose her belongings when she did. She was already winded and terrified, fear pulsing cold through her body as the water loomed closer.
Please don't let me drown. Please. I just want to be free. Please!
She didn't know who she was pleading with, since religion had never been her thing, but it seemed like the thing to do, and she kept it going in her head as the mud and leaves expedited her plunge into the river.
It was summer time, but the water still felt cold as she crashed into it, shock lacing through her system for a moment. Camilla was frozen as she sank a little, weighed down by her clothes and her bag, and it took her a good few seconds to get her head back on and start kicking for the surface. Her lungs were burning, and she sucked in greedy gasps of air when her head broke the surface, grateful that her hair was pulled back in a bun instead of plastered to her face and keeping her from being able to see. She was a little ways away from the other side of the river, and that side ran right along the road. All Camilla would have to do was swim over and haul herself out, avoiding getting hit by any cars in the process.
She was grateful for the streetlights that illuminated the way, otherwise she would have been splashing around in the pitch darkness. A bolt of lightning overhead made her get her butt in gear, and she started paddling her way towards the other side, keeping her head above water as best she could and trying to avoid getting splashed in the face when the wind and rain made the river more turbulent than it would have been ordinarily.
Her arms felt like lead weights, and her legs were so tired. She had no idea how long she had been on the move, but all she wanted was a break. “Just a little farther,” Camilla chanted to herself, teeth chattering in the wind and body trembling with exhaustion. “Just a little farther. C'mon. C'mon.”