For a moment, the two men were simply staring at one another.
Then, between one blink and the next, Lucien grabbed Chase’s head and hurled him into the floor so hard, a crack appeared in the lamination.
I gasped as Lucien flattened the rest of Chase’s body to the floor with his own strong muscles, restraining Chase as he tried to thrash against his hold, while smashing Chase’s head against the floor over and over again until his body turned limp and blood pooled under his head.
Staring at the blood, I could barely get my thoughts together as Lucien jumped to his feet and started taking Chase’s clothes off. “Pack a bag, Drew,” he said, voice terse with hurry. “We need to leave. Now.”
My brain did not compute his words. “Why?” I asked, lips dry, as I saw him dressing up in Chase’s clothes. His build was similar, though Lucien was taller, so he stretched Chase’s dark tee and jeans a little.
Lucien pulled Chase’s sneakers off and put them on. “I think it’s pretty self-explanatory,” he said hastily, “considering he wants to wipeyour memories of not just me, but probably anything you have to do with the supernatural.”
My heartbeat picked up again, and I moved just then, grabbing my notebooks and bandages for emergencies, packing my laptop, and every charger I needed, in a duffel bag.
The moment I told Lucien “I’m done,” he grabbed me by the waist and pulled me over his shoulder like a fireman before I could protest.
I gasped, wincing in pain as his shoulder dug into my stomach, while I saw the back of his shirt growing soaked with his own blood from the still-raw wound. “Lucien, you’re bleeding! Put me down—”
“No time” was the only thing he said before we fled my apartment.
Chapter 8
Off to an Adventure
Lucien ran like the fucking wind.
With me draped over his shoulder as though I weighed nothing, and him bleeding through the shirt so much that the fabric was quickly soaked, Lucien passed through the streets of North Hollywood as though his life depended on it.
And, considering the way he’d knocked Chase unconscious, his life did seem to depend on it.
While he ran without taking a break, it took everything in me to simply breathe, what with his shoulder digging into my stomach. But I didn’t dare complain, so I bit my lip hard to stifle any grunt of pain I might’ve uttered. Lucien needed to get us to safety.
After what felt like hours later, Lucien finally came to a stop somewhere in Glendale, which was a city in the LA area southeast of North Hollywood. I only knew it was Glendale because I could see the Museum of Neon Art from the playground he’d stopped at.
He gently slid me down to the ground, his hands on my hips until I was steady on my feet. I ignored the way his touch made me tense and instead looked up at his face. He was wearing a grim expression as he stared back.
“I have questions,” I told him matter-of-factly.
“I imagined you would,” he drawled back.
“But before then, I need to bandage your wound again,” I said, motioning for him to sit down on the nearby bench.
Lucien’s lips quirked as he followed my silent order and sat down, back to me. I settled next to him and pushed up his shirt, revealing the injury that refused to heal.
After I’d unwrapped the wound and cleaned the excesses of dead tissues and dry blood, I took out the bandages I’d packed in my duffel bag. Then, as gently as I could, I wrapped the bandage roll around his torso before tying it together so it would hold.
“Done,” I said, moving back.
Lucien turned to face me, his beautiful eyes almost luminous in the night. “Why do you take so much interest in the supernatural?” he asked suddenly, repeating his question from before.
I wanted to look away and avoid the question. But after everything that happened with Chase—his threat to wipe my memories of the supernatural and the fact he was an agent for some supernatural organization assigned to keep an eye on me, if I understood everything correctly—I knew I had to tell him. “Eight years ago,” I said softly, staring down at my hands, “I witnessed an event involving the supernatural. That event changed my life.”
This much was true. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him that the result of that event was my two sisters being killed.
When Lucien didn’t speak, I raised my gaze to meet his. He studied me with a contemplative look on his face. Flushing, I couldn’t stand his silence any longer and said, “Now it’s your turn to explain.”
He nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “As you probably guessed, my kind—not just werewolves, but other races as well—live in secret and in hiding from the human world.”
I jerked my head in affirmation.