He was right. Of course he was right. I let out a frustrated roar, flopped back onto the bed, realized what I was doing, and hopped back up and began looking for any hairs that may have landed on the comforter.

“I should turn myself in,” I said, thinking aloud. “The Alpha Pack can’t do anything to me with the world watching. Their plan will backfire. I’ll get to go home to my family, and they can’t touch me without attracting unwanted attention.”

Liam’s voice was bland when he said, “They’ll kill you before you ever see your parents again. And not only you, but anyone they see as collateral damage. Police officers. FBI agents. It doesn’t matter. None of them stand a chance against well-trained Shifters.”

“Then what are the options? It’s not like I can blend into the masses.” He had to realize that. After all, he was the one who pointed out less than an hour ago how someone couldn’t forget my weird face.

“I’ve got a plan.”

“Care to clue me in?”

Liam looked around the room with a critical eye. “No.”

Chapter 4

I kept a steady stream of curses aimed at Liam going as I climbed out the tiny window whose width was exactly the same measurement as my hips. Just climb on the back of the toilet and hoist yourself through, I mimicked his voice in my head. Be sure you don’t make any noise or scratch yourself on that metal. Someone might notice the blood. Oh? What? You wanted me to be concerned about it hurting you? Sorry, no. I don’t care if you get cut by rusty metal, except the resulting infection might slow us down as we carefully execute this elaborate plan I have but won’t tell you because you’re so far below my notice I can’t be bothered.

If I didn’t rip out his throat with my bare human teeth it would put us even for him saving my life, right?

We drove on to Denver that day since there was the chance the police were keeping an eye on Liam. Or, I guess I should say Liam drove to Denver. I had to stay crouched down in the back seat the entire journey. My legs hurt from staying scrunched up and I was getting claustrophobic from sitting in the floorboard, but it was better than Liam’s idea, which had me riding in the trunk.

The motel in Denver was a bit better than the other one, but still somewhere my family would have never considered staying on our vacations. At least I got to walk in the front door instead of shimmying through a window or vent.

I should have known something was up when Liam left his bag in the car and then decided he needed to “run some errands”. In two weeks he hadn’t left me alone any longer than it took for me to go to the bathroom. After sitting in the Denver motel room for four hours, I finally accepted he wasn’t coming back.

“I don’t blame him,” I told the anchorman on the TV screen. Despite knowing it was a bad idea, I had been flipping between all the news stations since Liam left, watching the fictional account of my disappearance over and over again. My parents declined to comment, which Fox News found suspicious, and Charlie’s medical records weren’t being released to the media, which caused some ire from the good folks at CNN. I refused to watch MSNBC after I realized they were using the school picture from my sophomore year, which was possibly the least flattering photo of me ever taken. “He doesn’t owe me anything. Heck, I owe him more than I could possibly ever repay. At least he got me somewhere where I can make a decent run for it.”

And yet, I felt abandoned and kind of hopeless. Not exactly shiny new emotions in my world, but they sucked all the same, especially for Wolf Scout who trusted Wolf Liam so explicitly. But I wasn’t going to let it break me. I had already been through hell and back and was still in one piece. Sure, I might have thought about throwing myself on the proverbial sword for a few minutes earlier in the evening, but then one of the news stations showed a shot of my family walking into our house. My parents both hurried inside, heads down, as if not looking at the crews camped out in our front yard would make them disappear. Angel, on the other hand, stopped at the front door, turned around, and looked directly at the camera. And even though she didn’t say or do anything, I knew what she was thinking.

You promised.

It had been an attempt to soothe my little sister after I almost died when Jase accidentally ripped out my stomach last April, but it turned into something more. I wasn’t going to die, at least not easily. If for no other reason, it was my way to ensure Sarvarna and the rest of the Alpha Pack didn’t win. If she wanted me dead she was going to have to work for it. I wasn’t giving up.

Of course, that meant coming up with some sort of plan. I couldn’t exactly eke out the rest of my existence in a cheap motel room. For starters, I didn’t have any money, which left me with the same overwhelming problem that made Liam bolt: Disappearing into the crowd despite my freakish face, which every person in America knew.

I pulled myself off the super-uncomfortable motel bed and ambled over to the sink. The mirror hanging on the wall was one of those really old dull things with the actual shiny reflective stuff peeling off around the edges. It made me look like a ghost, which caused me to giggle. Scout Donovan, the girl who came back from the dead. Twice.

I don’t know how long I stood there, but eventually I stopped looking like myself. That’s not exactly right. I still looked like me - it’s not like my face suddenly morphed into the wolf’s or anything - but I became a collection of features instead of just Scout. And those features? They’re not so bad. It's not like I have a hook nose, crossed eyes, and bologna-like flesh. If it wasn’t for my hair, skin, and eyes being pretty much the exact same color, I could pass for any other normal teenage girl on the street.

All I had to do was change the coloring issue, right? Except, it’s not as easy as you would think. For one, I can’t just get a suntan and look different. My skin doesn’t understand that whole browning process. It pretty much operates on two settings: pale white and painful, blistered red. Eye color can be changed with contacts, but where was I going to find those? Maybe if I had an optometrist or Internet connection, but I was lacking both. Hair dye was also out of the question. I tried it once before, even had it professionally done. At first it looked great, but then I took a shower and most of the color washed down the drain despite being permanent. By the third day my hair was a really unpleasant grey color. My hairdresser refused to put anything else on it, and I was too chicken to try again.