I was lying on the hood of the car, face turned so that I could watch the way the horizon burst with colors as the sun made its slow ponderous climb into the sky. The world was all yellow and pinks, oranges with streaks of midnight blue. I watched the sun until my vision went white beneath its brilliance, and then I closed my eyes and admitted a truth I had known for hours already.
He wasn’t coming back.
I’d kept track of him most of the night through our link. But it was different understanding the information I was receiving when he was in wolf form. The visions, the emotions that I knew came from Gabriel were all jumbled and strange. I felt a spike of some sort around four in the morning, and then everything went muted. It was like he’d shut down things on his end so that all I felt were spurts of him.
It was enough to tell me he lived, but that was it.
“I should probably leave,” I thought. Gabriel had been captured along with the other members of the pack. I should do what he said and get Asrai. Ask for sanctuary from the other Alphas.
Or better yet, we should just leave town.
Run away while we still could and let the wolves deal with their own enemies. What could we do anyway?
Correction: What could I do?
Asrai was some sort of mega-Sidhe. A mini Queen. If I left her with the Alphas they’d have their savior. The Lightbringer who would one day defeat the Hunt.
Arai the Lightbringer.
Gabriel Evans the Werewolf.
I was just Phaedra Conners.
Human.
Powerless.
I wouldn’t be able to save anyone. Not against what they would be facing.
“I should leave.”
Only this time, I was thinking Briarcliff and not just the immediate area.
But one obstacle at a time.
Getting to my feet, I got into the car, cranked it, and drove away.