Page 37 of Savage Surrender

I take it.

My hand closes around the thin blade. Nobody in this room is looking at the doll anymore. They’re all looking at the doors.

We break out into cold air, damp grass, and darkness. The temperature drop should feel good. It doesn’t touch the heat moving under my skin. Police begin to arrive, blue and red light breaking across the glass, the lawn, and tuxedos disappearing into the trees.

Whitney’s mansion is at the bottom of the slope, its white columns pale against the black tree line. We run for it.

I make it twenty steps before my heels turn traitor. The left one punches into soft ground and stops dead. My ankle nearly goes with it. I stagger and bend to tear the stupid thing off -

Freddie scoops me up, and then I’m over his shoulder with the grass wheeling underneath me and his forearm locked across the backs of my thighs.

Golden honey and cedar fill my lungs.

“Freddie!”

“You can yell at me the whole way down, Bianca.” He’s already running, the words bouncing with his stride. “We need to get you the fuck out of here.”

Can’t really argue with him there, so I shut up.

Upside down and jostling, facts knock loose and collide. Whitney is alive. That slippery bitch. Montgomery was shot. I have sisters. Someone tried to kill me. A lot of people just watched me commit a crime. A heinous one. My heat is coming, sooner than later. Definitely not three weeks.

No single thought stays for long.

The mansion welcomes us back. Guards haul the front doors open, and we spill into the entry as they sweep the rooms before leaving us alone. The doors boom shut at our backs.

Freddie puts me on my feet and drops to strip off my remaining heel.

Everyone moves.

We’re tucked away safely as far as they’re concerned, but I could almost kiss Whitney for the distraction.

10

BIANCA

By the time Weller leaves to check the back of the house, I am crouched beside Whitney’s bed, wrenching a knot tight. The linen saws across my palm. Working end through the loop, around the standing line, back down. Pull. The loose thread caught under my thumbnail can stay there until we’re in the woods.

Pregnant comes back in Montgomery’s voice, thrown across a ballroom full of people who stared at my stomach. I pull harder. The bitter chemical film from his champagne still coats the back of my tongue, and swallowing only drags it lower.

Over, under, around. Knot.

Anna used to stand behind me at the refuge and undo every bowline I got wrong without saying a word. When one held, her hand slapped my shoulder once.

This one holds.

Tristan stays in the sliver of wall beside the open window, his face angled toward the feed from the lawn camera. Burnt amber reaches me when he shifts, and I have the urge to bite him.

“Camera’s turning toward the drive,” he says.

I shove the bundled sheets over the sill. They unwind down the brick toward the wet lawn while I catch the metal at Tristan’s throat between two fingers. The steel stays cold against my fingertips, locked and silent.

“We need these off.”

“The moment we have distance.” His eyes flick to my hand at his throat. “Hopefully before you decide mine is another leash to pull.”

“You’d love for me to pull your leash.”

“Maybe.”