Chapter 5: Soldotna

Talya's POV

By the third morning I owned one pair of jeans, and they were on the floor of a cabin with no signal.

"You need clothes," Axel said.

"I need you to stop saying I need things when you're looking at me like that."

He looked away, and his ears went red.

It was the only part of him that ever told me what he was thinking.

We drove to Soldotna in his truck, forty minutes of white road with the lake falling away behind us.

I sat close against his side.

The heater ran, and my heat ran, and every few miles I put my hand on his thigh.

Under my palm the muscle was solid and tense.

I felt him go harder under the denim, and he kept his eyes on the road and his jaw tight.

"Eyes front," I said.

"They are."

"Good."

I slid my hand an inch higher and left it there.

The Fred Meyer lot was packed with the last-minute Christmas crowd.

I had forgotten the heat would be different outside his walls.

The second I opened the truck door it hit me, all the smells of the lot at once.

Exhaust and wet wool and a hundred men.

Three of them turned their heads.

They were strangers, not wolves, but the Dark Heat was on me, and I felt it in the way their eyes stuck.

Axel came around the truck and stood behind my shoulder.

He did not say a word.

The three men found something else to look at.

Outside the store a man had two heelers tied to the bike rack.

The dogs were barking at the cars.

When Axel walked past, both of them dropped flat to the concrete with their bellies down and their noses on their paws.

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