What was the likelihood they’d willingly help him and Sydney get out of here if he rejected them? Probably not high. After all, if he flat out said no, whether they wanted to follow him or not, they could collectively turn on him and take the trash out.
He sighed. “Honestly, who here wants to come with us and establish a pack farther north near my family? Show of hands?” Maybe if he framed it that way, more would hesitate, and they’d get off this kick. Shira wasn’t even cold yet.
One by one hands raised until all were in the air, but the last few were more fear than truly wanting to go.
“Fine. Get what we need together and we’ll go at sunset. What do you have for transportation?”
“Motorcycles,” one of them said.
Noah quickly covered his reaction. He couldn’t even drive a car. Where would he have learned? He’d thought if they had cars, one of them could act as his and Sydney’s driver and no one had to know just how cut off from the whole world he’d been. They were going to figure out he was a fraud before they got out of the gate. And that would put Sydney at risk.
“O-only… sir… if we could just wait until after the moon begins to wane. We can’t all travel in human form under the full moon. M-most of us can’t. We need to wait until we have better control. And we’ll better be able to prepare for the journey.”
And they’d be much less likely to rip Noah and Sydney apart when they realized their new savior wasn’t so fit for leadership after all. They’d been far better off with Shira.
Noah looked around at the assembled, anxious wolves. “We’ll leave on the first night of the waning moon at sunset. Anyone who doesn’t want to be a part of my pack can stay behind. There will be no retaliation for anyone who chooses to stay.” He had two nights to figure out how to ride a motorcycle and even less time to mark Sydney. Two nights was plenty of time for them to all defect, anyway.
7
Sydney tensed as Noah guided her back to their room. Surely he knew she hadn’t just walked out of there under her own steam. And if there was any doubt, the shattered door was proof enough there had been a struggle.
One of the other wolves lurked out in the hallway. “Umm, sir? About that other room…”
Noah growled in response, but took Sydney and followed the wolf up a couple of flights of stairs to a large suite. The wolf quickly ducked out and Noah deadbolted the door and put a chair under it.
Sydney searched the suite, looking for a place she’d feel safe for the day. The other room had been better from her perspective with no way any sunlight could get in through solid wall and brick.
She settled on the bathroom. She could take the comforter and pillows off one of the beds and put it in the giant tub. The bathroom was enormous with no windows.
Noah stood back and watched as she made what could only be described as a nest for herself in the bathtub. He didn’t say anything. Was he angry?
“Noah, I-I’m sorry about all that out there.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What do you have to be sorry for?”
“Well, I mean… if I hadn’t hit that guy… I escalated things, but I just… I got so angry. I’ve never been that angry before, I’m not sure why…”
“It was my blood. You’ve never drank from a werewolf before, have you?”
She shook her head. “Therians don’t usually line up to volunteer as blood dolls for us, and it wasn’t as if I could do anything to change that.”
Although… when she’d hit the guy, her hand hadn’t even hurt. And she’d definitely done damage. There was no way she should have been able to do that. She looked up to find Noah still watching her closely.
“I don’t think you’re going to stay very weak for long,” Noah said. “Earlier, you healed fast, even old scars. Then you hit that wolf. And that’s just from feeding one time. Once I’ve marked you, and you’ve had even more… over time I think you’ll be strong like a normal vampire.”
A normal vampire.
Sydney could barely dare to dream that she had the smallest hope of being normal. She’d lived so long having to be under someone’s protective wing that the idea of ever being able to hold her own with anyone seemed as unlikely as unicorns.
“Sydney…”
“Yeah?” The way he looked at her, all wild intensity and purpose, made her glad she wasn’t going to be an entirely helpless damsel for long. It wasn’t that she feared him. He was Noah. But still.
“I need to mark you.”
“You said…”
She’d thought as long as she didn’t escalate things to sex between them, a feat in and of itself for her when it came to feeding, that there would be time to get used to the idea. Not that she didn’t want to be with him. It was just that… when she’d run away from home, she hadn’t realized she was running straight into the arms of her future werewolf mate. Even if it sounded like a good idea, a lot had happened in a short time, and she still worried he might be wrong. Surely being locked up like that for so long had skewed his sense of… well, everything. They hadn’t talked about it, but she could see how he reacted around others. Slight shifts in body language that nobody else paid attention to because they had other worries to deal with than decoding the body language of the stranger among them.
But Sydney remembered Noah from when they were kids. He hadn’t been quiet like this. He hadn’t been closed off, wanting to be alone all the time. He’d been the center of attention, charismatic, gregarious. That place had changed him. She still wanted him, but what if some day he realized that he didn’t want her? That she’d only been a bit of comfort for when nothing else around him had smelled like home.
If he later discovered someone else was his true mate… she’d claw the bitch’s eyes out. Whoa. Yeah, werewolf blood. Damn. How did Noah control this? It was as if she now had her own wolf that had grafted onto her. A little angry furry Sydney to contend with. All the impotent rage that had built within her over years of powerlessness. The anger she’d had to tamp down because she wasn’t strong enough to back it up with an arsenal of bad ass. Someone else always had to fight her battles.
Now that she thought about it… she wasn’t sorry at all for hitting that guy. He’d had it coming. She only regretted that it had set up a situation it didn’t seem Noah wanted. Without meaning to, she’d handed him a huge level of responsibility, and maybe he just wanted to go back home and live with his pack and try to find some way to recover from twenty years in that terrible glass cube.
She wouldn’t have made it twenty days without losing her mind. Noah was strong in more ways than he realized.
“Sydney?”
“Yeah?” She’d kind of just spaced out there and wondered how long she’d been having an internal monologue, grateful wolves couldn’t read minds like vampires could. Or most vampires, anyway.
“Look, I know what I said, but if I had marked you when we first got here you might have been safer. And with the pack now, if I don’t mark you, you definitely won’t be safe from the women. They’ll all fight to be alpha bitch.”