Ascension - Book Eight - Man x Man

Chapter 20 ( M)

The heavy-sided SUV rumbles down the road with a low hum, the oversized tires built for off-roading chewed at the pavement in grumbling protest for the manicured conditions. Creating a jarring effect, I try not to flinch at every jolt and jerk the vehicle managed. These weren't built for comfort, the retired war vehicles rattle like the box of tin they resembled. I felt overcharged, I'd come within a hair of losing my life and Tiberius had so simply plucked me out of disaster as if it were a simple task.

Leaning my head against the glass, I could only vaguely recall the details of our escape for it all seemed like a blur to me now. Without Tiberius's siren song, there was little chance of making it through the guards. The fact was, if he had not come along I might have succumbed to the assault of the elemental or worse, the regulator army that had formed from the humans still resisting the joining of sides. 

I shut my eyes with a sigh, thankful to be in the back seat with a moment of peace. My body feels on edge as if any moment the car might explode and send us careening into a whole new direction, back into the warfare we so casually fled from. I replay the scene over and over, trying to block out the discomfort of my reality. Shellshocked, overwhelmed by the past few days, I couldn't help but wish I, too, could be affected by the Siren song. 

To be numb for a few hours would be a blessing to my spinning head. 

A former self might have found humor in this newfound disturbance, to be unseated by something so minor yet it had touched me to my core. I'd been so desperate to get out of that house but once freed into the world, I had succumbed to mortal weaknesses. How much longer could I have survived on my own? My body was still in good health, despite the gunshot, this lycan body needed much less frequent meals, I'd have to starve before it began to lose its condition. 

Yet I could not wield it.

I had killed, mauled, and decimated in only a short week. "Do you need a medic?" Tiberius asks, watching me in the rearview mirror. My eyes look abnormally dark as I catch the sunburned expression staring back at me. 

My hands tremble, folding my arms, I shut my eyes to avoid the dark ones leering at me. The wolf was displeased with my cowardice, I couldn't face it right now. "No. I just want to go home." 

"Lotta wants me to bring you in for questioning-" He hedges, wetting his lips with a chuckle. Tiberius flourished in the torment of others, while I sometimes considered us friends, I could only imagine that he was helping me because he liked the drama that it caused. Besides the fact that my new, lustful body quenched his thirst for immorality. "But I think you know how certain members would feel about being left out of your retrieval."

Much as I was looming in darkness, I was grateful. It was a good thing Tiberius had found me, for anyone else would have known better than to disobey Lotta. "It was Helen, Kestrel, and Echo," I tell him with no remorse. I hoped they all burned. "They kidnapped me, threatened to turn the heroes against Verando if I alerted anyone. When I shifted, I escaped."

I was not foolish enough to believe that Lotta knew anything about my three treasonous captors but then, my story needed to be straight before I came to her with the details. Testing it on Tiberius before Verando seemed like a safer bet. The truth felt painfully false when faced with big names that had been crucial in our rebuild. I wouldn't like to believe it myself I hadn't been the victim. 

Pulling his lips into a thin line, Tiberius nods one time, I can hear the strain of the leather as his hand tightens on the steering wheel. "We had suspected when you locked your phone that something was wrong."

I knew he had, from the questions he asked in our short conversation, he knew me better than I knew myself. "Does he hate me?" I whisper, it was the only thing I could focus on in my circling consciousness.