The Lycan's Runaway Bride

#Chapter 2 -Question

Ruby

The handsome man slides in across from me and clicks the door shut. The car is luxurious, with two rows of leather seats facing each other in the back and a soft LED light setting the back aglow in a deep red that makes the handsome man’s black hair look even more fierce against his tanned skin.

I warily glance at the driver, who makes brief eye contact with me with bright blue eyes before looking away to stare out at the dark, winding road ahead.

“What are you doing out here all alone?” the handsome man suddenly asks. He has a deep, smooth voice that resonates like music in my ears. I can’t see his eyes through his dark sunglasses, although I know he’s looking at me.

“I’m… I’m…” I stutter, trying to come up with the right words.

“Running?” he asks, almost amusedly.

I bite my lip and look down at my lap, fiddling with the lace in my skirt, then nod apprehensively. My face flushes hot.

The man sighs softly to himself, then leans forward a little.

“Where are you running to, at this time of night, in the middle of the woods?”

I avoid his gaze, feeling myself begin to tremble ever so slightly with fear. If he is one of the Lycan King’s men, I will surely be whisked back to the castle and put under the watch of more guards. When they find out about Tamara, they’ll certainly kill her -- just to teach me a lesson.

“I… My grandmother,” I say on the fly, “she’s terribly ill. I’ve just received word. I need to go to her now, because there’s no one else to take care of her.”

I can feel the man’s expression harden. I slowly look up to see his jaw clenching and his fists curling up ever so slightly, and for a moment I am afraid. But then he relaxes again, and I can almost see a soft smile on his full, dark lips.

“You’re going to visit your grandmother in a wedding dress?” he asks. I nod hastily.

“Her dying wish was to see me in a wedding dress,” I answer. I’m proud of my quick reactions to the handsome man’s questions, but of course, he has more.

“Was her dying wish to see you in a tattered wedding dress?” he asked, sounding somewhat baffled.

I struggle to come up with an answer. “W-Well,” I stammer, “no. I… I don’t have a car of my own, and… and while I was walking through the woods, a wild dog jumped out and attacked me. Completely ruined my dress. That’s why I was running: because of the dog.”

The handsome man rolls down the window and peers out into the forest, inhaling deeply.

“I don’t see or smell any dogs.”

He rolls the window up again and turns back to stare at me. I nervously look back down at my lap, but not before taking a quick glance at the lock on the door.

Surprisingly, it’s unlocked.

Still, I know that I wouldn’t be able to outrun this man. His legs are long, and his body is strong. He would catch me instantly, and I think he knows that, too. It’s not that he’s left the door unlocked to make me feel safe; he’s left it unlocked because I couldn’t run if I tried.

“Very well,” he says, much to my surprise. “Tell us where your grandmother lives, and we will take you there.” There is a small hint of amusement in the man’s voice, but I swallow my fear and tell him where to take me.

Once I give my directions, the handsome man simply nods to his driver, who puts the car in drive and begins to head toward the location of an abandoned house outside my pack, where my grandmother is in fact not residing because she actually died years ago in a completely different house.

I let out a small sigh of relief and sink down a bit into my seat, letting my body rest for now.

My plans are to enter the abandoned home as though I am visiting my grandmother, where I will hastily create a scene to make it look as though I have been attacked. Then, I will take the clothes and supplies that I have stashed under the floorboards, change into more appropriate clothing for the journey and escape through a secret tunnel that resides behind the house.

I will meet Tamara in the tunnels, and we’ll be able to escape together.

By this time tomorrow, we will be on a train headed far away from the Lycan Kingdom. I’m not sure exactly where we will go -- I hadn’t had time to perfect my plans before the Lycan King’s men took me away from my home -- but I know that we’ll figure something out. We always have, since our parents died when we were young.

The handsome man clears his throat, causing me to jump out of my deep thoughts.

“So,” he says, “how old are you, anyway?”

“Eighteen,” I reply.

The man looks a little surprised.

“Well, almost eighteen,” I say quickly, to which he nods in response, looking thoughtful. I don’t want him to know that my wolf hasn’t appeared; hybrids with no wolf are the most hunted by the Lycans out of all of the other hybrids.

Just then, the car comes to an abrupt halt as a deer jumps out into the road.

I’m not wearing a seatbelt, and my small body lurches off of my seat with the sudden stop and directly into the handsome man’s arms.

His scent is strangely comforting, and causes something to stir in me, although I’m not quite sure what it is. The air in the car feels a little hot now as he protectively wraps his arms around me, and I just want to lay in his arms forever, taking in his scent. The car begins moving again, but I stay in his arms for a few moments longer.

When I look up, he is practically frozen in place, looking away from me and out the window with his jaw clenched so tight that I can see the muscles straining.

I look down at myself to see that a good portion of my milky white breasts have slipped out of my bodice. I hastily sit up and cover myself nervously as I try to stuff them back into the slightly-too-small cups of my dress.

When the dressmaker fitted me for my wedding gown, she had commented on how busty I am and had made a point to make sure that the gown showed off my assets. Despite the fact that I was being forced into a marriage I didn’t want, the gown was beautiful and fit my body well.

Under different circumstances, I would have treasured this gown.

There is a long silence before the man speaks again in his deep, smooth voice. “I hear the Lycan King is looking for his missing bride,” he says.

My heart begins to race again and I involuntarily clench my skirt in my fists, biting my lip.

“I also hear that Lycan Atwood is an old, hateful, unknowable brute, and I wouldn’t blame his bride for running,” I say, surprised at my sudden courage. “He and his family have done horrible things to the tribes. In the short years of my life, I have seen innumerable deaths at the Lycan King’s hands. His greatest amusement is to make the wolves kill each other and then eat the flesh and blood of other wolves raw.”

The silence in the car is palpable.

I warily move my gaze up to the handsome man. As my eyes pass the rear view mirror, I can see the driver’s face. He looks like he’s holding back a laugh.

When I look at the handsome man, however, he looks grim, and is staring at me with a stony expression on his face.

“Well, here’s your stop,” the handsome man says glumly. “You can get out now.”