No Escape

Chapter Seventeen

It was quiet for a few minutes as Lily got lost in her thoughts. She had to admit, she felt relieved that Jackson had apologized. He seemed genuine, but Lily couldn't be sure. She would let him prove it though. She did like Jackson, and it was draining to avoid him and continually force herself to be mad at him. He deserved her anger at the time but forcing herself to remain in that state whenever he was around was exhausting. She really just wanted things to go back to normal, like how they had been at school. Everything seemed better then, if personally they weren't. Lily wrote, 'can I ask you something?' To which Jackson nodded, and she contemplated her options.

Was making her thoughts known really the best idea? Lily pushed her concern aside and decided to just be out with it, 'can things go back to how they were before? Like they were at school. I miss when it was like that. It seemed simple, easy.'

A small, sad smile crossed Jackson's face. He missed it too, it seemed like it was so long ago to him and it was. But it was almost as if it was a lifetime ago, even though it hadn't even been a year. He felt disappointed in himself that things had gone the way they had. It reminded him things hadn't been right for his mate even before Nikolas had come into the picture. That there was something else he had been meaning to get to the bottom of. "Yeah. Yeah, it can go back to normal."

Jackson watched as Lily sighed and relaxed back into the couch. He copied her actions and they sat in silence. It seemed like hours had passed that they just sat there in each other's company.

Suddenly Jackson got a mindlink, Alpha, there are rogues inside the border. He wondered why they had been informing him of the fact. The border patrol knew how to take care of these situations. He glanced at the clock on the wall and noticed that it was the normal time for a shift change. It was suspicious, but the rogues have been lurking just past the border for weeks now. He didn't bother responding until Dylan mindlinked him, they're talking about Lily.

Immediately, Jackson shot up from his place on the couch and turned toward his mate, "I have to go. You should go back to your room."

"What? Why?"

"Please, I'll be back soon," Lily nodded as Jackson took off quickly.

She made her way to the room she was staying in next door. She didn't know why she was so willing to listen to what Jackson had told her to do, but he sounded worried, stressed. It must have been important for him to take off so quickly without an explanation. As she was opening the door, Lily heard rustling from downstairs. It stopped her in her tracks. Forgetting what Jackson had told her, she made her way down thinking it might have been him or even Adrienne. When she was halfway down, she heard glass breaking. Lily picked up her pace, ready to help in case someone had fallen or hurt themselves.

What she hadn't been expecting was a huge beast standing in front of her at the bottom of the staircase. It looked like a wolf, but it was much too big to be so. Its eyes were pitch black and its golden-brown fur was matted and muddy. Lily began to freak out and panic. She couldn't control her breathing and her vision started to blur. She knew if she wasn't careful, she would pass out and she definitely did not want that. The wolf-like thing perched as if it was ready to attack and growled angrily. The last Lily remembered before passing out was the sound of screaming.

When she woke up, Lily was in a bland room. It took a few minutes for her eyes to adjust. The place she was in looked familiar; it was just a concrete room with a bed in the corner and there was a tall cabinet on the other side of the room. Lily knew she had been there before, she just couldn't remember where or when. She was tied to a chair in the middle of the room. She tried to remember how she'd got there, but all she got was the flash of a wolf-beast. What the fuck was that?!