The Claiming

Chapter Seventeen

"Now let's get out of here." Alec opens the door, takes me around the waist, and guides me into the unknown room. A light comes on automatically.

I gasp in sharply. "Oh. My. Gosh."

The room is filled with countless monitors plastering every inch of the walls. Each screen displays different portions of houses, but they are separated by room.

My hand flies to my mouth, but Alec yanks on my hand. "Come on. We can't let this phase us. We already knew about it."

"Right," I breathe. I stumble after him through the room towards a door in the back right corner of the room.

I'm surprised no one had been in that surveillance room. Must be dinner break.

Alec opens the door to the outside, the cold rushing in, and then we race into the outdoors. My naked arms quickly go numb.

The gardens are practically a maze trapped inside by a stone wall, except usually they aren't resting beneath a blanket of snow like they are now. "How are we going to get out of here? We're stuck!"

"Don't worry. I got in this way, so I can definitely get us out."

He never releases my hand as we trek quickly along the icy stone path towards the back of the palace grounds.

"How long do you think it'll be before they realize that we're—?" I start to ask.

Suddenly, a loud siren echoes throughout the whole palace grounds. I cover my ears as we stop to look around us very quickly. Alec touches my back and nudges me onward. "We can't stop. Keep going!"

The siren seems to get louder and louder as we run further and further away. I guess someone found Walden. I hope he was as embarrassed as he had made me. Serves him right for trying to take away the only innocence I have left.

Especially since I'm apparently no longer married.

We reach the stone wall, and Alec scans the ground base of it. "There!" He points to a circular drain with the opening ripped away by what must have been a crowbar.

"How did you get all of this done on your own?" I ask loudly over the blaring noise.

"I'd do anything to get you back, Belle."

I kiss him once again before he helps me down into the man-sized drain in the grass. I feel out a ladder with my feet and start to climb down.

I begin to hear yelling and even gunshots when I'm halfway down the hole. "Alec, come on!"

"I'm coming!"

He starts soon after me. My feet touch the bottom as Alec shuts the opening over us. The lights from the garden and the moon stream through the little holes of the drain cover onto the watery stream I stand on.

"Did they see us?" I shout, still trying to be heard over the alarm.

Alec puts his finger to his lips. He shakes his head. Then he puts his lips to my ear. "It echoes down here, so we have to make as little noise as possible."

I nod.

Alec leads the way through the tunnel upstream. I had taken off my shoes and abandoned them near the opening of the tunnel, but Alec had picked them up. Then I realized it's because those shoes would mark a trail. Wow, I'm dumb.

We walk for a good ten minutes before we reach another ladder. Alec goes first and then helps me out. As he replaces the drain cover, I stand and stare around in amazement. We're in the woods. We're still inside Bayfell walls, but we're in the hunting grounds. As a Facility girl, I've never been allowed out here. Family District boys usually go with their dads on weekends as a traditional father-son sport.

Alec takes my hand. "There's a road a little walk away from here. I parked along the side of it." He starts to take me through the forest. "Okay, so I know this is all confusing, and I can explain! I just... it's not going to be very thorough, though."

"That's okay," I say.

"Oh! I almost forgot." He offers me my shoes, so I put them on quickly and we continue. "So, as soon as you had left, I went and told Riah and Chance the whole thing. Then we took it to our parents... mine and Chance's. Turns out, Chance's grandma wasn't so crazy. Her suspicions of the government are, of course, true, and she had somehow been digging her way out of Bayfell ever since. Chance's family home is built so close to the wall that she actually succeeded. Unfortunately, the old woman died before she could get her family out of here."

"Wait. You mean—we're going outside Bayfell walls?"

Alec shrugs. "We have to. We're considered fugitives now. I kind of just kidnapped the future queen of Bayfell... Anyway! Once we came to the conclusion of what to do, my parents began packing our stuff as I came here to pose as a guard. One of my friends from school is a guard here now, and he got me in because he knows a guy who knows a guy... long story short—here I am!"

I look at him in awe. "I can't believe you went to so much for me."

"Believe it, babe, because I am head over heels for you."

I actually laugh. For the first time since the morning I was taken away, I laugh.