Saved by the King

Fifty Five*

Hey everyone! Before I start the chapter, I just wanted to give a quick shoutout to @Clairethebomb ! She has amazing werewolf story out called Broken Mate. If you're enjoying Saved by the King, you should definitely check her out!

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The majority of the unfamiliar car ride took place after the sun went down, long after I stopped being able to see anything out of the tinted windows. Logan grilled the driver for any scrap of information he might know, which amounted to absolutely nothing. He was nervous, and clearly not prepared to deal with the Alpha of the strongest pack on the continent. Logan quickly grew frustrated at his minimum knowledge of Astrid, her whereabouts, or any news related to Gwinn Forest. He lapsed into silence after only a few minutes.

As far as car rides go, it was uneventful. Logan tried to convince me to sleep, but I wasn't tired anymore. Amaad and Celine were relatively quiet as well; they seemed uninterested in anything the driver had to say since none of it concerned recent events that they didn't already know about.

The car ride passed in near silence.

The car slowed to a stop some eight or nine hours later. It was late at night-or rather, early in the morning-and I had begun to grow fatigued again. I admired Logan and his poise; the night before, he had fallen asleep much later than me, awoken much earlier than me, and was so far not showing any signs of tiredness. I, on the other hand, had been combatting heavy eyelids and weak limbs for the past two hours or so. My head was resting on one of Logan's broad shoulders when the car pulled into a large garage: I could only see because of the strong, artificial glow that breached the tinted windows.

"We're at the Maccone pack," Logan murmured to me. I sat up, breaking the small amount of contact we had been sharing, to look up and meet his eyes. "We'll stay here tonight, probably leave tomorrow morning. I want answers about Astrid, but I want to get you back to Gwinn Forest even more."

I nodded. I would have been apprehensive-even fearful-to be surrounded by an entire pack of unknown wolves in such an unfamiliar place after all that had happened, but all I could feel was a muted sense of relief that I would have a warm bed sometime in the near future. I couldn't bring myself to be frightened, not with Logan's ever-watchful eye and reassuring presence. Safety was an unfamiliar condition, it seemed I spent more of my life unsafe than not, but Logan was even more protective and attentive than he had been before Violet's betrayal.

Before, when I found his protectiveness annoying at times. There was none of that now, only mind-numbing relief that he was watching our surroundings as attentively as I was.

"Aren't you tired?" I asked as the car jerked to a stop and the engine shut off. He smiled humorlessly.

"Sure I am," he answered. "But I've gotten used to not sleeping for a few days at a time."

I frowned. I did not like the sound of that. I would have pressed the issue further, but Logan brought up new topic. One that I found even more unsavory than the last. "Are you going to let me help you, or are you going to stubbornly resist any form of assistance?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I grumbled. The driver got out of the car and stretched his arms when he finally stood up straight. I didn't blame him. He had been driving for the better part of 18 hours or so. Amaad and Celine followed suit.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Logan said dismissively. He opened the car door, unfolded his tall form from its sitting position, and held his hand out to me. His eyebrow was raised challengingly.

I narrowed my eyes but accepted his hand anyway. It was a testament to how tired I was that I didn't even bother to put up token resistance. The pain in my hips had settled into a dull ache instead of intense, sharp pain after hours of sitting in the car and I wasn't eager to aggravate whatever was causing the pain in the first place. As soon as I was on my feet, I could feel the tell-tale bolts of pain that preceded the full-scale onslaught.