Consciousness returns in fragments, none of them pleasant.
The first thing I register is darkness—complete, suffocating darkness that presses against my face like a physical weight. There's fabric over my head, rough against my skin, and my breath comes back hot and damp with each exhale.
The second thing is motion, the rumble of an engine beneath me, the sway of a vehicle taking turns too fast. The third thing is the bite of restraints around my wrists, pulled tight enough to dig into bone.
The parking lot. The SUV. Hands grabbing me before I could scream.
Panic floods through my system like ice water, and I have to fight the urge to thrash, to scream, to do anything that might make this worse. My throat is raw—did I scream earlier? I can't remember.
Everything between the coffee shop and now is a blur of terror and rough hands and the chemical taste of whatever they pressed against my mouth.
Breathe. I need to breathe. I need to think.
The men up front are talking, their voices low and careful. I strain to hear through the pounding of my own heartbeat, catching fragments that don't help at all. Something about timing. A location I don't recognize.
“The boss wants her secured before—”
The rest disappears under engine noise as we accelerate.
I try to stay calm, try to catalogue details like someone useful would.
The seat beneath me is leather, expensive. The engine is quiet, powerful. We've made at least three right turns, which means absolutely nothing because I have no idea where we started or where we're going.
My throat works around the fear, and I manage to call out, my voice thin and shaking.
"What do you want? Why are you doing this? Please, I haven't done anything wrong. Whatever you think I did, I didn't do it. I'm nobody important, I swear."
No response. Just the steady hum of tires on asphalt and the low murmur of voices that deliberately exclude me.
"Please." The word comes out as a sob now, dignity abandoned. "My father has money. Whatever you want, he'll pay it. He'll give you anything, just let me go. I won't tell anyone, I promise. I'll say I got lost or… or hit my head or something."
One of the men laughs, and the sound is worse than silence. Short and cold and completely devoid of anything human.
"Shut up, freak," he says, and that's it. That's all I get.
I'm crying now, I realize. Tears soaking into the cloth over my face, snot running down my upper lip, the whole pathetic package.
I hate myself for it—hate that they can probably hear me sniffling like a child, hate that I can't be brave or clever or any of the things that might actually help.
I'm just a stupid girl who left the house despite warnings, who thought one hour of normalcy couldn't possibly go wrong.
The drive continues. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Each second stretches into eternity while I count my heartbeats and try not to imagine what happens when we stop. Then something slams into the vehicle with the force of a freight train.
The darkness—impossibly—tilts sideways as we careen off the road, metal screaming against metal, my body thrown against the seat in front of me.
We crash to a stop with a jolt that rattles my teeth, and for a moment everything is chaos. Shouting, scrambling, the click of weapons being readied.
The driver's door doesn't just open judging by the sound.
It's ripped off its hinges.
The screech of metal is followed by sounds I'll hear in nightmares for the rest of my life. Wet, brutal, over almost before they begin. A man screams, then stops screaming in a way that's somehow worse.
Hands grab the bag over my head and yank it off.
Light floods my vision, painful after the darkness, and I blink rapidly to clear the tears. Standing over me, silhouetted against the broken window, is… Hugh.
But not entirely him.
His eyes are pure amber, blazing like molten gold. His hands end in claws—actual claws, curved and deadly, dripping with blood that definitely isn't his. More blood spatters his shirt, his jaw, the column of his throat.
He looks like a monster.
And an impossible feeling of ‘I’m safe’ washes over me at the sight of him.
"Claire." My name comes out ragged, desperate.
His claws slice through my restraints in a single swipe, and then I'm in his arms, lifted from the wreckage like I weigh nothing at all. I bury my face in his neck and sob.
"I've got you." His voice cracks on the words, rough and raw in a way I've never heard before. "I'm here, sweetheart. You're safe. Nothing's going to touch you, I swear to God, nothing is ever going to touch you again."
I can't respond—can't do anything except cling to him and shake and breathe in his scent, cedar cutting through the copper of blood. His arms tighten around me almost painfully, and I don't care.
I want it to hurt. I want to feel something other than terror.
He carries me to his car without putting me down, and when we reach it, he doesn't set me in the passenger seat. Instead, he slides into the backseat with me still cradled against his chest, settling me across his lap like he can't bear to let go.
"Are you hurt?" His hands move over my arms, my back, checking for injuries with frantic urgency. "Did they touch you? Did they do anything to you? Claire, I need you to tell me."
"I'm okay." The words come out between gasps, barely audible. "Just scared. They didn't… I don't think they…"
Something in his expression shatters. He presses his face into the curve of my neck and just breathes, deep shuddering inhales like he's trying to convince himself I'm real.
His hands are shaking—I can feel them trembling against my back—and that somehow makes me feel safer than anything else.
He was afraid too. For me.
After he’s sufficiently assured that I’m not injured, he grabs his jacket beside me and bundles me up in it, returning to holding me like I’m the most precious thing ever. His scent envelops me, his warmth soothes my frayed nerves.
We stay like that for a long moment, wrapped around each other in the backseat while somewhere behind us, a crashed SUV holds things I don't want to think about. His hand strokes my hair in slow, soothing motions while the other presses flat against my spine under the jacket, palm spread wide like he's feeling for my heartbeat.
His phone buzzes. He ignores it. It buzzes again. And again. A series of increasingly frantic notifications that he doesn't acknowledge, his focus entirely on the trembling girl in his arms.
Finally, the buzzing becomes impossible to ignore. He shifts just enough to pull the phone from his pocket, glancing at the screen, and his expression changes.
"What is it?" I manage. "Hugh, what…"
"Richard." His voice is flat now, controlled in a way that suggests massive effort. "Multiple messages."
My stomach drops through the floor.
"Oh god." The words come out as a whisper. "Does he think I'm dead? I need to get back. I need to tell him I'm okay, he'll be losing his mind, we have to—"
Hugh is already moving, settling me gently into the passenger seat with careful hands that linger a moment too long. He rounds the car and slides into the driver's seat, his bloodstained fingers curling around the steering wheel.
"We're going," he says, and his voice is still rough, still cracked with whatever emotion he's barely containing. "We're going right now."