Chapter 232

Ella

“Devon?”

My eyes widened as I took in the person who sat in front of me. I couldn’t believe it; Jet, the car racing rival who also happened to be Marina’s hitman, was… the man who I had begun to see as a friend?

“This can’t be real,” I said softly as I pulled away. “All along…”

As I spoke, Devon took advantage of my slip-up and wrenched the steering wheel away from my grip once more. He whipped the car around, causing me to slam into the back seat again. I grunted in pain as my other shoulder now slammed into the car door, a searing pain taking over me.

I must have hit my head, too, because the nausea returned—and with it, my wolf’s presence ebbed into the background, her strength fading once more.

As the car began to pick up speed again, the sound of police sirens caught my attention. I struggled up to peer out the back window; blue and red lights flashed in the distance, like a saving grace in the dead of night. But I was too weak now to bang on the window or try to escape again. Another wave of nausea overtook me, and I slid back down in my seat, quelling the urge to retch all over.

“This can’t be real,” I repeated, shaking my head incredulously. “Devon, you can’t… you’re not real. This can’t be real.”

“It is real, Ella,” Devon said, his knuckles white around the steering wheel as we continued to hurtle through the desert. “But I’m taking you away from here. It’s almost over, I promise.”

I swallowed, feeling my heart shatter into a million pieces. Devon had seemed almost like a friend to me, but it was all beginning to come together now. The yacht, the parties, the random encounters in the park or at the farmers market.

“It was all a scheme,” I muttered through the throbbing in my skull. “You traitor.”

Devon shook his head. “It’s not like that, Ella,” he said as he whipped the car around another large rock formation, momentarily losing the police car once again. “I never meant to hurt you. And I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

Make it up to me? I thought to myself. It made no sense. “Where are you taking me, Devon?” I asked, my voice trembling as I attempted to push myself upright. “Where are we going?”

“I’ve got a place we can hide,” he explained. “Somewhere safe. No one will be able to find us there, and then once the air has cleared, I’ll take us overseas.”

“O-Overseas?”

He nodded. “We’ll start over. Somewhere fresh, somewhere where no one will know who we are. We can be whoever we want to be.”

“But Devon—”

“You can meet my daughter, Ella,” he continued, pushing the car to its limits as the red and blue lights appeared in the rearview mirror once more. “She’ll love you. You’ll love her, too. We can be a family.”

This made no sense; me, Devon, his daughter? A family? Starting over together? Suddenly, however, everything began to come into focus.

Devon had begun to fall for me. I didn’t know how, or when, but it had happened.

And now I knew that I needed to get away, because things could take an even more dangerous turn.

Just then, I remembered something. The special pen—the one with the hidden knife—that I had grabbed from beneath my pillow earlier. I could feel it still stuck into the waistband of my pants. Somehow, it had slipped past Devon’s awareness.

My fingers fumbled for the pen, slow and clumsy. Finally, I located it and pulled it out, quietly clicking the little button that would release the knife. My head still felt fuzzy and aching, but my wolf’s presence had slowly begun to return. I just needed to get upright again, and then…

“Kill him,” Ema growled. “Kill him and escape.”

The car lurched again, the distant sirens coming closer and then fading once more. My body threatened to slide out of control again, but I couldn’t let it. I swallowed a stomach full of bile as I slowly pushed myself up to my seat, still gripping the knife tightly as tightly as I could so as not to lose it.

Up ahead, Devon sat unaware, too focused on driving to notice. “Just a couple of feet…” Ema urged, lending me what little strength she had.

And then, in one swift motion, I leaped forward and wrapped my arms around from behind the seat. I held the knife to Devon’s neck, and he instantly froze.

“I’m going to give you one chance to explain yourself now, or I swear I’ll kill you,” I threatened, the blade pressing against his skin just hard enough to make my point.

Devon’s eyes widened in the rearview mirror, his adam’s apple bobbing against the blade. He swallowed hard, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. But he didn’t stop. We kept hurtling through the desert at breakneck speeds, all while the police sirens slowly began to fade into the distance.

“Alright, alright,” he conceded. “I admit it. I’ve been working with Marina all this time. Nothing was ever a coincidence.”

My heart sank. The betrayal stung deeper than I could have imagined. Devon, the guy I thought was just an unlikely friend, was actually a spy, a traitor.

“I used my truth-seeking ability that day at the park,” Devon continued, his voice low. “I got you to spill everything about you and Logan. I recorded it all, brought it back to Marina as proof. And now here we are. But I can fix this, Ella, if you’ll just give me a chance.”

The realization that Devon had been using me all along, manipulating my trust to gather information, was a bitter pill to swallow. I pressed the knife harder against his neck, my hand shaking with rage.

“You betrayed me,” I hissed. “I thought you were a friend, but you were just... just using me.”

Devon’s face was a mask of regret, but I couldn’t tell if it was genuine or just another one of his ploys to gain my trust for his own gain. “Ella, I’m sorry,” he pleaded. “I never meant for it to go this far. I just... I had no choice.”

My grip on the knife tightened. “You always have a choice, Devon. And you chose to betray me.”

As I contemplated my next move, Devon suddenly swerved the car sharply to avoid a cliff edge. The sudden motion sent me sprawling across the interior of the car. The knife slipped from my grasp, clattering to the floor and sliding beneath the seat. My head hit the window with a thud, stars dancing before my eyes.

Dazed, I tried to regain my bearings, but the world was spinning. I could hear Devon cursing under his breath, his hands working frantically to keep the car under control.

Then, through the fog of my disorientation, I heard the distinct sound of an engine—a familiar, roaring engine that could only belong to one person: Logan.

I turned my head with effort, peering out the back window. And there it was.

Logan’s race car, closing in on us, relentless and determined.