Alpha's Captive 04 - Haven Read Free Page A

Pink, yes, but not yet tender. “It’ll be all right.”
    He shrugged. “It’s your nose.”
    “Do you really want to stop to put the roof back up?” she asked. She was enjoying the feel of the wind on her face and her hair streaming behind her.
    He shrugged, then shook his head.
    “Anyhow, I was thinking that if people are looking for us, we’re a lot more obvious as a red car with a white roof than a red convertible,” she said.
    He snorted. “This isn’t a proper convertible any more than a Vespa is a motorcycle.”
    Harper smiled. “So what kind of car is a proper convertible?”
    “A 1958 Corvette,” he said. “With the last hint of fins replaced with the sleekest body you’ve ever seen, and the scoops that go from the front wheel across the doors.” He dug in the bag at his feet and came up with a Subway sandwich. Wordlessly, he pulled it out of the plastic sleeve and passed it over to her.
    “Hmm, classic car buff,” she said , spitting out her gum into a corner of the sub wrapper. “I’ve always dreamed of owning a ’50s Lincoln Continental, totally tricked out.”
    “So why the Skylark?” he asked.
    “I told you, my brother bought it for me,” she said, taking a big bite of the sandwich. All this running away was making her hungry, and breakfast had been a very long time ago, before dawn.
    “A fan o f My Cousin Vinnie?” he asked. There was a scene in the film that prominently featured a Buick Skylark.
    “Oh, LOL,” she said. “I totally haven’t heard that one before. No, he got it because it was a classic and something we could actually fix up for not too much money, and it was cheap for the condition it was in. Six hundred bucks. He made my other brothers pitch in a hundred each since it was my sixteenth birthday, so it cost him four hundred, and he got a buddy of his to tow it over.”
    She smiled at the memory. Neither Braden nor Austin had been happy with that, but they’d done it. Even Christina did what Cory said. “Cost me a hell of a lot more, of course. Three grand, when it was all said and done. He said I could sell it for eight or ten, pocket the difference, maybe take some classes with it.”
    “But you didn’t,” he said.
    “It wasn’t about the money,” she said. “We rebuilt it together, all four of us. And even Christina would come out into the barn to hang out sometimes and watch us work and not pick a fight.” She cast her eyes sideways at him. “How big’s your family? You say brothers and sisters, you say clan, you say all kinds of things, but you don’t say anything more specific.”
    “It’s big,” he said. “Most werewolf families are.”
    “How big is big?” she prompted. “I’m one of five.”
    “Well, I’m the fifth of nine,” he said.
    She whistled. “You aren’t kidding about big.”
    “Yeah, and I’ve got hordes of cousins and nephews and nieces and aunts and uncles, never mind the second cousins—”
    “I get the picture,” she said. “So you left all that? Did you just want to, you know, get away?”
    Harper could understand that, to a point. While a family was a place where you always belong, it was also where you were stuck in the place you were given. Her role was that of the baby sister and baby cousin—even now, at the age of twenty-one, she got put at the kiddie table at half the family gatherings.
    Levi shrugged. “When I was a teenager? You’d better believe it. Plenty of people hate being a teen, but it’s worse for a werewolf, going through shifts and never quite knowing when you’re going to suddenly sprout hair. Regular guys worry about getting a surprise stiffy. Werewolves have to worry about surprise fangs.”
    “Okay, that does sound like it sucks,” she agreed , suppressing a smile.
    “And of course, even now, I don’t really care to live under the collective thumb of the clan council, with no say in anything.”
    She gave him a sideways glance—and immediate ly, a strand of hair got caught in the