CHAPTER 18: ARE YOU A WEREWOLF?

Eleanor’s POV

Roxy’s hands were a blur on the wheel, swerving us around a dumped mattress and then a cluster of overflowing trash cans. The car shuddered with each violent correction. With a curse, she fumbled her phone from a pocket, never taking her eyes off the road. She hit a speed-dial and put it on speaker, holding it between her shoulder and ear.

A man’s smug voice crackled through. And somehow, I could hear it clearly. "What’s wrong? Car trouble?"

"You pathetic little worm," Roxy snarled, her voice vibrating with a rage so pure it was almost awe-inspiring. "When I get out of this, I’m going to—"

"Yeah, yeah," the voice interrupted, dripping with false sympathy. "You might want to save your breath. Heard there’s a little... blockage up ahead. A container truck taking a nap along the finish line. Real shame."

Roxy’s face went pale beneath its usual defiance. The phone slipped from her shoulder and clattered to the floor. She didn’t bother to pick it up.

"Change of plan," she said, her voice now terrifyingly calm and devoid of all its earlier fury.

"What? What is it?" Mira asked, her voice trembling.

"We’re getting out," Roxy stated, as if she’d just announced we were making a quick stop for coffee.

"What?" Mira and I said in unison, pure disbelief cutting through our terror.

"The asshole on the phone says there’s a wall of truck at the end of this road. I could probably... maybe... thread the needle with just me in this thing. But with the extra weight..." She let the sentence hang, the implication clear. A crash was inevitable. "My priority right now isn’t saving my car. It’s getting you two out alive."

"What are you saying?" Mira whispered, her eyes wide with horror.

Roxy took a deep breath, her knuckles white on the wheel. "We’re going to jump."

"Are you insane? We can’t survive that!" Mira’s voice was a shrill pitch of pure panic.

"Probability of survival is about thirty percent," Roxy shot back, her eyes frantically scanning the road ahead and the narrowing walls beside us. "So it’s possible."

"What kind of math is that?!" Mira screamed. "The other seventy percent means we’re definitely, absolutely dead!"

I was frozen, my mind a white static of terror. I couldn’t form words. Somehow, I could notice the looming shape of a parked container truck grow larger and larger as we got closer. It was a dead end.

Roxy’s head whipped between us and the approaching wall, a violent internal debate raging on her face. She was calculating, discarding options. Finally, she shouted, "FUCK!" and made a decision.

"We can’t jump! It’s basic physics, Roxy! We’re human, we can’t handle that kinetic energy!" Mira replied, her voice breaking.

"I know that!" Roxy roared, her composure finally cracking.

I saw the solid, unyielding wall of the truck. It wasn’t far away anymore. A primal instinct took over. I squeezed my eyes shut and wrapped my arms over my head, curling into a ball in the back seat, bracing for the impact that would shatter us.

But then a different weight pressed against me. Mira had unbuckled her harness and thrown herself over me, her body a shield between me and the coming wreck. "I’ve got you, Elle!" she cried, her voice fierce with a love that shattered my heart.

No. The thought was a lightning strike in the storm of my fear. Not her. I can’t lose her. I can’t.

The dread was eclipsed by a surge of something else, something ferocious and protective. And then another, heavier weight landed on top of both of us. Roxy. She had launched herself from the driver’s seat into the back, her body forming a second, desperate layer of protection. "Hold on!" she yelled, her voice right in my ear.

There was a deafening shriek of tearing metal, as if the entire side of the car was being peeled open like a tin can. The car shuddered violently, and for a split second, it felt like we were slowing down, caught in some unimaginable force.

Then we were moving. Not in the car. Out of it.

Tumbling through the air, a tangled mess of limbs and screams. A strange sensation washed over me—a warmth, an aura of fierce, desperate need.

Protect Mira. Protect them.

It wasn’t a thought; it was a command that came from the very core of my being.

We hit the asphalt. The impact was brutal, a jarring slam that knocked the wind from my lungs and sent a shock of pain through my entire body. But it wasn’t the bone-shattering, fatal crash it should have been. It was... survivable.

My head spun, the world a dizzying carousel of dark asphalt and flashing lights.

Then a deafening, earth-shaking BOOM erupted from ahead of us.

The sound wave hit me like a physical blow. Roxy’s car had hit it. An explosion of glass and metal bloomed into a fireball, lighting up the entire alley in a hellish orange glow.

The world was a blur of pain and ringing silence. I could hear voices, but they sounded like they were coming from the end of a long tunnel.

"...the hell was that? Where did that shield come from?" It was Roxy’s voice, strained and laced with confusion and something like awe.

"Eleanor? Eleanor, are you alright?" That was Mira, her voice tight with panic as her hands gently patted my face, my arms.

I tried to answer, but my mouth wouldn’t form the words. A wave of intense dizziness washed over me, pulling me deeper into the fuzzy darkness. Their conversation continued above me, snippets cutting through the fog.

"...saw you... your leg... you slammed it straight through the floorboard to slow us down..." Mira was saying, her tone shifting from fear to sheer disbelief.

A sharp, incredulous laugh from Roxy. "So you’re a werewolf?"

"So are you."

Their voices were full of a mutual shock that my reeling brain couldn’t begin to process. Werewolf? What were they talking about? It had to be the concussion. I was hallucinating.

"I thought you were the one who put up that kinetic shield around us when we jumped," Roxy said. "That wasn’t me."

"It wasn’t me either," Mira replied, her voice trembling. "I was just trying to cover her..."

The conversation swirled around me, a confusing puzzle with pieces that made no sense. My eyelids grew impossibly heavy. The last thing I heard, as I finally slipped into the welcoming blackness, was Roxy’s voice, quiet and utterly serious.

"Mira... is Eleanor a werewolf?"