Cornered

Chapter 3-1

3

The rain had eased some during the night, but in its place, a gale force wind battered my coat from all angles on my six a.m. run home.

Added to that, Sean's words echoed around inside my head.

He'd caught me as I'd gone to jog down the stairs, his voice deep and serious as he'd said, "Next time you want to share Lia's room, you better turn up with less alcohol inside you. Otherwise, I'll be ignoring Jem's request to leave you be and kicking your arse down to the sofa to kip. Are we clear?"

I'd had no choice but to nod—mostly because Sean'd looked like he wanted to shred my hide. Just another peg on the board of things pissing me off.

Working off my irritation, I pushed my muscles hard on my run, stretching out kinks caused by a night spent with Lia snoozing on my chest. She'd finally drooped there a little after three, and too knackered to move her, or myself, I'd managed to switch off enough to get some shut eye.

With the shitty start I'd already had to the morning, a part of me wished I'd just stayed asleep.

My body still ached by the time I hit our side of the forest. Changing form only made that worse. Sweat stuck to me, as I balanced there in my crouch, the dampness fast becoming frozen once hit by the chilly blasts of air.

Head dipped low and eyes closed, fingertips still digging into the earth, I stayed there a moment, regaining my breaths, replaying Sean's warning ... hoping the kitchen would be unoccupied when I went through.

I'd purposefully made the journey a half hour earlier, just as I'd been doing for the past few weeks. Everyone at home tended to wake by their internal clocks, though, meaning the strategy didn't always work.

Pushing up off the ground, I straightened my legs, ignoring the tightness clenching my calves. Stretching out my fingers took conscious effort, as did up-righting my spine. My neck cracked when I worked it side to side, my shoulders crunching when I rolled them.

Once as un-tense as I could make myself, I finally opened my eyes to a confusion of colour.

The funky weather had begun a good couple of months earlier—giving us snow mid-April, floods down south, land-invading seas along the coast. At least it'd been a couple of weeks since the last hailstorm. Those were a killer on my bike.

As a result of the weirdness, nature didn't seem to have a b****y clue what season surrounded it, and aside from the wilting plants and bad crops, prey had been yo-yoing in and out of hibernation, and the trees had become a collage of greens, browns and pinks.

Sadly, the colour didn't extend much beyond the forest roof. As I trod through the remaining timber to home, only filthy-looking greyness toned the sky.

On my squelch across the lawn, I scoured the rear windows of the house. Curtains obscured the right-hand upstairs window—my room—but the one to its left showed shadowed movement within the bathroom. Hopefully Kyle. Or Brook. Better yet: both. Anything that meant eating my breakfast in peace.

A couple of metres from the back door, though, I knew it wasn't them upstairs, because they both sat at the kitchen table, chewing on food.

Not ready to deal, I veered off toward the carport to collect my gear.

The dampness of night had made my clothes limp and cold, but I still tugged them on, just to kill time. Retrieving my mobile from my jacket, I relocated it to my jeans pocket, and after grabbing up my helmet and boots, I made the too-short walk to the house.

So much for luck, though. Kyle and Brook still sat exactly where they had been. Sending out a silent prayer for patience, I tugged down the handle and stepped inside the warm kitchen, to the scent of eggs, sausage and cat.

Kyle raised only his eyes at my arrival. "'Morning."

I jerked my chin his way with my quiet, "Hey," my stomach growling as I eyed what they had left on their plates.

If either of them were surprised by my early entrance, neither showed it. They were probably as used to my comings and goings as the rest of the pack.

"There's some left," Brook said, scraping her chair back. "I can fix you some, if you would like."

My jaw tightened as I took in the wariness in her movements. "I'm going for a shower." Kyle's head made a slow upward rise, his stare darkening, and swallowing down my attitude a little, I added, "Thanks, though," before cutting through to the hallway.

I reached almost the top of the stairs before they began talking about me, and I caught the low grumbles, followed by, "Give him time," from Brook.

As Kyle's, "He's had four months," carried up, I strode the length of the landing and shut myself in my room.

***