STOLEN.

5: ESCAPE PLAN.

Jade shook her head in disbelief. She longed for it to be true, but how could it be?. "I have been with you, trying to help you however I could. Even though you couldn't feel me, I was there," Winter told her. Jade was dumbstruck. How could this be? "You can't be my wolf!" Jade exclaimed in shock. Winter looked at her, bemused. "And why not?" she asked. "Because I am female. We no longer have wolves." Jade replied sadly. Winter laughed again. Before Jade could ask anything else, she found herself being pulled from her dream. The lakeside and Winter fading away. "And yet here I am," Winter said as Jade woke.

Opening her eyes, Jade found herself looking up at her father. "Get up, you lazy little b***h! For today, you still work for me. I expect this house to be spotless before you leave for the pack house," he said. Jade apologized and got to her feet. Clive stepped closer to her so that she could feel his hot breath on her face. "You had better not embarrass me, or this family. You will do whatever it takes to make Delta Scott happy. Do you understand?" he hissed. The threat was clear in his voice. Jade nodded, not trusting herself not to burst into tears if she tried to speak. He gave her a look of disgust. "Oh, and clean yourself up. You look disgusting. I don't want the Delta changing his mind and asking for his money back, now do I?" he said as he strode out of her room.

Jade did as she was told. She washed her face and straightened up her uniform. Once she was presentable, she got on with her afternoon chores. She tried to lose herself in her work and forget about the misery that was still to come. Even if only for a short time. While cleaning the living room, she watched her father open the small safe that he had hidden behind the false back of a cupboard. He didn't bother trying to hide the combination from her as he knew that she would never tell anyone. She would be far too afraid of what he would do to her if she did. She watched as he took stacks of notes from the bag that Delta Scott had given him and put them into the safe. Anger bubbled inside her. That money was the price tag that her own father had placed on her. He had sold her like an old item of clothing that he no longer had any use for. He was supposed to love and protect her. Isn't that what fathers were meant to do? He closed the safe, smirked at her, and walked out of the room. Jade was holding back the anger that now threatened to burst out of her. She wanted to hurt her father and Delta Scott, but honestly, what good would that do? She would just end up locked in the dungeon or dead. Then again, that would be better than being Delta Scott's toy.

As she cleaned, she thought of Winter. "If only she were more than just a dream," Jade told herself longingly. Of course, she had dreamed up a wolf like Winter. She was big and strong, everything that Jade wasn’t. Jade knew that Winter had to be nothing more than a dream because even if female werewolves did still have wolves, then Jade still wouldn't have one like Winter. She was an omega, so her wolf would be much smaller than Winter, who had looked bigger than even Alpha Miller's wolf. Jade let herself dream for a moment, though. She let herself imagine that Winter was real. With a wolf like her, Jade would never have to allow herself to be sold off to a creep like Delta Scott. Never take another beating from her father. With winter, she could stand up for herself. She sighed loudly, pushing those thoughts to the back of her mind. Daydreams were not going to help her.

Jade was polishing the cupboard that contained her father's safe. She thought of all that money that she had watched him stash inside. That money could buy her a new life, far away from the Blood Moon pack and the horror that awaited her at the hands of Delta Scott. She thought that it would serve her father right to find her and the money gone when he returned from the pack house tonight. The more that she thought about it, the more that Jade wondered if she could actually do it. Could she take the money and run? She would have to live among the humans or become a rogue, living in the wilderness. That money was the difference between the two. By the time she had finished cleaning, she had made up her mind. When her father and brother were at the pack house tonight, she would take the money and leave. She knew that she wouldn't be able to just walk out of the front gate though, she needed to find another way out of here.