Chapter 387: A Different Reality (II)
His head hit the top of the roof of the car as Tracy swivelled the car for the nth time. Either she might have hoodwinked the licence examiner, or he was high on whatever drug she fed him, because her haphazard driving certainly didn’t deserve a licence.
Fucking hell. If he knew that this was going to happen, then he would have volunteered to drive this car, damn it.
He glanced at his watch and noticed that they had been driving for ten hours. Motherfucker.
"How long?" Ajax asked as he cursed the tinpot car for the tenth time after his knee hit the back of Finn’s seat. He looked upset, angry even, but he knew better than to lose his shit with Tracy. Rubbing his knees silently, he waited for the woman to answer his question and just as the silence started to stretch far too long and they started wondering whether the woman was not going to answer them, they heard her speak.
"We are here."
Everyone whipped their heads to the front and saw a dilapidated cottage house coming into view. It didn’t look like the hideout of a big, bad witch as they were expecting it to be. It just looked like a weather shed, with a half-arsed attempt to save it with a tin shed over the roof, as the wooden one had been broken long before.
But there was one thing that was really weird. There was nothing near this cottage house; it was located in the middle of nowhere, with weeds and overgrown bushes. There must be countless mosquitoes and many other bugs, maybe spiders. Maybe even snakes. But there was no way in hell he was going to let anyone figure out that he was scared of them, alright. Maybe over his dead body.
He had seen those annoying things more than once, okay, including when he was dealing with shifters and they were annoying as fuck. Disgusting shit, if he was being honest. It had nothing to do with him being a nasty motherfucker.
He thought that she was talking about the mountains or maybe the terrain that was on the right, anywhere but the cottage and yet the woman was already slowing down. Alright, this was it.
Dominic glanced at the cottage with a frown on his face. "It seemed like it was deserted in a hurry."
Yeah. In such a hurry that they even forgot to close the doors behind them.
No one spoke as the energy within the car started to shift from calm to stressed and then tense. Veronica was radiating a nervous energy as she straightened up in her seat. Even Tracy was no longer calm. She had changed her posture from a relaxed one to a rather wary one. No, she seemed to be irritated rather than worried like Veronica. Maybe even disappointed. The scent kept getting more and more intense until it blended together, and it got harder and harder for Finn to decipher what exactly she was even feeling at the moment.
What they were looking for was not it, or at least from the anger bubbling underneath all those emotions, this was not what she had expected.
She killed the engine and stayed put in her seat; leaning forward, she was eyeing the cottage with a hint of annoyance in her eyes. Her stormy eyes were flashing as if she was seeing a reality completely different from the one that they were in. In fact, the shadows and light in her eyes did point at that, but when he turned his head and looked through the windscreen, he didn’t see anything that would explain why she was furrowing her brows that hard.
He wanted to stay put and wait alongside her, but Dominic, having had enough, pushed open the door and stepped outside. Finn glanced at the man and enviously noticed that he was stretching his legs that had been cramped for way too long. You know what? Fuck waiting. He needed to get out of the car before his legs ended up getting frozen in this same position forever.
Anyway, Dominic had already taken the lead, so even if the surprise was getting ruined, the blame wouldn’t land on his head.
He pushed the door open with his shoulder and slid out of the car. He heard his back crack four to five times as he straightened up, and the muscles in his thighs started to scream in protest. Damn, this was worse than staying in his shifter form and fighting all night. He would rather run on all fours than cramp himself into this position again.
The others also spill out of the car after he and Dominic step out of the car. Laxus was a bit graceful about the entire thing, even though there was literal relief etched on his face. Ajax, on the other hand, was a mess. Slumped on the ground, he was inches away from kissing it. He looked beyond relieved, but then again, he was taller than everyone in the group.
Veronica arched her back like an old lady, while Tao had his foot up on a boulder as he stretched his legs one by one. As for him, even though his back was telling him to arch his arms up to his head and relax the muscles, he didn’t. He couldn’t let the little witch think that he was not up to mark.
Even his wolf straightened up his back as if he were worried that Tracy would take them as weaklings.
As for the said little witch, she was still sitting inside the car. Now her posture had changed from an attacking one to a pondering one. Her arms were crossed over her chest as she stared at the sight in front of them. Her eyes were still flickering as if she was watching a movie that was only visible to her. Was she really living in a reality that was different from the one they were living in?
And that was when —