Rivals and Retribution by Shannon Delany Page B

ground, and she kicked him, growling as savagely as a simple human could.
    I laughed in spite of everything. “What’s that?” I asked as Dmitri and Gabe brushed snow off the lump.
    “Our transportation,” Gabe explained, tugging a blue tarp away from the lump to reveal a sharp-looking pair of snowmobiles.
    I had always wanted to ride a snowmobile.…
    And I had never been allowed.
    “It’s far from a ladylike pursuit,” Margie had scolded me when I’d mentioned the possibility. A group of my friends were heading to a ski lodge way up in the mountains. It was going to be chaperoned. Safe. There was even mandatory church attendance on Sunday. In short, it seemed like the perfect diversion for winter break in an area where you had to head to the mountain peaks to find anything like winter.
    But Phil and Margie had agreed: The trip would be laced with temptation, and I was ill-equipped to make good, moral choices.
    That was before I let my grades slip.
    Before I stopped caring about things, because why bother trying to make good choices when you never got any choices to make in the first place?
    Before I started earning a reputation that made the girls hate me and the guys vie for fifteen minutes alone with me behind the school.
    Even though what they wanted only took ten.
    At most.
    And it was before I made my first change—terrified and alone at the first sleepover I’d ever been allowed to attend.
    At the church Phil preached at.
    My throat tightened. Yeah. The third verse of “Kumbaya” had been waaay more memorable than anyone ever expected it to be.
    I’d wanted only a few things and I’d been denied all of them until I disappeared and made my own way.
    “You’re kidding me, right?” I stepped over to the sleek machines and ran an appreciative hand across one slick chassis. “How much farther is it? I mean, if we expect them to catch up to us sometime during this century…”
    The faster this was over, the faster I could start to try and make amends—get my pack away from everything that was so wrong and so dangerous. That’s what we needed to do, I decided, looking at Dmitri and Gabe.
    Gareth would agree. But maybe he’d think I was just as bad an influence.…
    “We have the perfect staging area,” Dmitri confirmed. “Not far from here. But I prefer some small comforts in my old age. Let the others walk, run, or lope their way to us.”
    He turned one snowmobile on, the engine firing up with a noise much like a contented purr.
    “Not like Pietr can lope anymore,” I said, loud enough to be heard over the engines.
    Dmitri smiled. “He will lope when the moment is right.”
    “Wait. What?” My brows tugged in tightly.
    He thrust a helmet into my chest, his smile becoming a wicked grin. “There is still wolf within him—you need not worry. We will force it forward.” He put his helmet on, and Gabriel wedged one on Jessica before sliding one on his own head.
    “We tried triggering—”
    Dmitri tapped the side of his helmet and motioned for me to put mine on. I did. “They are smart helmets,” he explained. “Voice-activated.” He mounted a snowmobile and laid Jessica across it before him. “I would not get any ideas if I were you,” he warned her. “We will be going quite fast and it would be unfortunate if you decided to volunteer as a mogul for their vehicle to vault.”
    Gabriel mounted up and turned, patting the spot behind him. Awesome. I was going to have to ride with my arms wrapped tight around him. Someone was totally thinking he’d hit pay dirt with this idea. Making sure my groan of protest was audible thanks to the smart helmet technology, I took a seat behind Gabe and locked my hands in front of his stomach.
    “You may continue,” Dmitri said as we started off.
    “Thanks so much.” I watched the scenery ghost past us. “We tried triggering the wolf with the truck crash, remember?”
    Jessica’s growl filled my helmet until Dmitri gave her a swift smack across the