Chapter 40: Elodie

I don't know how long I ran or even where. There was no thought to laying a false trail or doubling back. No careful walking up the river bed. There was just running. Every step was an agony because my body didn't have time to finish shifting to one form or the other, and I didn't stop to let it. I had to put as much distance between me and Patrick as possible. And a part of me desperately wanted to escape the reality lying back there in that cabin because if I let myself think about it, let myself voice the thought, I would break. So I kept running, kept tripping over my feet and falling, picking myself back up and running some more because the pain kept truth at bay.

Until I fell again and just couldn't make myself get up. Couldn't make myself care about the smell of my own blood or the physical aches of shifting and exertion. Breath sawed in and out of my throat, my chest rising and falling in great gusts. And in my mind I saw Sawyer's chest. Blood-soaked and still.