Page 60 of My Boyfriend Marks Trees
She glanced at him. “Scares you?”
“Not because I’m worried my child will hurt me, but because others might hurt her.” He paused before saying, “When I met Athena, she’d just escaped a doctor who wanted to out her to the world. Turn her into a celebrity freak. He did awful things to her.”
“Oh shit,” Charlotte whispered, thinking of Greta.
“He’s gone now. However, we’re always conscious of the fact someone else might come looking, might realize there’s something different about Athena and her family.”
“I never suspected Greta was like her father.” She’d seemed completely normal, AKA human.
“Neither did Ares or Athena. It’s not something you can see or smell.”
They kept trudging, until Derek cursed. “Fuck, I can’t see the tracks anymore.” He pulled out his flashlight, they both did, andshone them around. However, the falling snow had obscured the paw prints they’d been following.
“Should we call for them?”
Derek pursed his lips. “I don’t want to distract if they’re fighting or hiding.”
Fighting? It made sense. For some reason as they’d walked, she’d forgotten Barry and his goons also chased Greta. She’d been more intent on finding her daughter.
Cheep.
A chirp drew their gaze to a squirrel sitting on a branch. A squirrel with a white tuft on its head, kind of like the one that leapt from the tree to frazzle Barry.
“This is going to sound strange, but I think I recognize him,” she murmured. “Pretty sure that’s the same squirrel that was in the tree Ares brought over.” The white tuft on its head was quite distinctive.
Derek chuckled. “Well, I’ll be damned. Skippy must have been hiding in it.”
“Skippy?”
“Squirrel that’s been taunting Ares for the past few years. Seems to think the whole tree farm is his domain and gives my boy shit every time he has to cut one down.”
The squirrel chattered before leaping to a branch on a tree slightly ahead and to their left. It glanced back at them and chirped some more.
“Is it just me, or does he want us to follow him?” Derek asked.
Follow a squirrel? Couldn’t be any stranger than her kid being a werewolf.
Hence, they plodded in the direction the squirrel led, with Derek watching the trees intently, enough she asked, “What are you looking for?”
“Trap markers.”
“Er, what?”
“Grams and Gramps don’t like intruders, and so they have the forest kind of booby-trapped.”
Charlotte froze in place. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Only if you don’t know what to look for.” He pointed to a tree with a nick in its bark. “That means there’s a snare, so keep to the left.”
She eyed the spot suspiciously as they passed. “How many of them are there?”
“Not as many as there used to be. Gramps has been slowly dismantling them because of Athena. Wants her to have a safe place to run when the full moon comes. So far, he’s disarmed the northern and western parts of our property. But this southern section still has a few.”
And her child and Ares and Athena were out here with them!
The squirrel kept them in sight, leaping from branch to branch until it stopped and chattered.
“I think we’re just about there. We should turn off our flashlights until we know what’s happening,” Derek suggested. They crept forward, her heart racing, her breath huffing and steaming. They paused to listen but heard nothing. Saw even less.