Flutter by Amanda Hocking

fifteen or twenty, and
other times there were as few as four. It depends on what kind of
mood he’s in. He’ll wipe out his entire pack for the hell of it,
and start over fresh,” Ezra talked as if he was explaining
something to me, but he started in the middle of the idea.
    “Who are you talking about?” I looked over at
him.
    “Gunnar.” His eyes went to the mirror again, as if
saying his name summoned him. “He’s led a pack in the Lapland for
the better part of three centuries. They winter up here, and summer
in Russia and Siberia.”
    “How do you know that he’s still the leader?” I
asked.
    “It’s been fifty years or more since I saw him last,”
Ezra admitted. “But when I was told of Peter’s troubles, Gunnar was
mentioned by name.”
    “So you knew exactly what you were getting into
when we came here?” I narrowed my eyes at him, and he pursed his
lips. “Then why are you so freaked out by this? If you knew that’s
who were dealing with.”
    “I was hoping to avoid him entirely. I thought we’d
find Peter and depart, before they knew we’d been here,” he sighed.
“And that’s how I know Peter’s on a suicide mission. He was with me
the last time we encountered Gunnar.”
    I sank back in the seat and finally grasped what
frazzled Ezra so much. They outnumbered us, and they were pissed
off. We had just very narrowly escaped death.
    “How do you kill a vampire?” I breathed.
    With my murder becoming increasingly imminent, I
wanted to know possible methods for my demise. Ezra once mentioned
starvation lasting for months or years led to death, but that
seemed unlikely here. I imagined something more instant, more
violent.
    “Head. Heart.” He shifted uneasily, but the car
slowed, meaning his initial panic ebbed. “Our bones are nearly
unbreakable, but another vampire could do it rather easily. We’re
our only enemy in this world.”
    The imagery of my heart getting ripped out was enough
to keep me silent for the rest of the car ride back to the hotel.
When we parked, Ezra didn’t check behind him for lycan, but I
did.
    The clerk behind the desk made googley eyes at me
when we came in, but I barely even noticed. There were far more
important things on my mind. Like how I planned on surviving.
    We made our circles wider around the lycan territory,
but after three days, we had no choice but to move in closer.
Besides that, everything Ezra heard said Peter was imbedded in
lycan land. It was all part of his suicide plan, I guess. Hang out
around them long enough until they slaughtered him.
    Since we saw the lycan, Ezra became hesitant about
bringing me with him. His whole plan for getting Peter rested on my
ability to convince him, but that wasn’t fool proof. Neither of us
were sure how he’d respond to me.
    Except… the last kiss we shared, the only time Peter
truly kissed me, I felt something different.
    Peter tasted Jack on me, he knew Jack had bitten me,
but Peter didn’t come back to kill him. Everything inside him, the
insistent bond in his blood, screamed that he should kill Jack, but
he hadn’t.
    Instead, he planned on really letting me go, not
because of his own fears or what his body demanded, but because he
knew that would be what made me the happiest. The one true kiss we
ever shared had been a kiss goodbye. Underneath all of his
chemicals and reservations, Peter had to have genuine feelings for
me, otherwise he never would’ve let me be with Jack.
    That just happened to be when Jack walked in, and he
set off an entirely different chain of events than what Peter had
in mind.
    That’s what kept me coming back out in the woods,
even with the full understanding of what we were up against. I
thought that Peter might really listen to me, and even if he
didn’t, I had to try.
    We walked through the woods in silence, but I knew
when we got closer to the lycan homeland. Ezra walked faster but
made sure his steps matched mine. He looked around more and kept
incredibly close to