Marked (The Pack)
Authors: Suzanne Cox
Table of Contents
The Pack
Marked
By
Suzanne Cox
The Pack (Book 1)
Marked
Copyright © 2012 by Suzanne Cox
eBook Edition: ISBN 13: 978-0-9859049-1-3 (10: 0985904917)
Print Edition: ISBN 13: 978-0-9859049-0-6 (10: 0985904909)
Cover Art - Claudia at Phatpuppy Art
Typography Ashley at Bookish Brunette
Layout and Formatting - Lasting Impressions eBook Creations
Published by Suzanne Cox Books
This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to people either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination.
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Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination, or are used in a fictitious situation. Any resemblances to actual events, locations, organizations, incidents or persons – living or dead – are coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.
Other Books by Suzanne Cox
Harlequin SuperRomance
A Different Kind of Man
Unexpected Daughter
One Man To Protect Them
Young Adult
Breathe (Atlantis Series Book One) Available July 2012
The Pack series Book Two available Winter 2012
Chapter One
My leg trembled while warm droplets trickled along my bare upper thigh. Heat from the sun burned through the window but still my skin remained cold as ice. I crushed my eyelids together, not wanting to look, to see what I already knew I’d find. My eyes opened, I guess my body knew the sooner I looked the sooner this might end. Burgundy rivulets of blood wound a path along my skin. I tried to shout, but I was paralyzed. It was kind of like when you’re half awake but still asleep. You can hear someone coming to get you, but you can’t move, can’t do one single thing about it.
“Alexis.”
With a jerk, I opened my eyes that hadn’t been open at all. The cup of watered down soda I’d been holding hit the floorboard and I scrambled to grab it before the liquid inside could leak onto the rubber mat. I stuck the cup in the closest cup holder while I mopped at the water that had dripped onto my leg from the bottom of the cup. Had I been sleeping? I didn’t think so, though lately I couldn’t be so sure. I glanced to my mom in the front passenger seat. Then I remembered where I was, where I was going, and a million reasons I wanted to jump out of the car and run home. Except home was hundreds of miles behind me.
“Are you all right?”
From the front seat my mom regarded me in the mirror of the flipped down sun visor. I’d seen that look more than once over the last year, way more.
“I’m fine, why?”
“You were making weird noises.”
“Was I?” I fiddled with the seatbelt not meeting her eyes again.
“Yes, you were.”
“I was daydreaming, I guess.” I looked over at my newly acquired stepdad, who was driving. He stared at the road ahead, not speaking, the same thing he’d done for most of this trip. My mother had thought this drive south from our home in the suburbs of Chicago would be fun, a bonding experience. It had been more like an experience in torture, silent torture. I couldn’t blame him. Aaron was a nice guy and I liked him. He knew I wasn’t happy about what they were doing to me. He’d had the decency not to try and convince me I was getting a good deal by staying with my aunt, who I barely knew, while they toured Europe for a belated honeymoon. My mother, on the other hand, was not so decent.
“You’re going to enjoy the summer here, Alexis.”
I didn’t answer immediately but stared out the window at the trees that barricaded the sides of the road. Occasionally, a brackish stand of water would appear among the tree trunks with moss hanging from the branches, dipping gray tentacles into the dirty liquid that likely held a million squirming snakes and maybe even an alligator. Yeah, this totally looked like somewhere every girl wanted to spend her summer.
“Don’t know why I couldn’t stay with some of my friends,” I muttered.
At this point, my mom turned around in her seat to face me. I could see the lecture coming. I’d heard it before, and for a moment I wondered what had happened to my mom and me. We used to never argue, never disagree. She used to trust me.
“If I recall correctly, all your friends were otherwise occupied this summer. One in rehab and one under house arrest, right?”
“Which is exactly why I could have stayed at one of their houses. One wouldn’t have been home anyway, and what could Lindsey and I have done? She has that bracelet on her ankle and she can’t leave.”
“Alexis, she burglarized people’s homes.”
I started to say that the people Lindsey stole from were wealthy and wouldn’t miss the stuff anyway. It wasn’t like Lindsey wasn’t wealthy herself. In the end my mom would say stealing was stealing. In the end, she was right, but I wasn’t the one who’d stolen things. I hadn’t used drugs with Kat, which finally ended up putting her in rehab. But they were the people who had befriended me the first day of sophomore year, and at last I’d been pulled from the sea of nothingness to the island of popularity. I certainly didn’t want to have to come to… where was it? Lebeaux, Louisiana, and either make new friends or have none for the next few months. When I went back home at the end of the summer my friends would still be my friends. I wasn’t going back to life as it had been before they pulled me in. I didn’t have to steal with them or do drugs with them, but I did want to be with them, be part of them. Something my mom couldn’t seem to grasp.
In front, my mom had turned back around and I saw that glance again in the mirror. Like she was trying to see past my skin, deep inside of me, but couldn’t quite get there and couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong with me. That was the real reason I was being sent here. Something was wrong with me, and she didn’t know where to turn.
“Aaron, pull over!” my mom shouted, making me jerk in my seat.
Gravel crunched under the tires as he immediately wheeled the rental SUV into the parking area next to a black iron fence that encircled a large cemetery. My mother rolled down her window, then waved at Aaron and magically my window lowered. I sighed, resigning myself to another history lesson.
“Look, Alexis. I bet most of those headstones are over a hundred years old.”
Admittedly, she was likely right on that point. The stones in the graveyard were weathered and worn, some with crumbled pieces lying on the grass. A few benches were scattered around and I smiled wondering if visitors actually wanted to sit in the cemetery and pass the time. Huge trees with long flowing branches, some of which touched the ground, stood like guardians. Live oaks, my mom stated, also hundreds of years old. That had to be a joke, right? Live oaks in a cemetery? My mother, the amateur history buff, began to expound to us the details of the fencing and its “fleur de lis” pattern. To me, it mostly looked like a flower with peelings hanging down. As she droned on, I scanned the area wishing I was anywhere else. Then, at the very back of the cemetery fence, I saw it.
Straightening, I unbuckled my seatbelt and stuck my head through the window trying to get a better view. A dog -a huge one- flashed its blonde bushy tail and seemed to stare straight at me. Well, I might have imagined that. It was a dog after all. Even from here I could see the hazy blue of the late evening sky reflected in the animal’s eyes. With a swish of its tail it started moving, fast, in our direction, covering the ground of the cemetery faster than I thought possible. Its teeth seemed to be bared, though I couldn’t be sure. But I wasn’t going to wait until the dog slobber hit me in the face to find out. I fell back inside.
“Aaron, windows, windows, up hurry.”
The electric window seemed to move in slow motion as the huge dog leapt the black fence with little effort. Front feet slammed against the SUV and it rocked precariously. There was a collective whoosh of air as all three of us gasped. The animal balanced on its back legs, dripping saliva onto my window. Then, as quickly as it appeared, it dropped to all fours and disappeared into the woods.
