Free I See You (Oracle 2) by Meghan Ciana Doidge

bigger you are, the stronger you can be.”
    “Well, you’re plenty big.”
    “Oh, yeah?” Beau wagged his eyebrows at me.
    I laughed. “We have the craziest conversations.”
    Beau instantly sobered. “We’re just getting started.”
    He leaned across the orange-carpeted hump that divided our seats and clipped something onto my necklace. I glanced down to see a tiny red vial hanging off the gold link nearest to my diamond. No, not red. Clear glass with a stopper, with something red inside it.
    I looked up at Beau.  
    “My blood. For tracking.”
    “I … I can’t …”
    “It’s not for you to use. And you won’t need to have anyone else use it unless … unless you think I’m in serious trouble. After you’ve run, like you promised.”
    I just stared at him.
    “Like you promised, Rochelle,” Beau repeated.
    I nodded.
    He reached over to take my hand, inhaling deeply as he pressed a kiss to my palm. “I’ll be able to track you anywhere,” he murmured, his magic tingling against my fingers. “I just thought you’d feel better with the same option.”
    My stomach did that weird flip it did when I wanted Beau. But since having a sexual reaction to him giving me a vial of blood was pretty creepy, I refrained from climbing into his lap like I wanted to.
    Beau smirked. He knew exactly what I was thinking.
    I laughed, then yelped when Kandy laid on her horn behind us.
    Beau snorted, dropping my hand so I could focus on the road as I carefully pulled away from the curb and drove the two blocks to the stop sign before the interstate.
    “You’re not going to need it,” Beau said. “I’d never leave your side voluntarily.”
    “Yeah? Me neither.” Keeping my tone light, I wrapped my hand around the vial and the diamond as about a dozen other RVs rolled by on the highway in front of us. “Except you keep demanding that I make all these promises to the contrary.”
    “Options,” Beau corrected. “I’m just making sure you have options.”
    I looked over at him, but he was looking away out the window at the oncoming traffic. “I don’t need options, Beau.”
    “You might.”
    I was suddenly terrified that we were having a completely different conversation than the one we’d started. One that somehow involved me leaving him.
    I gripped the steering wheel. “Not going to happen,” I said, as fiercely as I could. Then I hit the gas and turned north onto the interstate. I’d drive us to Waldport, then connect to US-34E to head east.
    Beau leaned forward and turned the radio on quietly, brushing his fingers against my knee as he withdrew his hand.
    I glanced at him and he flashed me a sad smile.
    “It’s going to be okay,” I said. “Our version of okay, at least.”
    “I know,” he answered, though I could sense that he didn’t believe himself any more than he believed me.
    More than anything else he’d said or done so far, that alone told me that Beau’s family might not be worth the trip. I seriously hoped I hadn’t made a huge mistake pushing him to act on the vision.
    But, as always, all I could control was myself and my reactions. And I knew — absolutely unequivocally — that I wasn’t going to let anyone or anything come between Beau and me.
    ∞
    The trip to Southaven took us east through Oregon and into Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, then just across the border into Mississippi. And that was the short route, according to Google Maps. The drive was supposed to take thirty-six hours, but even shapeshifters needed some sleep.
    We dry-docked at a rest stop in Utah the first night, where Kandy slept in the SUV. For the second and third nights, the werewolf insisted on a campsite and occupying the bed that the Brave’s dinette converted into.
    The vision hit me again after a late dinner somewhere in the middle of the sweltering heat of Kansas. Near Wichita, according to the interstate signage that had become a blur for me after driving for too long.