Chapter 84. She Bore No Claim

Elizabeth POV

I had lost all sense of time during the drive. At first, every mile that clicked by on the odometer had felt like an eternity, and then, as darkness swallowed the winding road, time became meaningless. Thirty minutes—or was it an hour?—ago, Alpha had turned off the paved highway onto a series of narrow, pothole-ridden back roads. The headlights danced over gnarled tree roots and rocks that jutted up like sleeping beasts, and my stomach had knotted itself into tighter and tighter loops with every bump. My heart pounded in sync with each thud of the suspension. I felt like a prisoner on a never-ending journey, each second amplified in my mind, a metronome of dread.

The forest outside the windows had grown thick enough that moonlight rarely pierced the canopy. Tall pines, their trunks black silhouettes against the night sky, pressed in on both sides of the car, making it feel as though we were being swallowed by ancient wood. My fingers pressed into my thighs,