Chapter 29

Stella opened up her mouth but no words came out. “It’s—just—I,” she began, trying to deflect.

This was clearly why the elders didn’t want anyone leaving the compound—lest their legendary pack secrecy be foiled by wedding invites.

“All right. I’ve packed and dialed up the jet,” Zach announced, looking at his phone while coming down the mansion’s stairs. He was bringing a smart-looking black-wheeled bag with him and he hauled up short when he saw Andi.

Andi looked between the two of them, her jaw dropping slowly. “Are you… ” she began, grinning.

“No,” Zach said as if to cut off her imagination. “Whatever you’re thinking, it is not that.”

“Damian told me you were taking a vacation—he just didn’t say it was this kind of vacation.” Andi’s dark eyes flashed to Stella’s for confirmation of this fact.

He had made her wait in the car, after all. Stella put her hand to the side of her face, to hide her expression from Zach, and then gave Andi a conspiratorial wink.

Zach groaned, putting his bag in the backseat. “Whatever you do, do not tell Austin,” the werewolf implored her, rounding the car.

“I knew it!” Stella said, triumphantly, whapping her hand on the dashboard.

Andi laughed at everything. “I think I can manage to keep my mouth shut. Have fun you two—bon voyage!” She blew them kisses and waved furiously as Zach put the car in reverse.

ZACH SEEMED subdued on the way to the airport, and she decided not to push her luck. If Maddox thought he was vital to her mission, he must be. And soon she was distracted by the planes flying overhead. She’d seen planes in the sky her whole life, but being near them was another thing entirely as Zach drove them to the airport’s edge.

He rolled down his window and flashed ID, which opened up a gate, and then they were driving onto an immense field of asphalt, almost as far as the eye could see.

“The TSA would have a field day with half your bag, so you’re lucky you’re with me. I’ve put us on the books as official Blackwood Industries business, and we can skate under the radar.”

“Thanks,” she told him and meant it. Everything would go according to plan, and for some reason, Zach was part of it. She just had to trust it would all workout.

Even if trusting was hard.

Zach drove them along the edge of the airfield, following a yellow line painted on the ground, until they reached a massive hangar that looked bigger than her pack’s entire compound. He put the car in park, got his bag out, and she mirrored him on the opposite side. Then he rapped twice on the car’s hood and it took off, back to Damian’s, she presumed.

Stella resolved to act nonplused as she followed Zach into the hangar’s interior where a private jet was waiting, as promised, painted a shiny taupe color, with the shadow of three massive black trees painted on the side.

“It’s the Blackwood logo,” Zach said when he noticed her looking. As they approached, the stairs lowered down, and a man in a uniform pushing additional stairs rolled up.

Another cheerful, uniformed man popped out at the top door and started latching the external stairs to the side. “Good to see you again, sir!” he said.

“And you,” Zach agreed, with a pleasant wave. “Would you like me to get that for you?” he asked her, gesturing for her duffle bag.

“Don’t be silly,” she told him, following him up.

INSIDE, the plane was set up like a small, narrow living room, with overly cushioned black leather chairs, low black tables, black carpeting, and a black door in the back.

“We’ll be serving ourselves today,” Zach announced as they boarded. “Both of you, please stay in the cabin.”

The captain nodded and retreated into the nose of the plane, as did his assistant. She heard the clatter of the stairs outside being rolled away and felt an engine thrum beneath her feet.

Stella sat down quickly across from Zach, fastening her seatbelt the same way he did. He only had eyes for the door to the front cabin, though— it wasn’t until it was locked that he began to relax.

“I’m around Damian as myself often enough that they assume I’m one of his bodyguards, in this guise,” he said, returning his attention to her.

The jet had more room than the car they’d just come from, but somehow he still felt too close. “So it’s safe to speak?” she as

“Oh yeah,” Zach said, kicking back a little. “We could murder someone in here and get away with it.”

Stella let her gaze rove around the small chamber. “I won’t ask you how you know.”

He chuckled, and the plane lurched beneath them. She gasped and grabbed the handles of the seat.

So much for staying nonplussed.

“Have you ever flown before?” he inquired and must have read the answer on her face. “Well, a Bombardier Global 8000 will spoil you for commercial. Actively swallow when we go up, it’ll help your ears.”

She gritted her teeth through their taking off, but being in midair didn’t feel all that much safer. They eventually leveled, some bell dinged, and Zach undid his seatbelt, starting to walk around. She was going to do no such thing, although she was glad when he returned with a small plate of meats, cheeses, and olives, putting it on the table between them. She forced herself to eat it for sheer fueling-up reasons, even though being in the sky was making her stomach do loop-de-loos.

“Now that I’ve got you alone and trapped… ” Zach began.

Stella felt her eyebrows crawl up her forehead. “Wow, just what every woman wants to hear.”

He laughed again, looking at her—“too openly” was the only phrase to describe it. With his ice-blue eyes and his full lips slightly pursed—she fought the urge to run away.

They were in a metal tube in the sky—there was nowhere to run to.

Then he gathered himself and stared at her seriously. “Be honest, Stella. Do you believe all that BS?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, trying to politely extricate olive pits from her mouth and put them on her plate without wiping all of her lipstick off.

“Let’s start with the part where your pack leader predicts the future and work from there.”

Stella groaned. “Oh, God, Zach.”

“Come on, it’s a valid question,” he pressed. “I don’t mind working with you—on the contrary—but if I’m going to trust you with my life, on some mysterious ‘mission,’ I need to make sure we’re on the same page. At least the same reality.”

“Fine,” she admitted. “He probably… I don’t know… guessed things.”

Because if all Starry Sky plans were always perfect, Remi wouldn’t have had to die.

“Did you tell him—or anyone—that you were going to go check out Larios’s mansion this morning?”

She shook her head. “No.” She hadn’t even told the girls when she’d snuck out—and she was a lot better at it than Callie was. “You did see him tear those papers up on the bed, though. Those were plane tickets.”

Zach frowned. “I didn’t get a good look at them.”

“Well, I did, and they were. He knew you were coming with me. Even before you knew yourself.”

Zach grunted. “But you’ve never been on a plane, you say?”

“No.” Which was very much why she was trying not to look out the windows. The ground shouldn’t be so far away; it wasn’t right.

“So most of your missions are closer to home?”