"What the heck are you doing in my car?!" Was Alaric's very calm reaction when he found me. I was hoping to have made it to at least Louisiana before he found me so he couldn't have turned back and brought me home.

No suck luck.

I just saw the welcome to Texas sign a couple minutes prior to falling asleep.

I mean Alaric didn't turn around. This would be a pretty boring story if he did 'then He took me back home and I missed out on the craziest adventure of my life. The end.' Alaric's excuse was "it would take too long." But he just knew he was going to be lonely.

I would be too if I was alone all summer.

I bet you're wondering what my parents thought of going to Tennessee for the rest of summer. Ok, maybe you weren't wondering that but I imagine I would be if I were I reading this.

I actually didn't tell them. I had decided my mom would probably be against me going to Tennessee for a over a month with a guy I met a couple months ago. My plan was to get there and then answer one of my mom's calls and tell her where I was. I planned to tell her I was fine and I'd be back before school started and that I would take however long of a grounding she wanted to give me- which would probably be until I was 18 and she couldn't control me anymore.

I didn't tell Ravyn either. Figured I'd do the same thing I planned to do with Mom. Tell her I was fine and where I was and not to come blah blah blah.

Now, I say "planned". Nothing I do ever goes according to plan. I'll get to that later though.

"So tell me about your pride." I ask Alaric in attempt to fill the fog of silence that had fallen upon us. I actually didn't know a whole lot about Alaric as a draki. Sure I'd become really good friends with him in the past couple months but usually Ravyn is present. We had become like, as cliche as it sounds, the three musketeers. Since Ravyn doesn't know, I found it easiest to just forget I knew and think of us as three normal human teens.

"Well... Like what?" Alaric seemed pretty surprised I had spoken. I hadn't since he found me and that was about an hour prior.

"Or just Draki in general. I mean if I'm going to spend all of summer surrounded by them I need knowledge." What I really needed was to fan out the awkwardness that was stinking up the truck. Or maybe that was just the truck's natural oder. "I mean is there anything you didn't tell me?"

"Um..." Alaric pondered for a moment "Oh." He reached over into the glove box and pulled out a safety pin and a napkin. What teenage boy keeps napkins and safety pins in his truck?

"What are you doing?" I ask.

Without acknowledging my question we poked his finder with the safety pin. Blood rushed up onto his fingertip. He took the white napkin and wiped it off. Neither of those could have been clean. I shuddered at how unsanitary that was.

"Here." He handed me the napkin.

"What? You're a living being. You bleed. I know that."

"Look at it." He said making eye contact with me through the rear view mirror.

I looked down at the napkin and for a second I actually wondered where he got white napkins because all the ones I see are brown.I'm holding Alaric's blood in my hand and I'm wondering about the napkin's home?

At first glance it looked like blood. Normal blood. Then I notice it's darker than normal. And as I look at it from different angles I find a purple sheen. His blood is purple? That's cool. I guess it meant he had to be really cautious about paper cuts and stuff but it's cool.

"Cool." I said with a small smile which probably looked psychotic since I was talking about blood but it was.

Alaric just laughed. "Can I have the napkin back, please? I am still bleeding."

I handed it to him. "So is there anything else I should know?" It might have sounded like I was suspicious but it was genuine curiosity.

The smile left over from his previous chuckle melted. He went pale. He looked like he just witnessed something terrible.

"What?" I asked. I was about to start thinking I should take over the wheel.

"Nothing." He said with a stone face. Might as well have been a robot. Did he really think saying "nothing" was going to work.

"Oh ok. I won't ask any further because it's nothing to talk about. Do you know where the next town is? I need to pee." I said sarcastically.

Alaric's eyebrows turned into a neat line. I swear sometimes I think they don't allow sarcasm in the pride. It's like a foreign concept to this guy.

"I'm kidding. Ric, what is it?" He knows I'm serious when I say 'Ric'. I never call him that.

"Not something I really want to talk about." He said. I knew I should respect that and not pry at him but I needed to know.

"I'm sorry, Alaric, but-" I noticed a gas station coming up on the road. "Oh, stop there. I really do have to pee. "

"I need gas anyway."

"We'll talk about this when we get back on the road." I said as I walked in.

You know how gas stations have reputation for having horrible bathrooms? I don't actually understand that. I've seen a lot of really, really nice gas stations. I'm not like a bathroom Connoisseur but they're not horrible.

I tried to convince Alaric he should take the chance to stop and use the bathroom too but he wouldn't. Did I ever mention how dumb he was?

Once we were back on the road I immediately brought back the previous subject.

"So tell me what it was you were going to tell me earlier."

He huffed a breath "Fine. Draki aren't the only ones that are a part of this world." I leaned forward a little, eager to hear more. "There are draki. And those that...hunt draki." He stumbled over the word hunt "And the there's the enkros." Add that to my list of weirdest words I've heard, right next to Draki.

"Wait there are humans out there that hunt Draki?" I ask him.

He just nodded. I could tell this was a delicate subject for him but I was too interested.