Do any of you listen to Steven Universe covers? I love them. Check out this one, Familiar, which goes with the title of this chapter.

The DGSE don't smash down the door.

They knock.

So frustratingly proper.

Meanwhile in the garage, Erik and Bently load food and weapons into the back of Erik's sports car. Colton and I, with guns in our hands, crouch in the doorway connecting the garage to the kitchen.

"Do you think they have a battering ram?"

Colton throws me a look filled with so much loathing I feel I need to apologize for asking such a question. Why would they have a battering ram? That's extreme.

"They wouldn't come all this way without one."

I nod. Gripping the gun tighter, I adjust my weight to my back leg. Wait. I look back at him. "So, they do have a battering ram?"

He throws me the same look, and this time I do apologize.

Either Bently or Colton slams the trunk, and I jump.

"We're ready," Bently announces at the same time the front door splinters, and a man dressed in a soldier's uniform appears in the doorway, his leg slightly raised. He actually kicked down the door. Now that seems extreme.

Colton slams our door shut and points his gun at the garage door as Erik flings it up, revealing a tiny but empty driveway.

Erik gets in the driver's seat while Bently and Colton claim the backrow. I slip in the front passenger seat, and Erik throws the car in reverse. I grip the handle over the door. Bently swears.

As Erik gets the car onto the road and in the right direction, I'm thrown forward and back. He steps on the gas, and though I can't see the DGSE, I hear sirens.

Erik grins at me.

"Eyes on the road."

"Just like old times."

I rub my temples. Yes, just like old times. I'm confronted with images of Erik and I in this same position, me in the passenger seat with no idea how to drive and Erik racing down some empty road. It seemed like we were always either being chased or shot at. Or both.

Flashing lights appear behind us.

This time it's not the same old story; I know how to drive. But Erik and I still aren't getting along. If we're pulled over, there's still some form of doom involved. Other than me knowing how to drive, it really is still the same old story. Boring? Maybe. Though rebels and shootouts kept it interesting in the past. Erik may have shoved me off my timeline long enough to live past my Expiration Date, but it seems as if we're cursed to live our lives in loops.

"You want to crawl in the back and fire at that thing?" he asks, referring to the gun on my thigh.

In the past, I was never too concerned about killing someone. Expiration Dates for all their faults usually insured that I wouldn't kill anyone.

Unless we both were just extremely unlucky and it was their Date.

But here, in France, my bullet won't miss because an Expiration Date says no. No, my bullet will strike true.

Colton, Erik, and Bently are immortal for all intents and purposes. Me, no, but that hasn't stopped people from firing at me. If I crawl in the back—and what? Break a window?—and shoot, I could kill someone and start a war. If the French fire first, I could be killed or we could be taken into custody, but the Society wouldn't declare war mainly because the first-in-command is on a different planet and the second-in-command knows the situation could more or less be considered our fault.

"I'm not firing at them."

Erik huffs. "Fine then." He whips the car into a roundabout, racing out of it at the first exit. The houses blur into a smear of color and then we're on a backroad, trees lining one side of the street, the backs of houses the other.

Despite Erik's maniacal driving, the French gain on us.

"If she's not going to defend us," Erik says, "will one of you two do something?"

Neither of them responds.

"If it's war you're worried about, I hate to tell you that we've probably already started it."

The leading vehicle, a black SUV, is about to approach tailgating territory.

His jaw set, Erik's knuckles are white, and I feel us gaining speed. Up ahead the road curves.

I become acutely aware of each beat of my heart. Erik has never been one to be sensible around curves. When we fled from rebels in the mountains surrounding the Estate, the curves were sharp and numerous. I still don't know how we didn't plummet off a cliff.

The SUV rams our bumper, shoving us forward and swerving us left and right. Erik swears, steadying us out and decreasing our speed in time to make it around the curve.

Colton grips the back of my seat, his knuckles digging into my shoulders. "Think you can call off your girlfriend, Bently?"

Bently shoots back a remark I can't make out, but it sounds scathing.

"Girlfriend?" Erik manages to ask as he swerves around a little yellow car.

"Abella." Colton's grip tightens on the seat.

Erik's eyebrows draw together, and he glances up in the rearview mirror, but I don't know if it's to see Bently or the French. There are four cars in their pack, and I have no idea if Abella or Alix are in any of them.

I wipe my hand across my thigh. "Can you please save all romantic inquires until after the ride is over?"

The line of trees morphs into a wheat field.

"You know, Iris, I was trying to take our minds off our impending doom." He cuts me a glare and whips the steering wheel right, breaking through a wooden fence and plunging into the wheat stalks.

The rest of us swear. The windshield is covered in yellow stalks flying up as we trample their friends below our wheels.

The back windshield is still clear, giving a perfect view of the French following us into the field.

"How far is it?" Bently asks over the sound of shearing.

"Usually an hour but I wasn't expecting to take the scenic route."

I ask what's at the end of the field, and he replies with a wildlook in his eye and a grin. "No idea."

It turns out to be a field of white flowers.

Erik doesn't hesitate to break through the fence again, and splintered pieces fly up, hitting the windshield. Erik tears through the flowers. The flowers don't soar up around us creating a cascade of snowy white. They just get trampled.

Two ear-splitting cracks resound through the air, and a hole appears in the middle of the front windshield. Cracks spiral out from it like a web. A glance back shows an identical hole in the rear windshield.

"I may not be Tresais anymore and not into the whole politics thing, but they shot first. Doesn't that mean if anyone's going to declare war it's us? I think it's—"

"Unless that was them declaring war." Bently's tone is flat.

"Iris," Erik says, "do you think you'd be able to shoot out their tires like you did before? Not them, just their tires."

I'd have to punch out more of the window, and they'll surely fire at me. They don't know I can be killed. Even if it's war they want, killing the other leader's future wife would be asking for more than war—I don't know what that would be.

But something has to be done if we're going to get away.

I pass Colton my gun and unbuckle, climbing into the back between him and Bently. The gunshot hole is right in the middle.

"I need a shirt."

"Usually I'd be happy to strip for you, my dear, but I'm a bit preoccupied at the moment." Erik's voice is strained.

Grumbling, Bently pulls off his shirt. His skin, warm, presses against me as I situate myself on my knees and wrap the shirt around my hand.

"Cover your eyes." I punch the crack. Glass flies, and I try to shield Bently's bare torso. The thought that my instinct was to cover him scares me. I shouldn't care. He tried to kill me in the past. What are a few nicks from glass?

I use his shirt to clear a place for my arm as glass digs into my legs through my leggings.

A bullet hits our trunk.

"Are you capable of firing that gun or do you need me to show you?" Bently snaps.

I jam my tennis shoe into his leg. "How about I demonstrate my capabilities on you?"

I take aim at the SUV's front tire. One well-placed bullet will do it. I curl my finger over the trigger—

and slam against Colton as our car hits a bump. Letting out a grumble about Erik's driving, I right myself. I take a breath, aim, and fire. The bullet hits the tire with a pop, and the SUV swerves. The car behind it, T-bones it, and the two other vehicles whip around them, narrowly missing the collision.

"You were saying, Bently?" Erik's voice drips sickly sweet.

Beside me, Bently grabs his gun and turns around to face his seat. I wince, thinking about the glass that must be digging into him, knowing the feeling because I'm experiencing it.

"I'm not about to let you have all the fun." A bullet breaks through what's still left of the windshield, soaring over his and Erik's heads before exiting out the front windshield.

Swearing, Bently aims and fires. The nearest vehicle, a sports car swerves, its front tire now ruined.

I don't look at Bently, but I can feel his eyes shift to me.

I take aim at the last vehicle, another SUV, but so does Bently. We both pull our triggers, and the SUV's tire pops, the tire I was aiming for. The car veers into a tree.

Bently gives me a look like it was his bullet that landed, and maybe it did or maybe it was both of ours, but I'm never going to concede that to him.

Do you love #bookstagram? Check out mine @  oflightsandfairies. I like posting and looking at pretty pictures of books. Do you have a bookstagram?

Finally, don't forget to check out and share the pilot for Expiration Date!