***
Knight’s emotions had fluctuated so rapidly in the last few minutes that all he felt now was numb. Looking at Fiona again had made his skin crawl. Her touching him had brought up memories he’d tried very hard to suppress. The call about Rook had enraged him beyond higher thought, and now Jonas was holding them all at gunpoint while God knew what was happening back in town.
One thing was crystal clear in Knight’s mind: Mitch Geary was a dirty traitor.
“I should have known better than to try to bargain with a bunch of dogs,” Fiona said. Her hand was a mess, and Knight wasn’t entirely sure she still had all of her fingers.
“Please,” Brynn said to Jonas. “Please, someone’s going to kill Rook. I need to warn him.”
Jonas hesitated, then said, “Fine, you go. Only you.”
Brynn bolted.
Fiona whined. “You were all too stupid to realize you were always being watched. Too stupid, dogs.”
“Shut up,” Jonas said. “What did you say about my father?”
She laughed. “It’s amazing what fathers will do to protect their sons. And then the fool kicked you out of town anyway. Ha!”
Knight’s temper roared. Geary had struck a deal with Fiona, ostensibly to protect Jonas. Jonas seemed utterly oblivious to all of this, and Knight felt his confusion too keenly to suspect he was faking. The air felt suddenly warmer and it crackled with energy. The strong scent of bitter orange hit him.
Fiona flung her undamaged right hand in Jonas’s direction. The air between them shimmered. He fired the rifle in the same instant he was slammed backward. He screamed, and something sizzled and filled the air with the stench of burnt cotton and hair. Fiona screeched as the random bullet hit her in the collarbone, on the same side as her broken hand.
Knight rushed Fiona. He dropped his shoulder and hit her square in the stomach, sending them both sprawling into the dirt. Her head made a delightful thud as it cracked off the ground. He rolled away, toward Jonas, intent on that rifle. He stole it away from the semiconscious man, unable to think about the wide, blistered wound on Jonas’s throat and chest. Knight pivoted on one knee and came up in a perfect crouch, the rifle braced in his armpit.
Fiona was on her knees, right hand out to her side as though gathering more heat to throw around. Blood poured from the hole in her chest, and she sobbed through obvious pain and rage. Knight steadied the laser sight over her heart, grateful the rifle was an automatic and not single-action, and prayed it was fully loaded.
“Look who’s got the upper hand,” Fiona said in a bizarre singsong voice. “You gonna kill your brother’s girlfriend’s twin sister?”
Knight doubted Brynn had any sentimental feelings for Fiona, but Knight had never killed before. Not in battle or in self-defense. As a White Wolf, he empathized with people. He helped them. He didn’t purposely cause pain or take life—he was nothing like Fiona.
“By the way,” she said, “Victoria sends her regards. Daddy.”
Knight raised the rifle a few inches and squeezed the trigger.
***
Faster, faster, faster
.
Brynn ran like she’d never run in her life, ignoring branches that scratched her and rocks that tried to trip her. She’d tried calling Rook and received no answer. She’d had enough sense and oxygen capacity to call McQueen next with a simple, “Get to the barn,” message, and then she ran faster.
She burst out of the forest at a dead run and angled for the barn. Snarls and shouts greeted her as she went inside through a large hole in the wall. She stumbled to a halt and nearly screamed.
Rook was crouched in the center of the dark barn, bleeding from more wounds than she could count, a broken piece of wood clenched in his hands like a baseball bat. Two shifted loup circled him, one black and one gray. The gray limped, and his coat was streaked with red along his left flank. The black noticed her arrival first and bared bloody teeth.
“Leave her alone,” Rook said with a primal growl.
The gray lunged at Rook. Rook swung the wood club and missed. The beast danced back out of reach.
Brynn’s entire body was on fire with a kind of hate she’d never felt before. Her skin buzzed with the need to fight, to protect, to save her mate. Her throat ached, and she released a furious growl that startled the two beasts in the barn. Without thought, Brynn grabbed a rusty shovel off the wall and charged.
The black beast ducked her swing, then snapped his powerful jaws around the shovel handle. He yanked, which knocked her off balance, but she held tight to the shovel. He twisted hard to the side and slammed his large hindquarter into her legs. Brynn fell, but she still didn’t let go of the shovel handle. She yanked hard and must have had a good angle to hurt his mouth, because the black wolf released the shovel. She whacked him in the face with the business end, and he yelped.
Rook screamed. The gray had him by the throat.
“No!” Brynn lurched to her feet, only to be knocked down again by the black. The dirty board floor scraped her knees raw, and her hip hurt from the blow. She curled toward the fallen shovel, expecting teeth to sink into her flesh at any moment.
A furious howl echoed through the barn and claws scraped across wood. She sat up and almost wept with relief. Three new shifted loup, two black and a gray, had joined the fray, all snarling their anger. They herded the attacking wolves to the other side of the barn, where the fight continued. She ignored the sounds of growling and squealing and other awful things, and she scrambled over to Rook.
He lay curled on his left side, panting hard, eyes open. Long gashes covered his legs and forearms, and one bisected the beautiful tattoo on his right bicep. She helped him roll onto his back. Horrified tears burned her eyes.
His left shoulder was a mess of ragged flesh and dirt-caked blood. The damage extended down his bicep to the elbow and up the side of his neck. Part of his ear was missing, and his hair was matted with blood and debris. A long cut came dangerously close to his left eye, which was slowly swelling shut. He looked like he’d been mauled by a wild animal—which was exactly what had happened.
Brynn yanked off her shirt, unconcerned with who saw her marching around in her undergarments, and pressed it against his shoulder. Rook hissed. His eyes rolled around, seeking something. She moved into his line of sight, then leaned down. He tried to focus, tried to speak.
“I’m here,” Brynn said. “I’m here, Rook, I’m here.”
The battle sounds behind them quieted, and the inside of her throat prickled. The sensation was similar to when Rook shifted for her. She wouldn’t look away from Rook to be sure. She kept talking, touching, kept pressure on that bleeding mess of a shoulder. “Help’s coming, I promise,” she said.
Thomas McQueen crouched on the other side of Rook, his hands and face streaked with blood, and completely naked. He swore violently, then gathered his son into his arms and lifted him as though he were a small child. McQueen didn’t speak, he just started to run.
Brynn followed him, barely able to keep up, as he raced through parts of town she didn’t know, through private backyards, on some crow’s flight path to Dr. Mike’s house. At some point, the other two beasts caught up with them. McQueen burst into the doctor’s office with a loud shout for help, then took Rook into one of the exam rooms.
Dr. Mike thundered downstairs within seconds, and Rook was lost to his care. Brynn stood in the foyer, shivering, panting, and breathless. Behind her, the two beasts were shifting back to human shape. She didn’t know what to do or what to think, so she waited until Bishop and Jillian urged her over to a couch and had her sit. Bishop opened a closet in the foyer and pulled out a few sets of sweats. He handed one set to Jillian, who put them on over her bloodstained skin.
Bishop offered her a sweatshirt, which Brynn clutched to her chest in lieu of putting it on. After he dressed, he sat down next to her and squeezed her hands. “Brynn, please, tell me what happened. Why did Alpha Geary and one of his men try to kill Rook?”
“Fiona.” Brynn explained what she knew in halting phrases, her mind still trapped in the barn. She was probably going into shock. Bishop and Jillian listened with growing incredulity as she told them about Fiona’s order to kill Rook, then Jonas killing the sniper.
“Knight and Jonas are still out there?” Bishop asked.
“Somewhere by the creek.”
“By your timeline, two more gunshots were fired after you left the creek,” Jillian said. “I heard the first as we were running, and the second as we arrived at the barn.”
Brynn hadn’t noticed the other shots. She’d been too busy trying to keep Rook from bleeding to death. She looked at the half-closed exam door, the urgent voices muffled. Rook might die. Knight could already be dead out there in the woods. And all of this would be for nothing if that happened.
The front door banged open. Devlin rushed inside, out of breath and sweating. “What’s going on?”
Bishop stood up. “I need you to stay here with Brynn.”
Devlin nodded, not even questioning the order. “Where are you going?”
“Jillian and I are going out to find Knight and Jonas.”
Devlin’s mouth opened, a question forming that he didn’t ask, even though he clearly wanted to. He stepped aside so Bishop and Jillian could leave, then crossed into the small waiting room.
“Are you injured?” he asked.
“Not really,” Brynn said. Her knees hurt and her right ankle was starting to throb—had she twisted it?
Devlin squatted in front of her and untangled her hands from the sweatshirt. She allowed him to help her put it on, unable to do it properly by herself anyway. He had to be so confused, and she couldn’t tell him anything. She didn’t know if Fiona was still a threat. Devlin stood up, then glanced at the exam room door and sniffed the air.
“How badly is Rook hurt?” he asked.
“He held off two shifted loup as a man.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Holy shit. It’s bad, then.”
“He lost a lot of blood. His father is in there, too.”
Devlin started to sit beside her. The exam door opened, and he jerked to attention. McQueen stepped out wearing only a blood-spattered surgical apron.
“Your cousin Winston is A-negative, right?” McQueen asked.
“Yes, sir,” Devlin replied.
“Get him. Rook needs blood.”
Devlin nodded and bolted, and McQueen returned to the exam room. Brynn couldn’t even speculate on how McQueen knew what Devlin’s cousin’s blood type was. All she knew was that Rook needed someone else’s blood because he’d lost so much of his own. She sank back against the sofa cushions, unable to do anything except stare at the door and hope—and hate her stupid Magus power for not seeing this betrayal coming.
Chapter Twenty-six
Coming down from the creek was an exercise in extreme patience for Knight, and he truly had none left. Jonas’s burn left him in screaming pain and was slowly making his throat swell. Instead of waiting for help to find them, they’d begun the long trek back to town with Jonas leaning against Knight for support. They kept a slow, plodding pace so that Jonas didn’t have to overwork his gradually closing windpipe and risk choking to death.
They’d left Fiona’s body where it fell in a bloody pile of bone bits and brain gore. The bitch could rot.
The forest footpath ended, and they circled around the boulder. Headlights flashed through the thin tree line, and a truck engine cut off. The lights stayed on, though, and Knight altered their direction.
“Here!” he shouted.
Two bodies crashed toward them through the underbrush.
“Knight?”
Bishop. The familiar voice loosened some of the anxiety sitting heavily on his chest. Jillian and Bishop ran toward them, both dressed in sweats they hadn’t been wearing earlier. They reeked of fresh blood and the sour tang of fear.
“Where’s Rook?” Knight asked, and Jonas followed up with, “Is he alive?”
Bishop snarled at Jonas. “He’s at Dr. Mike’s. He’s bad.”
“Jonas didn’t know,” Knight said. “Geary must have made a deal to help Fiona in exchange for not killing Jonas.”
“When?”
“No idea. Can’t you ask Geary?”
“I would, but he tried to kill Rook, so I ripped his fucking throat out.”
Knight shuddered. “Fiona’s dead.”
“Good.”
Part of Knight felt the same way. Another part of him was terrified of the way the remaining hybrids would react to her death. The night hadn’t turned out like he’d expected. The poison capsule he’d planned to use was still in his pocket, Jonas was back in their good graces, and Rook was fighting for his life.
Victoria sends her regards. Daddy.
His stomach sloshed. He gave Jonas a rude shove toward Jillian, dropped to his knees, and vomited next to a bush. Acid scorched his throat and tongue, and he retched until the liquid turned to dry heaves. Bishop was beside him, hands on his shoulders. He pulled Knight back from the mess before he could collapse into it, and they sat there in the dirt while Knight shook.
“Jillian,” Bishop said, “take Jonas to Dr. Mike’s, then come back for us.”
Knight didn’t hear if she replied, and he was only vaguely aware of the headlights disappearing. He felt like a fool for losing it so badly in front of Bishop. He also felt safe. Bishop wouldn’t make him talk about it, wouldn’t ask for details. He’d accept Knight was upset and do whatever he could to soothe the pain.
“It’s never easy,” Bishop said softly a few minutes later. “Taking a life isn’t easy.”
“She deserved it,” Knight said.
“Doesn’t mean you have to be okay with doing it.” Something in Bishop’s tone hinted that he wasn’t just talking about Knight’s kill tonight. Enemy or not, self-defense or not, Bishop had taken the life of a run Alpha. The action would have consequences.
They were waiting in the field when Jillian returned with the truck, and a scene of barely organized chaos greeted them at Dr. Mike’s. Word had gotten around, and dozens of people stood on the sidewalks and in the street, waiting for information. They were respectful enough to not pepper the trio with questions as they climbed out of the truck. The only people Knight didn’t immediately notice were the other enforcers, or the refugees from Potomac. Father was likely having the refugees detained by the enforcers until proof of loyalty was established.