Blood Rights [Wicked River 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (12 page)

The room gradually began to lighten, and Moira swore she could feel the sunlight warming her skin, even through the thick curtains. It was strange, though not necessarily uncomfortable. Gods, she had so many questions about what was happening to her, but they would have to wait.

Once Koba was home, they could tackle finding out who was doing this to them and why. They’d deal with the Shadow Walker problem. Figuring out a way for the pack to accept her would be a little more difficult, but they’d do that, too. Then, when things were back to their version of normal, she’d sit down and grill Casey about what he knew until his ears bled.

“Did Joss come back?”

“He’s in the back room with Casey. The rest of my team is tracking the Walker. I’m just waiting to hear something.”

“We’re going to get him back, Brock.” The hollowness in his voice was scaring her. She was a total mess on the inside, and maybe it wasn’t fair, but she needed Brock to be the strong one and make everything okay. For once, Moira didn’t have a plan, she didn’t know what to do, and she didn’t want to make the decisions. “Brock, please.”

“I met Koba outside of a bar in Atlanta. I was on my way home when he comes running out of nowhere and knocks us both to the ground. You wouldn’t expect someone his size to be adorable, but the way he blushed and apologized was cute as hell.”

There hadn’t been a question, and Moira didn’t think Brock was looking for commentary, so she stayed quiet, hoping he’d continue with the story.

“I knew right away he was my mate, but I didn’t want any part of it.”

A twinge of guilt pierced her chest, but Moira pushed it aside quickly. It was in the past, and the fault for their separation belonged to neither of them. Part of her felt sad for all the time they’d lost, but there was another part of her that was glad for it. If Brock hadn’t left, they may never have found Koba.

“Well, he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. You know how he is.” A quiet chuckle vibrated through Brock’s chest. “Once I finally stopped fighting, it was so easy to fall in love with him.” He kissed the top of her head tenderly. “One more thing you two have in common.”

“What happened?” It was a sweet story, but the tension in Brock’s muscles said the big “bad” was coming.

“We’d been living together for a couple of months. One night, Koba decided he wanted ice cream. He walked in on an armed robbery at the convenience store down the street from where we lived. I didn’t even know about it until I woke up to one of the pack betas pounding on the door.”

Moira bit down hard on her lip to keep from making a sound, but she couldn’t stop the moisture that gathered in her eyes. She really didn’t want to hear anymore, but apparently Brock hadn’t reached the moral of his story yet.

“He was shot three times, twice in the chest and once in the neck. If he hadn’t been a lycan, he would have died right there on the floor. I sat with him in the hospital, listening to the doctors go on about what a miracle it was. The only miracle I could see was that someone out there had decided that I deserved a second chance, and I promised that I’d never let anything like that happen to him again.”

Yet, it was happening. “This isn’t your fault.”

Brock took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he rested their foreheads together. “I know, baby. That doesn’t change the fact that he’s gone, and it could have just as easily been you.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to inform him that she was capable of taking care of herself, but she choked back the argument at the last second. That wasn’t the point. Someone had taken Koba, and Brock hadn’t been able to prevent it. No one pointed the finger at him, but that didn’t stop her mate from blaming himself.

Words were just words, and in this case, she had nothing to say that wouldn’t sound trite and clichéd. “We should eat something.”

“I feel like I have a steel ball in the pit of my stomach.”
Brock’s thoughts drifted into her head as clearly as though he’d spoken them aloud. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

“How long has the team been gone? Should they be back soon?” She didn’t much feel like eating, either, but cooking breakfast for everyone would give her something to do while they waited for information.

“Where are they? Did they find him? Maybe the Walker is already dead. Joss didn’t look very optimistic when he came back. I can’t tell her that, though. I don’t want Mo to worry. Fuck, how am I going to find Koba without that damn Walker?”

“Brock?” His chaotic thoughts beat against her brain, making her temples throb and her forehead ache. She had to figure out how to control it, because she couldn’t be debilitated by the noise in her head for the rest of her life.

“I hear someone coming now.”

Was he lying? Moira didn’t hear anything other than the beating of her own heart. Fortunately, before she could accuse him of dishonesty, there were footsteps thudding across the front porch, followed by a knock on the door. “I got it.”

Jumping up from Brock’s lap, she hustled to greet their guests, anxious for any news they could give her. Rays of sunlight spilled into the room when she opened the door, and Moira had only a split second to recognize Gatlan, one of the team members, before scorching pain sizzled through her body.

Unable to hold herself up against the pain, she fell to the floor and curled into a ball, gasping and screaming as her skin burned as though the fires of hell engulfed her. The putrid smell of burning flesh reached her nostrils, but she couldn’t uncurl herself from her tightly wrapped fetal position to investigate.

“Shut the door!” Casey yelled as he ran into the living room, shoving Gatlan out of the way and slamming the door.

Brock was across the room in a flash, lifting Moira into his arms and carrying her down the hall to her private bathroom. “Shh, baby. It’s okay. Everything is okay.” Holding her with one arm, he turned on the shower and stepped inside, both of them completely clothed.

Chewing on her bottom lip, Moira sucked in deep breaths through her nose, trying to quell the whimpers she could feel trying to rise up through her throat. She didn’t cry, and she damn sure didn’t whimper. It was hard to remember that when it felt like her skin was melting off her bones, though.

“I’m sorry.” Casey stumbled to a stop just outside the bathroom door. “I should have warned you. I didn’t think.”

“You can walk in the sun.” Was that her voice? It sounded hoarse and raspy as though she’d just chain-smoked a carton of cigarettes.

“I’m more wolf than demon,” Casey explained. “I don’t think that’s the case for you, Moira. I’m sorry.”

She really wished he’d stop apologizing to her. It was her own fault for not finding out everything she could about her nature. In her defense, she’d never met another demon that she knew of, and other paranormals weren’t keen on talking about the species. The little bit she knew, her mother had told her, but it mostly amounted to never claim a mate and always stay hidden.

Well, she couldn’t hide anymore. Several people had seen her shift during the night. News was sure to spread quickly. It was possible that her own pack would come with torches and pitchforks to personally hand her over to the former alpha.

“She’ll heal. She’ll be fine. Gotta be strong, but fuck, it looks bad.”

Moira couldn’t even bring herself to inspect the damage done to her body, but from the franticness of Brock’s thoughts, she assumed it was awful.

“I should have told her. I should have warned her. Crap, Brock is going to kill me.”

“Brock is not going to kill you,” Moira assured the wolf. “Everyone just needs to calm down. I’m going to be fine.” She didn’t feel fine, but thankfully, the mind reading didn’t work in reverse.

“Go find out what’s going on,” Brock ordered. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No,” Brock answered firmly when Casey left the room. “You are going to bed, and you aren’t going to argue with me.”

“Oh, no?” He had some nerve telling her what she was and was not going to do. Koba was just as much her mate as he was Brock’s, and if there was information waiting that could help find him, she wasn’t going to let a little sun stop her from getting it.

“No. Even if you could come out in the sun, I wouldn’t let you go with me. I don’t know how cooperative our Walker will be or what I’ll have to do to get him to talk. You think I want you seeing something like that?”

“I’m not some kind of delicate flower, Brock. I know how this whole interrogation thing works.”

Brock grunted, shut off the water, and stepped out of the shower. Then he set her on her feet, making sure she was steady before releasing her, and smirked. “Okay, you can come.”

“Really?” Well, that had gone better than she expected.

“Yep.” He backed slowly out of the bathroom door, still smiling in that way that she didn’t trust. “All you have to do is figure out how to get to the barn without going up in flames. I’ll meet you there.”

* * * *

The energy he sent out crackled through the damp air, pulsing around them like a living thing. Koba knew the exact moment that his captors felt it. All heads snapped around, and heavy-lidded, glazed eyes stared in his direction.

All four men shuffled forward, converging on the place where Koba still sat on the floor. It was kind of like watching zombies mindlessly stalking their pray. At that moment, with his powers cranked to full power and his pheromones permeating the room, there was nothing on their minds but him—just as he’d wanted.

The Walker hissed and retreated back to his dark corner when the sunlight scorched his flesh, but his gaze never left Koba. Unhindered by the bright rays, the lycans continued prowling toward him, their snarls growing louder with each step.

“Mine!”

“No, he’s mine!”

“I want him.”

The trancelike movements vanished, and the wolves pounced on him, pulling his hair and groping his chest. The hands on him made his stomach roll, but he kept his face impassive and didn’t struggle. “Untie me,” he whispered seductively. “It’ll be a lot more fun if you untie me.” And he wouldn’t break his wolf’s front legs by trying to shift with his hands tied behind his back.

The Walker growled and hissed from the corner, pacing next to the sunbeams but never coming closer. When one of the lycans leaned in to sniff at his hair, Koba turned his head fractionally, placing his lips right next to the man’s ear. “You can have me all to yourself, you know. You don’t have to share.”

The bindings on his wrist loosened at the same moment the man sniffing his hair went very still except for the vibrating of his muscles. Then he leaned away slowly, his eyes cutting to the man beside him with a wild, jealous gleam.

Rolling his head on his shoulders, Koba nudged the shoulder of the lycan currently untying him. “They don’t want you here,” he mumbled, planting the seed that was going to hopefully get him free. “Let’s go somewhere we can be alone. You deserve to have an omega all to yourself.” Koba sent out another little burst of power to punctuate his statement.

“He’s coming with me.”

“No, he’s mine!”

“I saw him first.”

“You wouldn’t even know what to do with him.”

A fist shot out, connecting squarely with another man’s nose. Another fist came out of nowhere, hitting the first attacker in the jaw. Then all hell broke loose as the lycans wrestled each other to a writhing heap on the cement floor, clawing, biting, hitting, and kicking.

And there was his opportunity.

It took longer than he would have liked to finish removing the ropes, but Koba was already in the midst of his transformation by the time the bindings fell away. With his captors’ attention firmly on one another, Koba pushed up from the floor, shook out his shaggy gray coat, and sprinted for the workbench just under the row of windows.

The Walker lunged for him but fell back against the wall with a yelp, leaving Koba clear to leap up onto the bench. Rising up on his back legs, he pawed at the windows and pushed with his snout. If he couldn’t get a window open, he was as good as dead in about the next sixty seconds.

By some miracle, the third window swung outward, allowing him to shove his head through and claw at the grass outside while his back legs scrambled against the cinderblocks, trying to get enough traction to propel him up and through. It was a tight squeeze, and for a moment, he didn’t think he’d fit. Once he was slithering on his belly in the dewy grass, however, there was no time to rest or even be thankful that he’d escaped.

Loud, vicious barking rang throughout the basement and battered against the windows with such force that it cracked the glass. With single-minded determination, Koba ran hard and fast, throwing up clumps of dirt behind him as he sprinted for the trees to the north. He needed cover, and judging by the sound of breaking glass behind him, he needed it fast.
 

“He was scared as shit when we caught up to him, and he didn’t fight.” Gatlan trotted beside Brock on the way across the back field toward the barn. “He hasn’t said anything, but I don’t think it would take much to make him talk.”

“Thanks, Gat. You guys did good. Take everyone up to the house, shower, and grab something to eat. I’ll take it from here.”

“You sure? He’s a little thing, but you know how those Walkers are.”

“I’m going with him.” Casey patted Gatlan on the shoulder and gave him a little push. “Get some food and then some rest. We’re going to need you guys tonight.”

With obvious reluctance, Gatlan nodded and ushered the other two men across the field, though he kept shooting glances over his shoulder as they went. “Should I go with them?” Joss didn’t look any more excited than Gatlan about the possibility of being sent away, but at least he’d offered.

“They’ll be fine.” Brock just wanted to get this over with. He didn’t relish in the idea of hurting anyone, but he’d do what was necessary to find his mate and bring him home. Part of him felt sorry for the Walkers. None of them had asked for what was done to them, but the minute they’d started attacking innocent people, they’d become paranormal enemy number one.