Redemption (6 page)

Strengthening The Alliance offered a formidable barrier between the NAH and Paraspecies lands, which ensured the safety of the packs and dens battling on the front lines. If there was a facility in Hell’s Playground, shutting it down could strike a major blow to their enemy.

A part of him wanted to protect her. Another wanted nothing to do with her. The latter was losing ground quickly, though, as his mind processed her story. Regardless of the outcome, Adrik needed to see this through for closure. Heading into Hell’s Playground was dangerous, but at least it gave him a chance to reconcile his emotions with the events—see for himself if what she said was true. More importantly, he owed it to himself and the pack to figure out if his wolf could move on from the woman he’d intended to mate. Hell, maybe everything she said was true and everyone could move past the two miserable years she’d been gone.

The flyers had wanted to question Mira immediately, but Jarvis and Adrik had managed to prevent that—thank fuck. His wolf couldn’t handle much more when it came to the female. Questions consumed him. Scenarios unmanned him.

He took a deep breath and entered the room where he’d had her quartered. On a primal level he’d known the location wasn’t wise, but he didn’t give a damn. Trusting her protection to anyone else was out of the question.

His gaze slid across the empty bed, past the vacant sofa and settled on the huddled mass of bloody filth in the corner of the room nearest the window. Guilt gnawed his insides. They’d been too harsh on her earlier.

Treating her like shit, questioning her as though she was a traitorous bitch had been hard, but necessary. The pack didn’t trust her and neither would the flyers. Hell, he was foolish to believe her story, but it was Mira. The woman he’d intended to revolve his world around.

What choice did he have?

He closed the door and flicked the lamp on. The lone, rarely used light source cast a pale yellow glow. A halo of dust drifted in the room. Funny how he hadn’t noticed the small details before now. He hadn’t used his bedroom in weeks. Grabbing a few hours of sleep on a cot in the warrior barracks made more sense, kept him closer to the perimeter and his men.

He walked over and checked the never-used thermostat. Was eighty three degrees too warm for a human? Probably. He adjusted it down a bit, but not too far. Doc had done a rudimentary evaluation of her condition before he’d let them remove her from Medical. She was a mess, but the white dragon healer thought he could heal most of her ailments once she was cleaned up.

“Why did you bring me here?”

He looked over at the huddled mass and stared into the cautious hazel eyes regarding him through a mop of muddied hair so ratted and tangled it’d take a decade to brush. His fingers itched to do exactly that. Caring for her, tending her every need, had once been his deepest desire.

“I didn’t think you’d be comfortable in the barracks, especially tonight. We had a large infusion of people because of some attacks on NAH buses on their way here.”

She huddled deeper into herself when he took a couple of steps forward and tossed his weapon belt on the end table beside his bed. Fuck. What the hell did he think he was doing?

He wasn’t a white dragon with excellent bedside manners, or a beta wolf capable of channeling his inner whatever. He didn’t know the slightest thing about making Mira feel secure.

“Doc’s going to come around soon, take a look at your injuries. You should get cleaned up some. There are some fresh clothes here for you.” He motioned toward the untouched pile of stuff.

Silence engulfed the room.

“I can call Peyton to help, if you want.”

“No.”

The shrieked response made him wince. “I know y’all didn’t get off on the right foot, but she means well.”

“She threatened to hang me by my toes and skin me in the square.”

“She’s overly dramatic. I’ll handle her.”

“I remember her wanting you to handle her,” she whispered.

Adrik’s jaw twitched. “There was never anything there.”

“She doesn’t seem to think so.”

“I’ll handle her.” Adrik kicked off his boots and settled on the bed. “We’ve got ourselves a standoff here, Mira. I need to get you cleaned up or there’ll be a very irritated white dragon dragging you in there. I can’t handle the idea of anyone scaring you right now. There’s a lot of shit unsettled between you and me, but I swear no harm will come to you. Work with me here. Okay?”

She shifted and groaned as she stood on weak legs. Fuck. She resembled a scrawny weeble-wobble doll. She stumbled toward the bathroom. The urge to pick her up and haul her in there pressed him hard, but he remained still, observant—prepared catch her if she tumbled.

He admired her steel will almost more than he hated it. Curiosity curbed his frustration.

“We see a lot of volunteers from facilities come through Redemption. I can’t recall seeing anyone in your condition.”

“I suspect you see very few of the Impures. You’re the Alpha, too busy to deal with injured humans.”

“You’d be surprised.” He stood when she leaned against the bathroom door’s frame. “Are all the people at the facility in your condition?”

If so, they’d need a lot more warriors than they’d planned, which meant a serious delay. They’d have to either wait for another pack to provide support, or for Daryn’s den to return.

“No. Maybe.” She continued forward. “Honestly, I’m not sure. I was secluded from the others, something about anomalous genetics. I suspected it was because, unlike the others, I wasn’t a volunteer, and I was associated with The Alliance.”

“They questioned you about them?”

“Yeah. And Paraspecies.”

He’d suspected as much. Apparently so did The Alliance since there was a price on her head. Two years was a hell of a long time to withstand torture. The best warrior would crack under those circumstances.

The frail female staring into his shower as though it were a torture chamber was no warrior. He made his way to the bathroom, then leaned against the door frame. Even though she deserved privacy, she wasn’t strong enough to be left alone. One hard tumble and she’d break something, probably the leg she already favored.

She turned and hesitantly met his gaze. “I can’t do any of this without you, Adrik. Please help me.”

He closed the distance, not caring whether she pleaded for now or for the mission she’d begged them to undertake. Nothing mattered beyond tending the female reaching out to him for strength. He inhaled, longing to immerse himself within the sweet ambrosia of vanilla he’d etched into his brain as being all Mira.

Now the stench of suffering clung on her like a second skin. He gently picked her up and set her inside the stall. There’d be hell to pay with Giles later, but Adrik didn’t give a shit. Mira was getting a hot shower.

He and his warriors never used hot water, opting to keep what energy stores they had allotted to Medical and other essential functions. Tonight all he gave a damn about was getting her clean, making sure she was safe. Water splattered to a dull pelting of icy shards when he flicked it on.

She gasped, but he placed himself between her and the cold spray until it warmed. The water weighted down his clothes, but right now wasn’t about his comfort. She shivered against him as he repositioned them both.

He focused on the safest task—her hair. Finger-combing his way through the caked-on grime and filth, he cooed to her and wiped away dirt covering alabaster skin. The tension in her thin body eased until she leaned against him.

“I’ve got you. Relax against me so your leg doesn’t hurt.”

“It’ll be okay,” she whispered. A growl rumbled from his gut.

“Let me care for you, Mira.” He hesitated as he touched the collar of the tattered shirt. “We need to remove these.”

“I-I know. It’s okay.”

Erring on the side of expediency, he tugged on the material. He chucked the garment outside the shower and focused on anything other than the creamy skin he’d exposed. At least he assumed it was. Right now it was mud-coated and caked with dried blood.

“How did you get so muddy?”

“It was a long trip,” she stated, her hands moving to scrub her front while he focused on her back. Each exposed bruise and scar made his wolf clench in rage. He’d probably be labeled a son of a bitch for stripping and scrubbing her down, but there wasn’t anything sexual about his actions. Not when she was in this condition.

He’d kill every single person who’d touched her. The vow became his mantra as they worked together. By the time they’d finished the task, Adrik was overwhelmed with a primal need to hunt. Eviscerate every living soul who’d hurt Mira.

She’d endured hell and come to him the moment she tasted freedom. He shouldn’t have stopped searching until he’d found her.

“Why are you being so nice to me now? You were so angry when you first saw me.”

“I’ve thought you were dead. We all have. I owed it to my pack to be cautious, question you as we would any suspicious person.”

“That’s all I am now,” she whispered as she looked up through a layer of wet hair. “Another suspicious Impure with a hidden agenda infiltrating Redemption.”

He cupped her face and leaned in until the succulent scent of her filled his nostrils. “You could never be just another anything to me, Mira.”

His gaze tracked her tongue as it darted out and swept along her lower lip. Fuck it. He fisted her hair in his hand and captured her mouth with his. A bolt of desire shot straight to his dick with such ferocity he’d swear someone shoved a live wire against his balls.

His tongue darted into her succulent mouth and delved deeper, until the honeyed cinnamon tea she’d sipped earlier in Medical taunted his taste buds. His free hand ran upward along her side. Need burned deep, an uncontrollable urge he longed to unleash.

Her hands settled on his chest. And pushed.

Fuck.

He pulled away and ran his hands through his wet hair. Mira looked up at him. “I shouldn’t have kissed you.”

“It’s okay. I wanted to taste you too, see if the chemistry between us was as powerful as I recalled. I always loved the way you kissed me senseless, but none of them beat the first one, up on the hill.”

“My little hellion with a rifle.” He smirked. “You were sexy as hell with that gun.”

He’d had no way of knowing what the first kiss would lead to—a whirlwind attraction he’d battled because an Alpha couldn’t mate an Impure. For months he fought the attraction flaring between them, only allowing stolen kisses fueled by raw, potent need. He’d never allowed anything more than a duel of tongues. Until that day. They’d almost…

Duty blinded him to what he’d learned when she’d vanished. She’d already been embraced by his pack. They would’ve accepted her as a mate. But that was then. Things changed. She wasn’t his. He lowered his voice and purged the dark guilt, his constant companion since her loss. “You know, I blamed myself, at first. I thought I’d pushed you too hard, made you run. I shouldn’t have let you leave with things hanging the way I did. You deserved to know what you meant to me back then, but I was a fool and too stupid to admit it to myself. Or you.”

“I wouldn’t ever run from you.” She looked down and took his hand. Her thumb ran along his wrist. “The day I got captured, I’d been thinking about you all day. I ran faster than I’d ever run. Honestly, I blamed what happened that day for my capture for a long time too. I was so busy thinking about things, us, I didn’t see them coming. I should’ve been paying attention.”

“You couldn’t stop them,” he whispered.

“Neither could you.”

He deserved sainthood for not visually feasting on her exposed body. Truth told, he couldn’t handle the wounds, scars. He kept his gaze on her face and flipped the water off. “Let’s get you clothed before Doc shows up.”

A few moments later he had her dried and in the clothing he’d procured from Peyton, much to the female’s chagrin. A soft knock on the door moved his mind from the primal urge pressing heavily on him. For now he had a duty to care for her, make sure she was settled.

Avenging her suffering would have to wait.

“Am I too early?” Doc asked.

Yes. No. “She just showered.”

Adrik regarded the man a moment. Bredon’s death made the ancient white dragon before him the strongest healer in existence. Few knew the warrior’s real name. All they knew was he was a force within himself, refused to report to anyone and went where he wanted. Fortunately for Adrik, he wanted to be at Redemption healing Impures and warriors stuck on the front lines.

The white dragon healer lifted his eyebrows and stared down at the puddle of water beneath Adrik. “It seems she wasn’t the only one. I’ll get my things situated while you change. We don’t have time for the Alpha wolf to catch a cold.”

“Oh, wow. I didn’t realize you got so wet.” Mira’s gaze widened as it moved between Doc and the water drenching the floor around Adrik.

He glared at the man. Shifters didn’t get sick and she didn’t need to worry about anything beyond healing. “It’s fine. Let me get dried and we’ll get him gone so you can rest, okay?”

She nodded and settled on the edge of the bed nearest the bathroom, as though not wanting much distance between them.

“Take a step closer to her while I’m gone, dragon, and you’ll need a healer.” Once in the bathroom, he changed quickly.

He reentered the bedroom and settled on the edge of the bed. Mira reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing it gently. “You’ll stay, right?”

“Of course.”

Doc smiled as he sat on the other side of Mira, who maneuvered until her side was against Adrik’s. “Why don’t you relax? You shouldn’t feel anything more than a mild warming sensation.”

Mira nodded and grabbed Adrik’s hand. A few moments later her weight settled snuggly against him, her eyelids closed.

“Hell of a bedside manner there, Doc.”

“Funny, I was going to say the same to you. I have to admit the crap you pulled at Medical wasn’t settling right with me.”

“You know why I had to do it.”

“Letting the pack see her innocence themselves was smart, a faster way to get them to do the right thing by her. But you’re Alpha. Underhanded tactics aren’t necessary. You command something, they’ll follow.”