Every Night Forever (20 page)

Alyssa’s warm breath fanned across his bare chest where she lay half on him and half on Mason, her eyes closed as she napped in the dark corner of the den’s main room.  She really loved it down here, and he couldn’t have been happier or more surprised.  Most clans only used the den in the winter, but Alyssa found peace down here and they were happy for it.

Dante cleared his throat quietly and Cairo looked up at him.  In a low voice, he said, “I’m going to go take a look at the gym, maybe look around the property and see if anyone left anything behind when they were waiting for us last night.  Want to come?  Mase, you can stay with Lys.”

“No,” she said with a yawn, wiggling around until she was partially sitting up.  “I want to go, too.”

“Lys,” Dante started, but she stopped him.

“You can’t keep me apart from everything.  I want to see the gym, and I want to walk the property with you.  Don’t shut me out, please.”

Dante might have argued, but clearly something in her eyes told him that she wasn’t going to back down.  Cairo was proud of her.  She’d been attacked twice at the gym, and she wasn’t afraid to go back.

Dante nodded, and they got up, dressed, and left.

Standing inside the gym, they looked around at the mess.  The interior doors had broken, weakened from the flames and the force of the water from the hoses.  The carpeting was soaked, and the walls, ceiling, and equipment were dusted with ash.  The whole place was going to need to be redone.

“How long did the repair company say it would take until we could open again?”  Mason asked, turning in a slow circle with a frown on his face.

“If we’re willing to pay for three full shifts of workers, five days.  They can start Monday morning at seven and be done by Friday evening, Saturday morning at the latest,” Dante said.

“We’re going to pay, right?” Cairo asked.

“Yeah.  I thought I’d grab the client list from the safe and call, refund everyone for the week and offer some kind of incentives to stay on with us.  Fortunately most of our clients are tied in for their contracts, but we still might lose some.  This is just such bullshit.  It needs to stop.”

“I’ll call the clients,” Alyssa offered.

Dante smiled.  “Sure thing, Lys.”  He glanced around the gym and his anger rose again.  “What we need is some proof of the men who were waiting for us.  If we can find evidence of the men who were there and tie them to Grady, we can put a stop to this once and for all.”

“It would be easier if you just let me kill him,” Cairo growled.

“Easier in some ways, but more complicated in others.  Humans don’t understand our need to protect our mate, and going after him when he’s not a danger right now would land you in jail.  If he disappears, we’re going to be the first suspects.”

“Still.”  Cairo sniffed, feeling oddly impotent and helpless.  “Alright, let’s go take a walk.  If I can’t put him down, I can at least put him in jail.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone will shank him,” Alyssa offered as he held the door open for her.

Mason chuckled.  “Did you just say ‘shank’, Lys?”

She made a face and then shrugged with a laugh.  “I saw it on a TV show.”

They all grinned at their mate.  The sun was beginning to set, so the golden glow of early evening cast a pleasant shine to the five acres of property.  At one time, they had planned to build a real boxing training center so he could focus on what he really loved.  But now with Lys, he was thinking it was time to hang up his boxing gloves.  At least professionally.  He could still train, he could still teach others.  He wasn’t doing anything that was going to take him away from Alyssa, that was for damn sure.

Cairo was suddenly caught off guard by a flash of white skin as Alyssa pulled her shirt off and dropped it on the grass behind the gym.  “What the hell are you doing, Lys?” he demanded, immediately scanning the area for prying eyes.

She rolled her eyes and stepped out of her jeans.  “Duh, I’m going to shift.  I have a better sense of smell in my shift than my human form.  I might be able to find something by smell in the grass or the trees.”

Dante grabbed her arm, not forcefully but enough to make her pause in the motion of stepping out of her pants.  “No way, baby.  Mase can shift, you don’t need to.”

Instead of tugging away from him, she stepped closer, wrapping her free arm around him.  “First of all, it’s so adorable that you think you can boss me around.  And second, wolves have a great sense of smell, it’s just a fact.  So if you want to hold my arm, you’re going to have a handful of fur in about two seconds and then you’ll have to buy me a new bra because this one will be toast.”

She relaxed and they all saw her eyes shimmer from pretty brown to wolf amber.  Dante released her arm and she smirked in triumph before stripping completely and slipping into her wolf form.

As Mason stripped to shift, Dante squatted down in front of her and tugged gently on her ear.  “Alright, but you have to stay close to one of us and keep your guard up.”

She chuffed at him and nuzzled under his chin, licking at his throat with a soft growl.

Cairo chuckled and watched as she and Mason put their muzzles to the ground near the back door, where Dante said the men had waited.  The two paced slowly in front of the building and then began to move out towards the trees.

He and Dante swept their eyes along the ground looking for any anomalies that Mason and Alyssa might miss.  Most of the property was flat and unobstructed by trees, but a there was a stand of trees a few hundred feet long that offered some privacy from the street.  When Alyssa and Mason disappeared among them, he and Dante followed.

Alyssa began to whine as he and Dante entered the trees, putting her nose against several of their trunks and scraping her claws against the roots.

“Baby?”  Cairo asked, squatting down next to her.  A pile of cigarettes lay at the base of one tree, with a few scattered buds lying around.

“Someone stood here last night for a long time and smoked all these cigarettes,” Dante said with a frown.  “I can pick up the faint smell of sweat and, I don’t know — something herbal?”

Cairo took a deep breath.  “It smells like muscle ointment.”  That was a red flag in his mind that Grady’s men had been behind the fire last night.  He wondered if there would be any DNA on the cigarettes.

As he took in another breath, Mason barked sharply in alarm and the audible click of guns echoed around them.  They’d been so entranced with scenting, they hadn’t heard the men approach.

“Come out, come out,” Grady crowed from just outside the trees and Cairo’s hyena went nuts, desperate to get Alyssa out of harm’s way.

“Run, Lys,” he whispered, shoving her hindquarters.  She yelped in surprise and then growled, turning towards Grady.  Through the trees, they could see him and several of his guards.

Mason snarled softly and grabbed her by the scruff, dragging her backwards deeper into the trees.  Her claws sought purchase in the soil but Mason was stronger.  He saw Dante palm his cell phone quickly and they shared a look of quiet resolve before they stepped out into the soft light of the setting sun to face Grady.

* * * * *

Mason had to keep a tight grip on Alyssa’s scruff.  Every time he loosened it slightly, she tried to get away from him.  He knew that she was feeling helpless and wanted to help Dante and Cairo, but they would be furious if she risked her life to do it.  And Mason couldn’t bear to see anything happen to her.

He growled, wishing she would stop struggling.  She whimpered and finally relaxed some, but he didn’t loosen his grip on her in case she was feigning compliance.  They were secure in a densely treed section, out of sight, and he strained to hear what was being said.

“You just couldn’t play along, could you, Stone?  All you had to do was show up Friday night and go down, and I would have left you alone,” Grady sneered.

“I don’t believe for a second that you would have been satisfied with one performance, Grady, and I’m no one’s puppet,” Cairo said, his voice taking a deep, savage tone.

“Well, see, the problem is that now you’ve upped the game.  You failed to show for the fight I scheduled, which means I lost a bundle.  That’s twice now you’ve cost me money.  So now I’m going to make an example out of you.  I want the boxing world to know that if I tell a boxer to take a dive, then he better take a dive, or his family will suffer.”

Mason heard Dante’s sharp intake and imagined that Grady or his people had pointed guns in their direction.  He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, wishing he could do something without endangering his mate in the process.

“You can threaten me all you like, Grady, but I should tell you that the police are on their way.”

Grady snorted.  “If that were true, they would already be here.  No, I think you’re bluffing.  Don’t you, boys?”  The men with him agreed loudly.

As if on cue, sirens filled the air.  Dante really had called the cops.  Mason had thought it was a bluff, as well.  He heard the sounds of a struggle and one gunshot, and the sound of men running away.  With a reprimanding growl, he eased off Alyssa’s scruff and they moved quietly through the trees until they could see what was going on.

By the time they could see, Cairo had Grady on the ground in what looked like an incredibly painful headlock.  Two men were unconscious nearby and Dante had a third on the ground with his arm twisted sharply behind him.  With a sigh of relief, he and Alyssa moved from the trees and sat down several yards away to watch.

The police cars pulled straight onto the grass and up to the trees.  Uniformed men ran to aid his brothers, including Chief Layton.  Dante straightened once the man under him was in cuffs and being shoved into a police car, and told the chief what had happened.

As Grady was taken away by two officers, Cairo turned on his knees and held out his arms, and Alyssa loped towards him, landing in the safe cage of his embrace as he nuzzled her furry neck and held her close.  “I’m so glad you listened to me, baby,” he said, his voice muffled by her coat.

Mason snorted, knowing full well that if he hadn’t kept his teeth in her neck, she would have been right there with them, a snapping, snarling pissed-off female.

Shouts of alarm filled the air suddenly and all of their heads whipped to the side to see Grady grab for one of the officer’s guns and snatch it, just as the officer was about to secure his hands in cuffs.  The gun rose in slow motion, training on Dante.

He barked and raced forwards, but Alyssa was closer and faster, leaping from Cairo’s arms and knocking Dante to the ground.  A bullet fired from the gun and Alyssa yelped and tumbled off Dante as Grady tried to fire again, but was killed by the quick reflexes of the chief.

Mason forced himself out of his shift and stumbled towards his sweetheart, tears clouding his vision. 
No!  No, she can’t be dead!

Her body twitched and then the fur began to recede as she shifted from her wolf form to her human form.  A shallow, small mark on her hip was the only evidence that she’d been wounded.  She winced as she sat up and shook her head.

“Fuck, that hurt.”  She looked down at her leg and gingerly touched the mark.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”  Dante roared as he went to his feet, fear and relief twining in his voice.

She trembled as she stood on shaky legs and poked him in the chest.  “I’d do it again a hundred times, Dante.  You’re mine.  And no psychotic criminal is going to take you from me.  You hear me?” she yelled back at him, tears choking off the last words.

Dante grabbed her against him and turned, shielding her nakedness from the prying eyes of the police force with his body.

“Thank you, baby,” Dante said in a rough voice.

She cried openly now, her hands in fists against Dante’s chest.  “I just got you; I don’t want to lose any of you.”

Cairo pulled off his shirt and tossed it to Mason, who wrapped it awkwardly around his hips.  When Dante had pulled off his own shirt and helped Alyssa put it on, the three of them held her tightly together and thanked their lucky stars that all four of them were safe.

Chief Layton cleared his throat.  “Does your girl need an ambulance?”

“It just winged her.  She’s going to be fine,” Cairo said, picking her up in his arms and carrying her towards the gym.