FRACTURED (26 page)

Tasted like blood to me.

“It tastes normal,” I said, gagging slightly.

“Then tell Cooper to go straight to my place. We have some things to sort out.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “Ruby. Try not to get yourself killed before I can see you.”

The line went dead.

I threw the phone up to Janner before lying down beside Beckett.

“What did he say?” Cooper called from the front seat. I propped up to find myself being stared down in the rearview mirror.

“He said the wound should be okay and to meet him at his place.

He's got the boys on clean up.”

“Good.”

My mind was still reeling from all that had happened. Things went from mundane to explosive in the bat of an eye, and we'd nearly lost people in the process. I looked down at Beckett, his eyes still closed, his breathing still shallow, and wondered how things got to be so bad with his own pack that they would hunt him and the others down like rabid dogs.

Why had they bothered? Cooper seemed to be pondering the same thing because he started in on the two who were conscious at that moment.

Instead of listening, I channeled my energy to Beckett, not knowing if it would make a difference or not. He didn't have a bond with me like Cooper did, and I still didn't know if my outward influencing abilities relied on any of Scarlet's power, but I decided to try anyway. I hoped that it didn't matter how emotionally close I was to the victim; I just wanted it to work. He’d saved Cooper's life and held mine together because of that.

I owed him, big time.

We all did.

25

I don't know how fast Cooper was driving, but it seemed like we were back in Portsmouth in the blink of an eye. All of my energy had been trained on Beckett, hoping to coax him out of his near-death state sooner rather than later. I knew that there wasn't any real danger of losing him, but it was still so hard to wrap my head around his ability to walk away from a wound like that unharmed. It didn't seem to matter how many times I'd seen it done; it was always surreal. Even when it was me.

As we rolled into town, Beckett started to stir slightly. I laid my head on his newly healed chest and tried to keep him still. He may have been doing better, but he wasn't up to snuff just yet. I didn't want him expending any energy that he didn't need to.

“Welcome back,” I whispered, my head tucked in tight below his chin. It felt somewhat intimate when he wove his arms around me, hugging me to him, but it made me think of how quickly Cooper and I had bonded during our escape in Utah. Life-threatening situations changed people, bringing them close together in a way that time alone could not. It was just a fact of life―a fact of
my
life, at least.

“You truly are special,” he said softly, smoothing my mess of curls away from his face. “We hadn't heard about this
ability
of yours. Just how many tricks do you have up your sleeves, Ruby?”

I laughed, pulling away from him to sit up.

“More than you'll ever know about.”

Beckett, like Alistair, was naked, and I suddenly became far too aware of that fact. Needing to maintain some level of modesty, I searched for something to cover him up with. I spotted a duffel bag along the far wheel well and grabbed it, hoping to find what I thought I might.
Bingo!

Inside were spare clothes, and I quickly started doling them out to all in need.

“Here,” I said, chucking a t-shirt and jeans at the back of Alistair's head.

“What? You don't like the show?” he asked, his expression and tone cheeky as ever, as though we hadn't all just about died only an hour earlier.

“If
that's
the show,” Cooper mocked from the front seat, “then we should get our money back.”

Janner laughed. Like
really
laughed. I'd never heard him so jovial or animated. It startled me at first.

“Put you in your place, didn't he, Ali?”

“Rubbish,” Alistair grunted, wiggling into the too-big pants I'd given him. “Like yours is any bigger, mate.”

Beckett, who had been trying to sit up, crashed back down to the floor in a combination of laughter and wincing while clutching his chest.

I reached over to help him up so he could get dressed too. We were almost downtown, and I couldn't afford to have a naked foreigner riding illegally in the back of an SUV, even if the windows were tinted.

Portsmouth was small enough that not much ever went on there. If someone spotted us, we'd be the talk of the town for sure, not to mention the precinct.

“You both know that I put you to shame, so I wouldn’t start with me, if you know what's good for you.”

“I'm quite sure I have you all beat,” Cooper warned from the front seat.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I had deep concerns that they were all going to start whipping out their wobbly bits in the ultimate man-contest while we parked the car, just to be certain who the winner was. Men―the most ridiculous creatures on earth.

“Could we please just get inside Sean's place?” I whined, wanting to be somewhere that had a feeling of safety attached to it―preferably one that might not be attacked by misguided werewolves. They didn't reply, but all of them departed the car to head into his building without further shenanigans. As we cautiously made our way around the corner, Sean was standing there waiting.

“Glad to see you're in one piece,” he said flatly, eyeing the group tightly as he slowly approached us. When he stopped before me, his hand caught my face, and he pinned scrutinizing but concerned eyes on mine.

His thumb stroked my cheek gently, and I pressed into his touch slightly before realizing the others were all watching. Maybe they needed a good reminder of who my mate was.

As if that was written on my face, he leaned in and kissed me. Then he stared down at the others before ordering them inside. Shit really was about to get real.

When we arrived at his apartment, a man was waiting inside.

Standing military straight with hands pulled behind his back, he watched us all file in with curiosity. I'd never seen him before, but I knew he was a PC brother―his energy carried the same confidence that all the others’

did.

“Trey, get their phones and take them downstairs. Work your magic,” Sean ordered. “I need to get some answers out of these three in the meantime.”

“Wait a second,” I blurted out, staring at Trey in disbelief. “How did he get here before us if he was just down in Boston awaiting our panicked arrival?”

Trey and Sean exchanged blank looks before turning their eyes to me. Trey said nothing in response and Sean gave me little more than his trademark ambivalent shrug. Whatever means Trey used to arrive at Sean's before us was clearly going to remain a secret.

Still perplexed, I watched as the tall and almost lanky man approached the boys. The two who still had their phones held them out as was expected. When Trey was finished collecting them, he paused in front of me, looking at me curiously as if I were a puzzle that needed solving. Apparently the phones weren't enough for him to work on.

“She's prettier than they said,” he declared with a soft, wistful voice. Then he disappeared through the main door.

I looked to Sean for explanation.

“Trey lacks a filter,” he said with a shrug. “I’d think that you of all people could understand that.” Suddenly Trey's IT job made far more sense. “Now, what happened out there, and don't skimp on the details.

This is important. If they found you, then they've figured out how to trace the phones and are working with technology that few are privy to outside of large government agencies.”

“And you,” I interjected with a small smile.

“Yes,” he replied, the smallest twinkle in his eyes. “And me.”

“Well, I was trying to read your directions on my phone, but I just couldn't see them clearly, so I gave the phone to Janner. He made a miscalculation along the way, and we ended up in that neighborhood I told you about with the abandoned factories.”

“Yes,” he said, his voice dripping with disdain. “I find that very convenient for those trying to hunt you all down. What better place for a massacre?”

“It wasn't an ambush,” Cooper said, reading between the lines.

“They followed us there.”

Sean eyed Cooper in a way that I'd never seen before. He was assessing something about him―
searching
. Without a word of objection, Sean let him continue to explain how the whole scenario played out to the very last detail. When Cooper finished, Sean paused, eyeing him tightly before pressing his lips tightly together and nodding.

I nearly fell over. I think I would have if Sean hadn't turned to me to fill in the blanks of the fight. The battle had seemed to wage on far longer than Cooper had said it did. Apparently it was minutes at best.

It felt like a lifetime.

“Ruby?” Sean called, pulling me from my thoughts. He'd likely repeated himself more than once, given his tone. “What did you see?”

“It all happened really fast,” I started, closing my eyes to try and replay the gruesome scene. “There were more of them than us―five to four. Two of them went after Cooper, the others went after the boys.”

“Interesting that they doubled up on Cooper right away,” he said with growing interest in Janner. “You seem to look unharmed.”

“Sean,” I said, leaning forward to grab his arm. His eyes were on me in an instant. They didn't look as friendly as I would have liked. “I saw him fighting. He was in trouble for a while. I didn't know it at the time, but the others were too. Ali and Beckett Changed. I didn't know who was who then, but nobody walked away from that fight unharmed. I know that. And the second that the others were free, they went to Coop's aid.

Beckett even took a point-blank bullet for him.”

“Yes, and I find it highly convenient that it wasn't silver.” His voice held a dangerous lack of emotion. Things weren't looking good for the boys.

“If I may,” Janner said with hesitation, “I would submit that our former pack is more of the 'wound them and then take care of things manually' kind of family. We rarely if ever had silver ammunition available to us. Even the cleaning crew.”

“They would have incapacitated Cooper with the gun, then come after us. They would have disposed of him last,” Beckett added, his voice and expression impassive as always.

“And Ruby?” Sean asked, staring the trio down. “What would they have done to her?”

They looked back and forth amongst themselves nervously.

“We don't know,” Alistair offered, his sad eyes landing on me. His shielding energy threw up a wall around the three almost instantly.

“She is the most lethal of your kind,” Sean said menacingly as he shook loose from my grasp to approach them. “Surely they would have had a plan to subdue her. It would be suicide to challenge an RB, based on what you yourself said your pack knew her reputation to be.”

Again, the trio shared uncomfortable expressions.

“We told you when we arrived that there were rumors of a lethal wolf...a Rouge et Blanc,” Janner started, clearing his throat. “There are other rumors―many rumors―some of which are of how they can be controlled. Contained.”

Caged...

“How interesting,” Sean growled, hovering inches away from Janner's face. “And just what are these rumors?”

Janner swallowed―hard.

“I don't know exactly. We were never high enough up the food chain, but I do know that Tobias knows. And he's ruthless. Who's to say what his orders would have been for Ruby if she had been caught. He could have wanted her dead so that there would be none more powerful than he could ever be. Maybe he would have captured her. I just cannot say. I am sorry.”

“Sean,” I whispered from behind him. “They
all
risked their lives for Cooper and me today, just as much as we risked ours for them.

Please.”

“What I want to know,” Alistair said, piping up at the worst time possible, just as he always did, “is why you need protecting at all. If you're so lethal, why didn't you just wipe the floor with them so we could be on our way?”

I looked at Cooper, who had been strangely quiet. The look on his face told me why he had been. He knew this question was headed our way. He'd been trying to figure out a viable lie that would be easily believed without exposing any vulnerability in the process.

I prayed he'd come up with one because Sean's look was murderous.

He was about to snap, and that was going to come at a high price. He would not allow my weaknesses to be known.

“Because we couldn't risk her exposure,” Cooper said with a sigh.

“We have to tell them. There's just no way around it now.” He looked past Sean to me. I knew that expression. I'd seen it on more than one occasion. It read 'Play along and we'll get out of this without issue'. I hoped Sean would keep it together long enough for Cooper's plan to work.

“Cooper,” Sean snarled, a warning. Sean never gave more than one.

“There are many reasons why Ruby doesn't let her wolf out often,”

he continued, giving Sean the look he'd just given me. “The main reason is that her wolf is far harder to call upon and completely unpredictable once out. There are reasons why they were hunted to extinction―and quickly too. Sean can attest to that.”

Sean's eyes narrowed on Cooper.

“He's right,” he finally concurred. “That killing ability comes with a complete lack of conscience. Once unleashed, there's no telling what she's capable of. To let the wolf out in a crowded city while under attack would be madness. An RB's bloodlust is unrivaled.”

“Ruby has lived this long for two reasons alone,” Cooper continued, picking up where Sean had just finished. “She's learned how to cage the beast and she is Sean's mate. But even Sean has said that he will take her down if he has to, and we all know this to be true. It's almost happened.

She's on a short leash with both him and the PC.”

“And pack or not,” Sean added, “she can't be risked for your benefit.” He leaned forward into their faces, his eyes black pools of darkness. “I won't allow it.”

I stared at Sean, bewildered.
Pack?