by A Lonergan
Rafe was still awake, though I couldn’t see him through the windows, I knew he could still see me. I didn’t know how I knew but I did. I wondered if it was a part of our mate bond. This hyperawareness to each other. I scrunched my body down lower on the couch and sighed as my eyes fought to stay open.
A noise made me jerk awake. I sat up straight on the couch and blinked in the darkness. The lamp had been turned off at some point. I wondered if Rafe had done it. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand and focused on Tracey in the doorway. The sun hadn’t come up yet but it was starting too. The first thing I zeroed in on was the hickey on her neck.
I rubbed my eyes again. It definitely wasn’t a hickey. There were two puncture wounds on her neck still weeping blood. Her cheeks stained red. “Hi.”
“Glad to see you’re still alive,” I got up from the couch and stumbled to the bedroom. I didn’t bother with saying anything else or even looking at her again as I heard her stumble behind me. I was too tired to care about anything else. The only thing that mattered was that she was safe.
I should have mentally prepared myself when Tracey came through the door that previous night. I should have known better than to expect everything to go back to normal. I was eating a piece of toast the next morning when I heard the glass shatter next door.
Even though they ached, I jumped to my feet and ran to the balcony to see what was happening. I couldn’t hear what was being said, even with Nalia’s help but I could see Rafe and Knox going head to head. His face was beet red as Rafe held his hands up. I could see the words on his lips. I am not your enemy here.
Knox’s chest rose and fell rapidly as he shook his head. His hair was down around his shoulders and his face looked pained. I had never seen him this way. I had never seen him so shaken up or frazzled before. What had broken?
Rafe shook his head and put his hands on his friend’s shoulders. I couldn’t read his lips this time. Knox nodded his head and his shoulders slumped forward. Rafe’s eyes met mine and he shook his head. I retreated back into the house. Tracey was still sleeping soundly in the other room and I doubted she would be getting up anytime soon. She hadn’t slept a wink before she had stumbled through the doors. I had seen it on her face before I turned away from her.
The sand was hotter under my feet than it had been any other day. I dragged a fold-up chair with me to the water and set it down where I would get some water on me but not be submerged. It took Rafe a total of five minutes before he was sitting down next to me in the surf.
I peered at him through my big sunglasses. “What happened?”
“It’s not my place to talk about,” he muttered.
“Is Knox okay?”
“He waited up for Tracey last night to make sure she made it back safely. He smelled her blood on the air.” He leaned back and let the sun hit his face. There was too much tension in his body. This trip was supposed to relax us, not make everything worse.
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Maybe she bled after they… ya know?” The lie slipped from my lips and I could even smell it in the air. His eyes flicked to mine as he shook his head. At least there would never be lies between us. I closed my eyes and leaned back. A sigh escaped my lips. What could I do?
“You saw her last night when she came in, you tell me what blood you smelled. There is a distinct smell difference. One is mingled with sex and the other is mingled with the scent of venom.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m trying to help all of this along the best I can,” I shrugged. “Knox is hot then he’s cold. Tracey is always angry at him and all he does is annoy her and continue to push him away. I don’t know how the hell to navigate this. I just want them to get along.”
“Then maybe the only way for that to happen is for me to leave,” Tracey’s voice shook behind us. I whipped around and stood from the chair on trembling legs. The blisters on my feet had healed overnight but they were still aching.
“Why would you say such a thing?” I frowned.
“I don’t know what I’m doing either,” Her voice broke. The wound on her neck didn’t look good and her golden skin was ashen. Dark circles were stark under her light eyes. “Last night was a mistake.” She hiccuped before a sob tore through her.
She tipped forward then fell to the sand on her knees. I caught her before the rest of her body could tumble forward. Rafe looked down at her with shock. I tilted her head up. She hadn’t changed out of her clothes from the night before. Now in the light of day, I could see the bright spots of blood on her clothes. She didn’t smell like sex. She didn’t smell like pleasure at all. She smelled like death.
Chapter 19
Rafe
Knox paced around the room. He had been so angry a few hours before. So angry that we had fought in the living room. A poor potted plant was collateral damage. Knox was no longer angry, he was murderous. He was seething in a slow burn of revenge. “If you don’t allow me to go after him, I will go insane.”
I held my hand up. “You are allowed to avenge Tracey but we will have to hunt him tonight. Tracey told Jade that she told him it was a girl’s trip. He thought they were all alone so I doubt he skipped town. He might go for Jade next.” The words hurt coming out. The last thing I wanted was to shift right now. My wolf and I would do anything to protect our mate, but that didn’t matter as much at the moment. What mattered was that Knox avenged Tracey and the rest of the men protected Jade while we did it.
Knox smoothed his hair away from his face and then pulled it into a ponytail holder. His arms shook with the effort like it took everything within him to contain his rage. His wolf wasn’t close to the surface. His eyes were still clear but his anger came off of him in waves. When he went off to train to be a Guardian they had taught them how to control and contain their wolves. They didn’t need to shift, it just helped to do so more often. Their power lay in their ability to control their forms. They were ruthless and cunning. They were everything most of the pack was not. They were willing to do whatever it took to ensure the pack’s safety. Including eating hearts.
Knox’s hands stopped trembling. He licked his teeth before he straightened his shirt. “I’ve never tasted a vampire heart before.”
Guardian training prepared my brothers for anything and everything. Knox cracked his neck and he inhaled outside of the bar we had been at the previous night. He peeked an eye open. “Just follow me, don’t ask any questions.” He turned around and marched down the street. His chin was just barely lifted and his nostrils would flare every few minutes. We took side street after side street until we made it to an apartment complex on the other side of the city. Knox rolled his head on his shoulders before he yanked the door open.
A woman stepped forward and blocked our path to the elevator. “Can I help you two gentlemen?”
Knox pulled his sunglasses down on his nose and looked deeply into her eyes. “You won’t remember us and you won’t notify anyone of our presence today. Once we leave you will delete all camera footage from the security software as well as the hard drive.”
I had never seen Knox or the other Guardians do anything like that before. Admiration rolled through me. The woman stood a step back and blinked a few times before she walked back to her desk and sat down with a dazed look. Knox punched the button on the wall and the elevator dinged open.
“Her scent is stronger than his, probably because she left this morning and he hasn’t left since.” Knox’s canines elongated and his pupils shrunk down to slits. Claws poked out from the tips of his fingers.
He was more than capable of doing all of this himself. He didn’t need me here. All I was here for was backup and because I wanted to see justice served. I wanted to make sure the bloodsucker was dead.
As soon as the doors to the elevator closed, Knox leaned forward to sniff the buttons. He punched the button to Floor 11. As we went up I wondered if we would have been better off taking the stairs. But there was no telling if the dickwad had ever taken them befo
re. Even if it was one time, Knox would know. Either way, when the doors opened Knox grinned.
“Showtime.”
It took Knox at least five seconds to find which apartment was the vampire’s. His jaw elongated slightly as he listened to the door. He blinked and the whites of his eyes disappeared as his wolf took over completely. His boot connected with the door and it splintered inward.
Vampires were quick creatures but a Guardian was faster. I wasn’t sure of all the things that they did to prepare them but they honed them into weapons for an Alpha’s disposal. These men would protect me as Pack Law someday and they had to be the best of the best. Thankfully I still had a while until I had to take up my father’s seat. He wasn’t initiated into the Pack Law until he was a couple hundred years old. I hoped they waited that long for me too. I wanted to have kids and live my life before I had to be a judge and executioner.
I carefully stepped over the pieces of the door and followed behind Knox. Based on the sounds of struggling coming from the bedroom, Knox had found him. The bedroom was down the hall and to the left, past the kitchen. Knox had the vampire pinned to the bed.
“What did her blood taste like?” Knox whispered.
The vampire struggled against his hold. “She begged me to do it. Said she wanted to feel nothing.”
I pressed my lips together and leaned against the doorframe. I crossed one ankle over the other while I picked at my nails. “You see, I would believe you except I can scent your lies in the air, and there was no scent of pleasure on her skin when she got home this morning.”
The vampire scowled. “The only reason I let her go is because she did this to me.” Somehow he managed to maneuver his shirt up and showed the long thick claw marks across his chest. “What are you? What was she?”
I narrowed my eyes as I cocked my head. He still smelled slightly human. He had been turned recently. “Whoever sired you should have warned you about bigger and badder monsters in the dark.”
The creature looked between us and he struggled against Knox’s hold once again. Knox leaned forward. “What did she taste like?” His wolf was speaking for him now.
“Like honey and sunshine,” the vampire choked out.
I chuckled. “Wrong answer.”
Knox reared back before he plunged his hand into the creature’s chest. He jerked forward with the impact. The vampire’s eyes got big as he realized what was happening. “I would have drunk her dry-” Knox wasn’t having any more of his words. He yanked his hand out. Black blood coated his fingers and inside of his hand was a decaying organ.
Knox threw it into the sunlight streaming across the room. It immediately burst into flames. “Yuck, I do not want a bite out of that. Too dead for my liking.”
He hefted the body off of the bed without much effort and tossed him into the sunlight. It took a bit longer than his heart but after a few minutes, he was ash on the carpet.
“Do you smell that?” I hadn’t noticed it when we had first entered the vampire’s home but now the sickly sweet smell coated my nostrils.
Knox leaned over the side of the bed and cursed. “Bodies.”
“Looks like we did this town a favor.”
Chapter 20
Jade
Tracey was still laying in bed even after the sun had gone down. I knocked on her door before I opened it. She had the blankets pulled up over her head. “Hey, do you wanna go have some margs?”
She peeked out and all I could make out was her mess of curls. “No, I wanna go home.”
“Okay, I have my things packed already. Do you want me to pack your stuff?”
She shook her head. There were clothes strewn about the entire room in hectic disarray. “I’ll get up and do it. I was missing a shoe yesterday. I don’t want to subject you to my irresponsibility.”
I sat down on the corner of the bed and tapped her foot with my hand. Was this what I had been like? “You’ll have a pretty badass scar.”
She pulled the blanket down farther but I still couldn’t see her neck. “You think so?”
I nodded.
Her eyes flicked down to my scars on my arms. “I’ll wear them proudly if you do.”
I hummed. “Okay, then maybe we can come to an agreement on that.”
“I did it all to bother Knox,” she whispered after a few minutes. My hand tightened around her ankle. “He just always gets under my skin. I should have known trying to get back at him would only bite me in the ass. Do you know what my parents are going to do to me when they find out?”
“They aren’t going to do anything to you because you were assaulted. It was against your will.”
Tracey sat up in the bed and the blankets pooled around her middle. She wore a white sports bra and a bandage over her neck. “It wasn’t at first. I wanted him to. I wanted Knox to see the marks. But then he pulled deeper and I felt myself drift. I had to fight him off.” She tucked the blanket back around her shoulders a tear slipped free from her eye. “No matter how hard I scrub my body, I can still smell him. The wounds won’t heal because of the venom in his teeth.”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “They don’t need to know that part, all they need to know is that you were attacked. Okay?”
She nodded. “Do you think they’ll catch him?”
I licked my lips. “I do. You should have seen how angry Knox was. It was kind of terrifying. It reminded me of that day when I first met him. Not a pretty memory or sight. He’s gonna make that vampire scared shitless before he kills him.”
Tracey nodded. “Can we leave in the morning?”
“Of course.”
Rafe was waiting for me in the kitchen. Surprisingly, there was no blood on him. I tilted my head in question. “Did you get him?”
He nodded. “Yeah, this wasn’t his first offense either. He had a few bodies under his bed.”
My shoulders slumped. “He messed with the wrong girl last night.”
Rafe took a step forward and tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear. His fingers lingered on my neck as he swallowed. “All I wanted to do today was touch you.”
I leaned into him. “Too bad all of this has to come to an end.”
He frowned. “We have a few more days on our rental.”
I shook my head. “Tracey wants to go home tomorrow.”
“You girls attract danger like magnets.” He pressed a kiss to my hairline. “I’ll let the guys know. They’ll be packed and ready to leave. Is there anything I can do for you tonight?”
My body reacted on its own and continued to lean into him. When his lips captured mine it took me completely by surprise. I sighed into the kiss and savored the feeling of his hands on me. I hadn’t realized just how much I had missed this. We had plenty of time to be alone and kiss back at home but didn’t take advantage of it nearly enough. When he pulled away my lips turned down into a frown.
“I have to pack too, ya know,” he bopped my nose with his finger and my pout deepened. “I’ll drive tomorrow so you and Tracey can rest. How does that sound?”
It sounded too good to be true like everything that went along with being mates, but I couldn’t deny that I didn’t like it. I liked it a lot.
Knox didn’t say a single word as we loaded up the next day. He was even silent as he slid into the driver’s seat of the other car. Rafe wasn’t usually a talker but I found it extremely odd that he didn’t speak much on the drive back either.
Tracey curled up on the back seat with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and part of her head. I wondered if she was doing it to hide the wounds on her neck that still hadn’t healed. As we drove farther north, the temperature started to drop outside of the car. The closer we got to the Pack Lands, the colder it got until snow was falling from the sky and I was pulling a hoodie out of my bag at my feet.
“Look,” Rafe started as he pulled over on the side of the road. “You both need to know something.”
Tracey sat up immediately. “What’s wrong?”
“You ha
ve both been through so much lately that I didn’t know if I should bring it up but there was another attack.”
Tracey threw the blanket off of herself. “How long have you known?”
“Since this morning,” His words were laced with regret and guilt. It choked me.
Tracey ran her hands down her face. “You knew all this time and you let me have a pity party in the back seat for hours?”
“Sometimes that’s what can help you heal.” Rafe shrugged.
“The last thing I’ve been doing since we left the beach house was heal.” She scoffed like she couldn’t believe what Rafe was telling us.
“How bad is it?” Someone had to ask. I didn’t want to be that person but it had to be brought up. We couldn’t dance around it.
“It’s pretty bad,” he muttered. I couldn’t imagine what he was going through. He had left his people, even if they were well taken care of. He had still left and he probably blamed himself. “Axel communicated through the bond when it happened. There are no casualties but many homes are destroyed.”
“What’s the plan of action?” Tracey was all soldier now. She leaned forward to lace her boots. Her face was slack of all emotion. It reminded me of Mav when he was in the zone. For a brief moment, I wondered if they would be good together. Perhaps they needed to go on a date. It might make things awkward between her and the rest of the crew, but she had to leave Knox alone. It was starting to become toxic.
I shook my head and internally chastised myself. I couldn’t believe I was thinking of that at a time like this. “What can I do?”
