Head Hunter

by Layla Nash

Percy

  The next time I woke up, it didn’t take me quite as long to figure out where I was. Bits and pieces of dreams and reality blended together until I wasn’t really sure what had happened and what I’d hallucinated. I couldn’t have said what day it was for a million dollars. I managed to lift my head just a bit, even though it felt like an over-inflated balloon on the end of a toothpick. A large body sprawled in a chair next to the bed where I lay.

  His chest and shoulders were on the edge of the bed, his head against my thigh, and he’d completely passed out. A small snore escaped. I gazed at him and my heart cracked. Dodge was still alive.

  I didn’t understand how. I thought I’d dreamed him earlier, but it must have been real. He survived the shooting and then managed to find me, and... I fought through the pudding in my brain. He’d been a wolf at the sanctuary, maybe. Him and the other wolf, the one who’d originally chased me at the Evershaw house. Silas. Dodge called him Silas.

  My hand weighed as much as a brick but I managed to lift it and settle it against the back of Dodge’s head, working my stiff, sore fingers into his hair. I blinked at my hand and the kaleidoscope of bruises and cuts that decorated most of it. I could have sworn at least two of those fingers were broken by the goons. It didn’t seem possible that they could have healed already, unless I’d been in a coma or something. I tensed, staring at my feet where they were hidden by blankets and sheets and Dodge’s arm.

  Could I have been in a coma for weeks or months? My heart stuttered and started to beat faster as I looked around. Dodge definitely looked worse for wear: his beard shaggy and unkempt, his hair standing out in wild tufts, and even his eyebrows looked like they needed a weedwacker to be brought under control. My eyes burned. If it had been weeks or months, he was still there beside me and hadn’t been taking care of himself.

  I couldn’t breathe and my fingers tightened in his hair. I’d almost gotten him killed and he was still there with me. Maybe he just wanted to tell me to my face that he didn’t want anything to do with me, that he hated me for the trouble I’d caused. The machines clicked and one beeped, a warning sound as something else switched on. A light flashed near the door.

  Dodge tensed, then lifted his head. He blinked sleep from his eyes and looked disoriented for just a second. Then all of his attention went immediately to me. I couldn’t look away.

  A blinding hope filled his face. Both hands captured mine with infinite gentleness. Dodge’s voice emerged as a rusty shadow of his previous deep, commanding tone. “Am I dreaming?”

  “I don’t think so,” I whispered, and it sounded just as hoarse.

  Dodge tried to get closer, almost climbing into the bed next to me. “You’re here. You’re alive. Talk to me more. Persephone. Are you okay? How do you feel?”

  My cheeks burned with tears and grief, and the overwhelming hope that he wasn’t furious with me and didn’t resent me.

  But the tears agitated him. He sat on the bed and tried to gather me close, squeezing my hands. “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. I’ll get you whatever you need. Are you in pain?”

  I shook my head but froze and swallowed a cry as his knee bumped against my hip. Something that still hurt with a bone-deep agony that set my heart racing and lit up with the movement. The monitors and machines switched into alarm mode, blaring warnings, and activity erupted in the hallway. Dodge growled deep in his chest as the door opened, and leaned over me to brace on the other side of the mattress. He created a massive, muscular barrier over me.

  A familiar voice called from the hallway, “Don’t move, Percy. Just stay still. We’ll deal with him. He won’t hurt you.”

  Deirdre stayed near the door as her husband and Todd and half a dozen other guys I didn’t recognize slid into the room. Doctors and nurses tried to crowd in with them, but with every new person through the door, Dodge growled and snarled louder. His fingers bit into the mattress, his nails dark and sharp and hair sprouting on his arms and fingers. My breath caught. What was happening?

  I tried to lift my arms to push him away or try to draw the sheets up closer to my chest, but it just hurt more and sparked more tears. Which in turn sent Dodge into some kind of rage.

  Static charged the air as Deirdre moved her hands. Evershaw growled and advanced. “Cut it the fuck out, Dodge. Get your shit together. You’re scaring your mate.”

  I stared at him, trying to understand the words that definitely meant something more than what I expected. Mate? What the hell was a mate, and did he mean me? Did he think... Was I something to Dodge after all? But was he about to… was he going to lose control and go rampaging through the room as a wolf? What happened to me if he flipped out?

  My breath caught and another machine cheeped rapidly. A nurse moved around the perimeter of the room, trying to reach the machines, and Dodge growled more. When Evershaw jumped forward to protect her, Dodge leapt to meet him. Dodge changed mid-leap. His body twisted and turned and then he dropped to the floor on all fours as a wolf. A giant, furious wolf. He charged the people who tried to come in the room, including his friends, and the doctors and nurses scattered. Evershaw pushed my bed into the corner and snapped orders at everyone else as I stared in horror.

  Dodge whirled and snapped at Evershaw, and my eyes locked on the madness in the wolf’s eyes. There was no hint of humanity left in the beast. No flicker of Dodge’s humor or flirtation. Just rage and blood-lust. I choked on a scream. How could someone who’d been so gentle with me turn into such a terrifying beast? He lost control until he could have hurt anyone, might have tried to attack or kill anyone who got in his way. He bit Evershaw and blood splattered on the floor, but the man just tackled Dodge and more bodies piled on.

  Shouting and snarling deafened me and I sank lower in the bed, trying to bunch the pillow up around my ears. More of the wounds I’d almost forgotten about pulled and tore, and I whimpered.

  The snarling ceased immediately and I found a wolf’s golden eyes fixed on me. He went completely motionless as he stared at me, and I saw a flicker of recognition. I opened my mouth to say something but choked on air and the words that needed to be said. Then Deirdre said something strange that I didn’t quite hear, and three men trussed up Dodge and hauled him out of the room. The moment he was in the hall he started fighting again and more shouting started, mixed in with copious amounts of cursing. But by then the doctors and nurses filled the room and surrounded the bed, dragging it away from the corner where Evershaw had shoved me. The chaos swallowed me up.

  Even with the voices asking me questions and dozens of hands doing things and adjusting tubes and changing sensors, the only thing I saw and heard was Dodge’s fierce fight against all of his friends. People he lived with, people he worked for, people he cared about. If he attacked them when he became a wolf, what did that mean for me? Would he lose his mind and attack me at some point when I made him mad? He barely knew me and I’d already gotten him shot. It grew harder to breathe. How could I trust him to stay sane? He was the second shifter I’d seen lose total control. If it happened that often... how would I ever be safe around him?

  Chapter 44

  Dodge

  They chained him in the cellar where they’d kept Silas. Dodge could hardly move from the restraints, at least until he was almost in his right mind and Evershaw forced him back to human. The moments after Persephone woke up and Dodge ended up in the cellar flickered and blurred until he wasn’t sure what had really happened. But Persephone was awake. He survived. He hadn’t been able to smell her to know whether she’d turned, but there would be time for that.

  If Evershaw ever let him out of the fucking cellar.

  He was losing his mind. Dodge felt sanity slip further and further out of reach with every passing minute that they kept Persephone away from him. He felt her far away from him, somewhere in the city, and the pain radiated from his heart and soul and every bone in his body. It turned into a physical ache, like a deep bruise, that throbbed as his heart beat.

  Sila
s stayed underground with him, although the other wolf remained stuck but wasn’t chained. Whatever Deirdre had done with her magic shifted Silas back to his full wolf form, the human fully in control, but he couldn’t do anything else. He just lazed around and kept Dodge company. Dodge told Silas everything – every fear and hope, every wonderful memory of Persephone and all the things he planned to say to her the moment he saw her again.

  Dodge nearly freed himself a couple of times before Evershaw grew fed up and stalked down to the cellar to stand over him. The alpha’s fury radiated from every inch of his body. “Look, asshole. You need to calm the fuck down. I don’t want to keep you away from your mate, but you’re in no condition to be around her.”

  Dodge growled even in his human throat. He managed to rasp, “She’s mine. Mine.”

  “Yeah, and she’s fucking terrified of you.”

  The comment left him cold all the way to his core. Persephone feared him? He’d blamed the alpha for keeping him away from his mate, but what if... what if she didn’t want to see him? Dodge shook his head to try and jostle the memories loose from in the hospital. She’d woken up and he’d been there with her. She’d cried out in pain and then there were too many people in the room. The wolf took over, wrestled control away from him, and fought to keep everyone away from her.

  And then... she whimpered. Made a sad sound, a hurt sound, that cut through all the other noise and straight to his heart. She’d been afraid. Of him. He felt lower than the worst asshole he’d ever beaten the shit out of.

  But he needed to see her, to explain to her. Dodge tested the strength of the chains. He had to find her. He could make her understand.

  Evershaw sat on his heels, near the stairs to freedom, and fixed Dodge with a dark look, filled with the alpha’s power. It knocked Dodge back and stole his ability to move. “Listen to me. She is afraid. She is still weak but she is getting stronger. The doctors say she should make a full recovery.”

  “She’s getting stronger,” he repeated in a whisper. It was the only thought the wolf and the man alike could hold onto.

  “Yeah.” Evershaw poured himself a glass of whiskey from the bottle that remained on the shelf, next to the cigar humidor. The alpha took a deep gulp and tilted his head back to stare up at the darkened beams of the ceiling. “But she’s afraid and she doesn’t understand this. You fucking scared the shit out of her. So this is what we’re going to do. You are going to stay here until I’m confident you can keep your shit together.”

  Dodge growled.

  “You’re not making your case, dude.”

  He didn’t care. Neither did the wolf. The only thing on his mind was Persephone.

  Evershaw poured more whiskey and slowly moved to hand it to Dodge. “They’re releasing her from the hospital in a few days. Deirdre and I will move her back to her apartment so she can continue to recuperate. The O’Sheas have already agreed to set up rotating guards on the building to make sure she’s safe. Rafe managed to rent most of the apartments on her floor so she won’t have to worry about neighbors.”

  Dodge swallowed irritation. He didn’t want to be indebted to the O’Shea pack, particularly that asshole Rafe, but he had to grudgingly admit he would have been grateful for the additional protection afforded to his mate. If he’d had any intention of letting Persephone go back to that shithole of a building. “No.”

  “The fuck you mean, ‘no’?” the alpha snapped.

  “She’s not going back there.” Dodge threw back the whiskey, ignoring the weight of the chains and shackles on his arms, and held the glass up for more. “A new place. Safer. Better neighborhood. Concierge and guards. I’ll buy it.”

  “Dodge...”

  “Doesn’t matter how much it costs.” He scowled at the alpha, holding onto the wolf with the last edge of his control. Dodge knew Evershaw wouldn’t take him seriously if he let the wolf out even for a moment. Dodge stared into the whiskey after the alpha grudgingly poured more into the glass. “The money’s in the bank. Make sure it’s one of the new buildings, maybe the one where those fucking lions live. Buy whatever she needs for it – new furniture, kitchen shit, fill it up with food and nice things.”

  He would have preferred to purchase it all with her, or at least on his own for her, but part of him knew that he couldn’t control himself around her yet, particularly if she remained weak. The moment someone looked at her wrong or she felt a twinge of pain, he’d be out of his mind again. Not that he’d ever admit it to the alpha or anyone else.

  Dodge stared at the glass in his hand. There wasn’t enough whiskey in the city to dull the pain of being separated from Persephone. She was a ghost beside him. Memories of her haunted him both asleep and awake. Sometimes he thought he could smell her hair.

  Evershaw watched him warily. “You’re talking at least a million for one of the places in that building, Dodge. You sure –“

  “Yeah.” Dodge didn’t take his eyes off the glass. Staying drunk might take the edge off until he forgot to be crazy with grief that his mate wasn’t at his side. He could be drunk the rest of his life. It might be the only way he’d survive not being with her. “Bank account information is in the black book in the top drawer of the bedside table upstairs. There’s enough liquid to cover whatever.”

  Evershaw didn’t look convinced. “You gotta take things slow, Dodge. She’s still freaked out by all of this. Your meltdown at the hospital didn’t help. These have been the worst weeks of her life. Deirdre is staying with her to help her figure things out, but it will take time. You gotta get your shit together. You and Silas chill down here for another day or so, then we can revisit the plan going forward.”

  “She’s mine,” Dodge said, staring at the darkness in the corner of the cellar.

  “She’s her own first, man. Remember that.” Evershaw folded his arms over his chest. “I don’t want to keep you from her. I don’t. It’s gotta be fucking torture, and I know that. I sympathize. But I cannot let you terrify that girl any more than she already is. She needs to heal. And I know you think you’d be the best thing for her, but right now, that’s not the case.”

  A growl worked its way up his throat. The alpha didn’t know what he was talking about. Dodge would take care of her. He was the only one. He would keep her safe, he would protect her from the rest of the city. Being apart from her just meant that she was more vulnerable, even with a safe new apartment with a concierge and 24-hour security.

  Evershaw shook his head and turned toward the stairs. “That’s what I thought. Get it together, Dodge. If you don’t have more control in two days, we’ll have a talk about what happens next. I can’t have two crazy wolves in my pack. We’ll start to get a reputation.”

  Silas snorted loudly enough they both looked at him, then the wolf rolled his eyes and flopped on his back near the expensive space heater. Dodge shook himself and jerked his chin at the whiskey bottle, still on the shelf. “Then leave that where I can reach it.”

  “I don’t need a bunch of drunks in my pack, either,” Evershaw said.

  But before he left, he took the whiskey down and handed the bottle to Dodge. “Don’t drink it all tonight. You won’t get another one, so pace yourself.”

  Then he strode back up the stairs and left Dodge and Silas in the dim half-light of the cellar. Dodge studied the liquor and took a deep breath. Tomorrow he would get himself together and figure out how to help Persephone. Tonight, though... He unstoppered the bottle and closed his eyes. Tonight he would focus on dulling the pain. Tonight he would let the ghosts and Persephone’s scent tangle around him until he could believe that she was right there next to him.

  Chapter 45

  Percy

  I knew I looked awful because no one let me use a mirror. I could see enough of the bruises all over the rest of me to know that my face had to be in the same condition. Deirdre stayed with me at the hospital most of the time, with Mercy and Todd taking turns, and answered a lot of my questions – but not all of them. She danced ar
ound the details of what happened after they found me at the sanctuary, and wouldn’t say anything about Dodge except to say that he was safe and at her house.

  Moving grew easier with each day, though if I thought about it for too long, none of it made sense. I should have been lingering on the edge of death for far longer, or at least laid up in traction with broken bones, but instead there was just a lot of discomfort and the occasional sharp pain. They brought in a physical therapist to help me move around and walk and stretch. It was probably a good thing Dodge wasn’t there because I always ended up crying. Most of the time it was frustration more than pain, but the end result was the same: collapsing in bed, exhausted, and sleeping for at least half a day.

  At least the nurses were generous with the pain medication, which made it easier to accept that Dodge didn’t visit me at all. I didn’t know how I felt about his disappearing act. He’d been terrifying in his wolf form as he fought everyone in the entire hospital. Every time I imagined the weight of his gold gaze on me, no hint of the man in its depths, my heart sped up and my palms grew sweaty and clammy.

  And yet my mind always circled back to the possibility that he’d been protecting me. He’d stood over me in the bed, then charged at whoever tried to get into the room. Maybe if his wolf side took over... I shook my head and concentrated on staying upright as one of the nurses brought in a wheelchair.

  They were discharging me, finally. I still wasn’t sure what day it was, but Deirdre assured me it had been two weeks since that night at the sanctuary. It felt like it should have been longer, based on how my bruises looked. Mercy, the bright-eyed younger wolf who’d nearly steam-rolled me with hugs at Deirdre’s house, bounced along beside Deirdre to help me get dressed in the new clothes they’d brought. My sides ached by the time I finally maneuvered my stiff limbs into a sweatshirt and amazingly soft yoga pants, then crawled into the wheelchair.