"Ow! Dude! You better stick to the alpha healing and let someone else do the clean up!"
I looked at Clover, pained tears making her eyes shimmer.
"Let me check on Paisley," I said. "It'll give you a few minutes to rest before I have to draw that bullet out of you."
********************
Paisley
Sitting on my grandmother's couch, I stared at the floor, eyes purposefully crossed, as I listened to Rooster and Clark whispering in the kitchen.
Pack...exposed...humans...
The words slid against one another, not always making sense.
None of it made sense, actually. I had witnessed a wolf transform into my best friend. I'd seen her heal in Braeden's arms when she had been near death before his arrival. And not a damn one of the Woodsmen present at the time seemed shocked at what had happen. So they were in on the secret -- or carried the same secret as Clover did.
Every last one of them had that power of transformation in them, and now I knew.
Not good...too risky...
The words belonged to Clark and Rooster but they echoed the sentiments racing around inside my head. What happened to normal people who knew the Woodsmen's secret? Was that what had happened up on Taron's mountain? Had the rumored shootout been between the Woodsmen and humans who had discovered their secret?
Fuck, I had to get away from them. Only where could I go? It wasn't like the government had some supernatural witness protection program -- at least I had never heard of such a thing.
First rule of Supernatural Witness Protection -- don't fucking talk about Supernatural Witness Protection!
I choked on an hysterical laugh that wanted to escape.
She's losing it...No one beyond Braeden and Clover can know about this...everyone is still freaked out
Rooster's words hit me like a cold, wet, urine-soaked rag. This was confirmation of what I had feared. The Woodsmen would silence anyone who knew their secret.
The door to my bedroom opened and Braeden stepped out. His gaze skipped over me to land on Clark, the younger Woodsman's hand wrapped around a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a box of gauze pads stuffed under his arm. Clark stopped whispering with his brother and quickly crossed the room, his gaze down as he approached the very pissed off looking vice president of his club and, I assumed, his pack.
Braeden planted a hard palm on Clark's chest, halting him. He pulled the box away and opened it, shaking loose a few of the wrapped pads. Shoving the box at Clark, he tore open one of the pads and took the alcohol bottle, soaking the pad.
"Take the rest to Clover."
Ignoring Clark, Braeden sat next to me on the couch.
"Clo was worried you might have been injured."
I said nothing, brain spinning but not so much that I didn't tuck away the fact he was only out here because of his baby sister's concern. He probably figured I was dead meat anyway, which meant it was pointless to tend to any injuries I might have.
His hand came up under my chin, one curled finger making contact with my skin to force my head and gaze up. Need zigzagged through me. For the half second before he said anything, I felt no pain.
"You still in shock?" He squinted at me, a scowl narrowing his fiercely beautiful face.
"Maybe," I answered weakly. My head throbbed angrily and I felt on the verge of collapsing after the adrenaline rush of the last twenty minutes or so. My ankle hurt like a motherfucker from the jump down from the barn loft and several kicks had landed against my legs and hips from the upset goats as I barreled through their stalls.
"I probably twisted my ankle," I offered, deciding I needed to play things as cool as possible. Not only might any defiance immediately seal my fate, but I needed to accept any assistance offered so I would be in better condition when I had a chance to escape.
"And a headache," I added.
He grunted then looked at Rooster. "Get ice and some aspirin."
Still wearing a scowl so deep it was probably etched into his bones, Braeden began to wipe at my cheek. Seeing the gauze pad turn red, I felt another rush of panic and pulled back.
His free hand shot up and wrapped around the back of my skull. "Calm down, Paisley. This is probably Clo's blood."
Right. I would know if I got shot. The headache and surrounding horror show was just fuzzing up my brain.
"Here," Rooster said, setting a compress down on the table while he handed me a glass of water then produced two aspirin tablets.
As I took a drink and popped the pills into my mouth, Rooster reached for the leg I had been favoring since I sat down.
His hands stopped mid-reach as Braeden growled.
"I'll go see if they've found anything," Rooster suggested as Braeden's cheeks began to redden and his beard seemed to come alive, the hairs visibly bristling and thickening.
What, I wondered, did his wolf look like?
"Just keep your mouth shut about what happened in the barn. Taron's on his way here to help with Clover. He'll decide what the rest of the pack needs to know."
"Sure." Rooster glanced at me, his gaze unexpectedly soft. "I didn't say anything when I sent them into the woods, either. Just told them to look for one or more shooters."
Braeden nodded, the bright red fading from his cheeks.
When the front door closed and we were alone, he got down on the floor and inspected my ankle.
"Definitely sprained." He lifted it gingerly onto the couch, propped it on top of a pillow then placed the ice compress on it before he returned to cleaning my face.
This suddenly tender, gentle version of Braeden was a stranger to me, at least he had been for the last five years. Before that he had cleaned plenty of my cuts and scrapes.
Was there enough lingering goodwill from our past I could trade on to stay alive?
Looking up at him, I pushed every ounce of terror and vulnerability I was feeling up to the surface of my face. "What's going to happen to me?"
He didn't answer, just kept swabbing.
His hand moved higher. Pain stabbed through my left temple. I winced and jerked my head.
"Stay still," he ground out and fisted a handful of hair to keep me from moving. His fingers probed gently around my temple. A whimper circled inside my mouth.
"I forgot," I said as the memory flickered inside my head. "I was shot right after you hung up."
I didn't mean the explanation to come out as an accusation, but it sounded that way. I tried to cover it up with more words.
"I woke up on the ground and crawled over to the wo...I mean to Clover right before you showed up. That's why I hadn't started working on her, I guess."
"Stop talking," he brusquely ordered. "This is just a flesh wound. We need to keep it from getting infected, that's all. It probably saved your life, too, with the shooter thinking he dropped you. That or the bastard ran out of ammo."
I listened, eyes closed, to the anger growing in his voice. When he finally used the alcohol on me, I suffered through the sharp stinging with my lips pressed tightly together. But my silence ended when his hands dropped to my shoulders and started to touch all over.
"What the hell, Braeden?" I asked, eyes flying open.
"You didn't know you'd been shot. I'm making sure nothing else is wrong with you."
His words issued clipped at their ends, his hard face cemented with a professional disinterest mixed with irritation. He was down to my hips when Clark opened my bedroom door and popped his head out, interrupting Braeden's inspection with a polite cough.
"Clover said she wants Paisley in here when the bullet comes out." He paused, looked back into the bedroom with a grimacing glance over his shoulder. "And I'm pretty sure you need to do it now."
********************
Braeden
"Damn it," I growled at Clark. "Why didn't you call me in here sooner?"
"She wouldn't let me," Clark mumbled as he side-eyed my barely conscious little sister.
In the fifteen or so minutes I'd been in t
he other room, she'd gone from a normal temperature to burning up, the sheets wet with her perspiration. Black lines trailed from the sealed entry wound, spreading toward her breast and along her shoulder.
"Busybody," I snapped at her, fear over losing the spoiled brat making my words and tone harsh. I knew exactly why she had prohibited Clark from fetching me. She wanted me to spend time alone with her best friend.
She squeaked at me in complaint. "I'm pretty sure you whispered you'd never call me a busybody again while you were healing me."
Shit, she'd been conscious enough to hear what I had thought I was only saying in my head.
"Hallucinating," I mumbled as she reached for Paisley.
"Will you hold my hand?" she asked, eyes tearing up with more than the pain running through her frail body. "I'm too weak to hurt you if I squeeze."
"Sure," Paisley answered, head bobbing as she took Clover's hand.
"You'll need to do more than hold her hand." I nodded at the other side of the bed. "I need her braced against you and restrained. Clark, get her legs."
As injured as she was, Clover managed to turn her head when Paisley got into position behind her and brush her friend's cheek with her own.
"No one will hurt you," she told Paisley with a soft croak. "We'll make sure of that."
Baby sister was in no condition to guarantee anything. Even I couldn't guarantee Paisley's safety -- only that I would kill any shifter who tried to hurt her.
"You need to save your strength." I warned as I positioned my hands above the exit wound. "So stop talking."
"You promised not to say that, either," she rasped, her energy to argue quickly fading.
I closed my eyes, teeth grinding as I instructed everyone on how I needed them to assist me. Paisley and Clark just needed to keep Clover from thrashing about. But Clover would have to help guide her body's regenerative powers to move the bullet along and tell me if it took a wrong turn.
"Ready?" I asked with a faked tranquility, my eyes remaining shut so I could visualize the bullet.
"You got this," Clover softly assured me.
I opened my eyes long enough to meet her gaze for one fleeting second. We had gone through too much together, lost too much together, for a coward's bullet to end it. She was going to grow old, give me nieces and nephews to annoy me through their childhood and teens just like their sweet, exasperating mother had.
She nodded, the motion barely detectible. Closing my eyes again, I pictured the original hole in her shoulder, its angle and the path the bullet had taken. I needed to move it through the muscle and fat, avoiding the blood and lymph vessels.
Clover gasped as the bullet started to shift. I was taking it up and out with a short detour around her collarbone. But the two inches or less it had to travel would feel like a thousand miles to her.
"Breathe through the pain, baby girl."
"It's a bullet, not a baby!" she snapped, the sudden surge of adrenaline fueling her sarcasm as fresh pain kicked her body into fight mode.
"Breathe, Clo," Paisley coaxed, her fingers turning purple from Clover's death grip on her hand. She sucked in a lung full of air and exhaled slow and strong against Clover's ear. "Breathe with me, bestie."
My baby sister growled once, but she complied, in and out, each breath measured and steady even though her lips were bloodless and trembling.
"Bone," she grimaced without missing a beat.
Recognizing the resistance, I pushed the bullet toward the top of her collarbone a centimeter until I met muscle, then I drew it forward. Skin separated and her raspy breaths turned into an ear piercing scream.
"It's out," I said, changing the force of my energy to flow into her in an effort to enhance her own regenerative powers.
"You're doing great, Clo," Paisley encouraged. "Totally bad ass."
A whimper mixed with a laugh in Clover's throat. Bringing Paisley's hand to her lips, she kissed it before she passed out.
"Is she okay?" Panic laced its way through Paisley's question. She could only see that Clover had lost consciousness, couldn't feel her body still mending like I could.
Pocketing the fragments of the bullet, I nodded then placed my hands back on Clover's shoulder. I focused my alpha energy on repairing the damage I'd just done. She was in bad shape. Best I could guess, the bullet had hit either the vein or artery behind her collarbone, each vessel as fat as my finger.
A human would have bled out before I made it to the cabin. As it was, she was only alive because I'd stopped by Rooster's place to make sure he could be at the cabin on Monday when Paisley was selling her livestock. If I'd been at home or the clubhouse, my baby sister would have been dead.
Withdrawing my hands, I caught Paisley's attention with a nod.
"Stay with her..." It wasn't a command, but a request. Clover would want to know her friend was safe when she woke up.
She blinked her acquiescence and snuggled closer to Clover. Standing, I snagged Clark's gaze and offered a meaningful tilt of my head directing him to stay in the room. I didn't want to scare Paisley, but she was only safe as long as she didn't run. I couldn't be sure she wouldn't bolt once she knew Clover was out of danger.
Leaving the girls, I entered the living room to find Taron Murphy sitting on Holly Ulster's couch, his bearish frame all but eclipsing the piece of furniture.
"How long have you been here?" I asked, collapsing into a nearby chair.
"Not long enough to directly assist."
He rose, came around the chair and put one of his big hands on each of my shoulders. Heat began to immediately flow into me. His alpha energy was powerful, unlike anything I'd ever felt in another shifter.
Taron had been trying to convince me I was every bit as strong, only a few years greener. But I figured he was trying to build me up to take over as the club's president and pack leader. He didn't want the job anymore, not with a cub in his woman's belly.
"Did Paisley see anything?"
My lips mashed together. I had told Rooster to keep his mouth shut, but Taron was the one man in the pack I would not lie to -- and not because he was my boss. I trusted his inherent goodness, and not just toward protecting our own kind, but humans as well.
Hell, I'd seen him almost spill his bike to avoid killing a squirrel.
"Yeah," I admitted and felt a fresh surge of his alpha energy. "Rooster and Clark were there."
"Lucky for you that Rooster has a sweet spot for Paisley and his brother knows it."
A growl rumbled through me. The brothers were near in age to Clover and Paisley, Rooster two years older and Clark a year younger. I'd made it clear to each of them that they could court my sister if she was interested but Paisley was off limits. She was a human and we tried very hard not to expose our existence to the outside world.
"Even luckier," Taron chuckled, "is that Rooster's a good enough man who won't seek revenge if her affection lies elsewhere."
I shrugged away from my boss's healing touch and turned to look up at him. He lifted his hands, a silent proclamation of innocence, but his honey gold gaze danced with mischief. Now that he had a mate, he was trying to get me hooked up as a family man.
"It was always going to come to this, Paisley finding out," Taron said. "You were never going to be able to push her out of Clover's life -- or yours."
Yep, definitely trying to play the matchmaker. Only he couldn't realize how very hard I'd been trying to cut Paisley out. She had to think I was a rude, self-absorbed asshole by now because that's the role I'd started playing when she first left Night Falls to attend college five years before.
Heading toward the front door, Taron stopped halfway across the small living room and looked at me. "I have a feeling this was some faction from one of the Champaign groups."
"It wasn't a normal, that's for sure," I said, remembering the bullet fragments in my pocket. Following after him, I removed the fragments and gave them another sniff before handing them over. Mixed in with the scent of Clover's blood was the ca
use of the rapid blood poisoning that had started to set in while I wasted time checking on Paisley.
"Datura," Taron growled as he drew a deep breath in, his nose hovering over the fragments.
I nodded. The white trumpet-shaped flower was deadly to humans in large doses. But shifters were far more sensitive to the poison it produced.
"Lucky the shooter only managed to sink one bullet," Taron observed, pulling the door open. "See if you can recover any more slugs. And move the girls to Rooster and Clark's place after Clover has had a few hours to recover."
Right, I nodded. The brothers had the closest thing to a safe house in Night Falls outside of the clubhouse. If Taron was right, the morning's attack was just the beginning.
********************
Paisley
Whatever tenderness Braeden had exhibited when he tended to my bleeding head and sprained ankle in the living room was gone when he returned to the bedroom a few hours later to wake Clover. Glaring in my direction, he ordered me to help her get a shower and into a fresh change of clothes.
He limited the shower to ten minutes. When we came out, he had the suitcase I'd brought from Michigan sitting by the front door and one of Holly's bags. Looking at the two long woolen coats draped over the back of the couch, one for Clover, one for me, I could see that he had raided my dead grandmother's closet as well.
"I'll do that," he said as I held one of the coats out for Clover to thread her arms through. "Get yours on."
The few words he spoke rumbled low in his chest before he spit them into the air. I couldn't understand why he was angry again. I hadn't done anything new, had stayed with Clover while she slept, no thought of escape in my head, only concern over her well-being.
And I certainly didn't think Braeden Hughes could read minds or he would have been a lot meaner to me a lot earlier in life -- like the first time he would have realized I had a crush on him.
Finished buttoning Clover into the coat, he jerked his head at Clark. "Help her out to the car."
I started to follow but his hand seized my elbow. Even through the thick wool, I could feel how hard he squeezed.
It was a jailor's grip and I was the prisoner.
Comes Now the Wicked Woodsman (A Night Falls Alpha Wolf BBW Shapeshifter Romance) Page 3
