Biting my lips, I straighten up. He’s trying to send a message to me: Do not be so stupid as to fall in love with me. My heart is closed.
“Why would people kill him?” Michael asks. “He’s so cool!”
Xavier sighs. “Fear. Insecurity.”
“Is he you, Zavier?” Sofia whispers. “Is the little wolf boy you?”
Michael informs his sister, “Of course he’s the wolf, Soph! He’s the boy-wolf who’s Mommy scared him when he was little!”
“It’s just a story,” Xavier frowns and shakes his head, glancing to the closed window. “Just a fairy tale.”
I head over to tuck Michael in. “Alright Michael. Time for bed, honey.”
He burrows under his comforter, trying so hard to stay awake, but I know that face. He’ll be out in less than five minutes. I kiss his forehead and rise to tuck my daughter in. As I do, a stolen glance at Xavier can’t be helped. He’s watching me with a somber face.
“Are you staying the night?” Sofia asks him. He shakes his head. “Mommy, can Zavier stay?” I smile at her cute mispronunciation. “He can watch over us so Daddy doesn’t come back.”
My fingers freeze on the blanket I was tucking around her little body. “Sofia!”
Her face scrunches up. “I’m sorry.”
Totally taken off guard, I bend and kiss her forehead. “It’s okay, hon. Go to sleep. Xavier has to go home, but I’m here to watch over you.”
“But you don’t!” she whispers.
Stunned, I stare at her. “What do you mean by that?”
Her mouth squishes and she stares at the ceiling. Glancing over to my son, I see him already sleeping with his mouth open, one arm splayed over the side of the bed. I’m beside myself and I wish I knew what Sofia means, so I ask her again. She just rolls over. With my heart twisted, I lie down with her, spooning her with one arm holding her tight. “Honey, I promise to watch over you and protect you. I’m sorry if you feel that I haven’t.”
“Okay, Mommy,” she whispers, but I don’t know if she believes me. Like my son, she falls asleep much more quickly than I ever can so I wait for that moment. I won’t leave until she’s sleeping. I’m so terribly disturbed by what she just said and a coldness has slipped into my veins.
Xavier doesn’t move until I get up. When her breathing changes and I know she’s out, I carefully climb off the bed and motion to him to follow me outside.
Running both hands through my hair, I stare at a photograph of our family on the hall wall and whisper, “She doesn’t think I protect her.”
Xavier is silent, and I can’t look at him. I’m very troubled by what my daughter thinks of me.
He follows me to the front door and does not offer the usual things people say under awkward circumstances.
She’s just a child. She didn’t mean it. Of course she thinks you can protect her.
They would be lies. And while part of me wishes he’d lie to me, I’m very glad he doesn’t.
I feel like a veil has been lifted from my life. Reality is staring me in the face. Denial is dead. My children resent Sam’s abuse. They think I couldn’t protect them. And I couldn’t. Not really.
I feel shaky. I want to vomit. Holding onto a wall to steady myself I feel his hands on my waist. Instinctively I lean into the support, then burrow into his strength of his chest. His embrace is comforting and too hard to take. Pushing off from him, I say, under my breath, “You should go.”
“I can stay with you tonight,” he tells me, his voice deep and cautious.
Shaking my head I unlock the front door. “I can take care of them just fine thank you.” As I meet his eyes, I see no emotions reflected in them. I have no idea what he’s thinking. If he’s judging me. If he pities me. Xavier is impossible to read.
With conviction, I tell him, “Please go. I need to be alone.”
He frowns and gives one curt nod, turning to leave. As he glances back to me before descending the stairs, I shut and lock the door before I change my mind, sighing with my back against it.
Ten minutes later, I’m still here when a knock makes me nearly jump out of my skin. I guess I was waiting for him to come back. To tell me I was being stupid. That he will stay and I can’t say no just because I’m trying to brave when I’m feeling anything but. With my heart jumping for joy, I unlock the door, swing it open and see four strange men in suits standing there, looking at me with dangerous expressions. In a Russian accent the one right in front of me says in a low and threatening tone, “Ready forrrr ride?”
I scream. He clamps his hand over my mouth. Two of the men pass me, heading inside. I start kicking at the guy’s feet, but the fourth man helps him restrain me by grabbing my legs and lifting me up. With my mouth covered by a powerful and sweaty palm, I fight them, screaming like crazy. When I see the other two men dragging my children from their room, I lose my fucking mind.
Xavier
The phone rings but I don’t need to answer it. It’s Draik and I’m almost at the loft. I’m still processing the evening, the children, Emily and her looking at me like she was trying to be stronger than she felt. I could smell her sadness. I’m used to smelling fear. Sadness is new for me. I didn’t know what to do with it. It took me off guard completely. I get why she wanted me to leave, when she heard what Sofia said. She wants to be everything to them, but kids need a father. She can’t protect them. I can.
Listen to yourself, Xavier. You’re the one who took their father away.
“That’s not fucking fair,” I grumble to my own demons. “He was evil and he was hurting them. He’d never stop doing that. Guys like him never do unless someone makes them.”
As a text comes through — Answer your fucking phone! — my phone rings again.
So I pick up. “What.”
“Where are you?”
“Almost home.”
“They’ve got her and the kids.”
My bones go ice cold and I spin the car around, throwing my phone on speaker and tossing it on my lap. “Explain!”
“Sandra called me. She heard screaming. She knows I’d taken an interest in the family. Knew about Sam Foster. So she thinks his family has come for them. She’s hysterical.”
“How long ago!”
“Just now. Sandra didn’t open the door. She was too scared. She called me and I could hear them in the background.”
My nerves split in half as I imagine what that must have sounded like. “The children,” I grate. “Emily.”
“I heard them all, X.”
“Get your asses over here now!”
“We’re in the Camaro already.”
I hear Curragh’s voice in the background. He must be driving. “Tell us what you find.”
“What I’m going to find is a bunch of dead fucking Russians!” I grind out, speeding through a stoplight as cars hit the brakes and their horns. “It’s been almost fifteen minutes since I left. They weren’t there when I was. Must have come after. Not much time has passed. I might be able to catch up with them. Fuck that. I HAVE to catch up with them.”
Emily. Michael. Sofia. If they hurt that family, I don’t know what I’ll do. Whatever it will be, I will probably go to jail for life for it. It will be worth it.
I can’t live without them.
This is when it hits me. What I’ve been avoiding all along and what the others have seen before I was able to acknowledge it.
Emily is it for me. She’s my forever mate. It’s why I needed her to tell me she was mine. It’s why I couldn’t control myself when it came to Sam Foster. Why I couldn’t just scare him like we normally do. Or even hurt him a little. My wolf recognized her as who she was. Anyone who lays a hand on my mate loses that hand. Anyone who hurts her like he did, for as long as he did…has to die.
“Emily,” I whisper as terror takes hold of me. “I have to find her.”
Draik tells me, “Don’t hang up. Drive as fast as you can, not that I need to tell you that. We’ll stay on the line.”
&nbs
p; No one says anything else.
My Jeep isn’t great for taking turns like this. I’m pushing it hard and the thing nearly rolls on its side as I take the last right. Way way way down their street I see a black SUV, an Escalade, going as fast as I am. She must have given a fight. That’s my girl.
“I’ve got ‘em!”
“Where are you?” Draik demands.
“Passing by her building. Motherfucker if they’ve touched a hair on any of their heads I will make what I did to Sam Foster look like…” Gritting my teeth, I feel my wolf thrashing about in my soul. My eyes start to glow, and I keep the pedal to the ground even as I pull back my own leash. “I’m losing it.”
Curragh shouts at me, “You can’t drive if you turn! Get a hold of yourself!”
“I’m trying,” I rasp, but my nails are now claws on the wheel. C’mon boy. Get down. I need you but I don’t need you now. Wait for it. Wait for it! “He’s not listening.”
War yells at Draik’s phone, “Xavier, you have more control than any of us! You can do this! Sofia and Michael need you.”
“Emily needs you,” Draik says in a voice mixed with calm and a need to tear those evil bastards to shreds. “War’s right. You can do this. Be their hero.”
Cracking my neck, I feel my wolf back down. He heard that. It means something to him. He wants it just as much as I do. “They’re faster than my Jeep,” I mutter, cracking my knuckles on the wheel. My right leg muscles are rock hard as I keep the gas pedal to the ground.
“What direction?”
“Northwest. Black Escalade. Moving fast.”
“You hear that?” Draik asks Curragh.
“Of course I did.”
“FUCK!” I bellow as pain and fear twists my gut. “I lost them. They were right there and now – wait. I just saw their taillights through a split in some buildings to my left. What the fuck?!”
“What’s up,” Draik demands.
“They’re going the exact route I used to take to get to that shit-hole, that last hide-out.”
“What the fuck?” Draik parrots.
“It’s gotta be a coincidence,” War mutters.
With my wolf at the ready like this, War’s practically shouting – that’s what it sounds like to me. All my heightened senses are at full alert. If only my fucking Jeep could shift into something faster, too.
“I could turn and run after them,” I growl.
“Don’t you fucking do it!” Curragh yells at me. “Xavier, we’re nearly there. Wait for us. We will do this together. You don’t know what’s waiting for you.”
He thinks I’ll be vulnerable. And maybe I would be. But I can’t help but think that Emily and those kids are alone with some of the most evil motherfuckers who ever walked the streets of Chicago. They had their hands on them already. What have they done? My gut clamps tighter and I snarl to my packmates, “If they’re hurt, I will…”
“WAIT FOR US. I MEAN IT!”
Crashing over a yard, I cut the corner of an intersection entirely, sending a woman screaming from my path.
“What the hell was that?” Draik asks me.
“I made a short-cut. Lady overreacted. She wasn’t even near me.”
“Imagine how she’d react to a wolf jumping from a moving vehicle and bounding off as said vehicle crashed into who-knows-what?”
War’s got a point. And I don’t fucking care.
“You have a better idea?”
“ANYTHING IS A BETTER IDEA.” Curragh bellows. “YOU FUCKING STAY ON POINT AND WE WILL HANDLE THIS.”
“Together,” Draik adds, distracted. I can almost see them, all three leaning forward searching the streets for our enemies, bodies tense as shit.
“I can’t wait. I’m sorry.” I scour the road in front of me thinking where I can point my Jeep so that it won’t hurt pedestrians. Fur starts to spring from my hands. My eyes are glowing amber and I am ready to sprint out of here. As I open the door and hear War yell, “THERE THEY ARE!”
Gripping the handle with my left claw, I snarl, “Don’t fucking lie to me, Howard.”
“He’s not. Black escalade. And Xavier? I just saw Emily.”
Slamming the door shut, I demand, “You better not be fucking with me.”
“She’s unconscious, her face pressed against the tinted window. If I wasn’t what I am, I wouldn’t have been able to make her out.”
“Is she alive?” War asks them and I nearly lose my shit.
Curragh growls at him, “What are you, stupid?!!”
“STOP THEM!” I shout with all of my preternatural volume.
That’s when I realize where we are. We are headed right for ‘the coincidence.’ Which means it’s anything but. The Camaro comes into view
“Motherfucker,” Draik mutters.
“They’re going to the squatter house,” I snarl.
“That means he was watching us,” Curragh says, focused on pushing that Camaro as fast as it will fucking go.
“It’s a set up!” War says, under his breath in disbelief.
And this is where he’s smarter than the three of us. None of us thought that. We just thought Alexander was using the same hideout because he’d spied on us and knew it was safe from the police. And now War has opened our eyes to what’s really going on, that it’s much deeper.
We were too eager to catch the Escalade that we didn’t realized it wanted us to.
“Shit,” Draik grumbles. “Now what?”
The squatter house comes into view way up the isolated street. This place has been long forgotten by society and yet there are lights on in that abandoned meth-lab, crack-den like someone’s sitting by a fire with cookies and champagne. The Escalade screeches, bouncing into the driveway and I grit my teeth.
“This is all me. You guys stay back.”
“The hell we will,” Curragh says, cutting in front of me, his car faster. The street has only two lanes and no one is coming from the other direction. Curragh hits the brakes and veers into the other lane, coming up to my side. I glance over, not slowing at all. Draik’s window rolls down and I see War in the back seat handing him a couple guns. I punch my window with the side of my fist and it shatters onto the road between us. Draik throws me the weapons one at a time. I catch them and we all focus on the target again.
Emily
The moment I blink awake, three things jump into my consciousness. One is my face hurts. The second is I’m being carried over a guy’s shoulder. The third is so are my children. As I start to scream, I hear shots ring out. My kids are crying. What is happening? Where are we being taken? And why?!!!
Dr. Peters and two other men run up at an unnatural speed. My eyes go wider as I see Xavier join them. All of them have guns. They’re shouting war cries as they approach.
I scream, “XAVIER! HELP SOFIA AND MICHAEL!”
The man carrying me kicks a door open and dashes inside as I bounce over his shoulder. The two men who have my kids are ahead of us. I am set down in the large living room in a house that is ill cared for and disgusting with peeling paint, no furniture and at least twenty large men on the staircase, along the walls, and staring out from the other rooms. All armed. Sofia calls out to me and I kick at the man holding me captive, slamming the heels of my feet into the tops of his where all the fragile, little bones are. I nail him really hard and he smacks me upside the head, but I’m used to that. I duck as soon as the blow lands and propel myself forward to get to my children. I land on the ground on my stomach at their feet and they bend to hug me.
“Let herrr haff zehm,” a thick Russian accent commands the men. My children scramble into my arms and I hold them tightly to me, our backs against a wall.
I know Xavier must be outside but they haven’t come in yet. Why was I taken? How did he know? He’d left my house…wait, what time is it? I have no idea.
“Mommy, I saw…” I shush Michael and kiss his head before he says, Wolfman. I don’t have time for fantasies right now when reality is scary enough.
&nb
sp; From outside and without warning, shots ring out and I duck instinctively, shielding my children with my body. The windows shatter around us. Men start falling to the ground. From the second floor, I hear heavy footsteps clamoring out of rooms up there. There is a cacophony of bullets exploding through glass, walls and people.
Then it goes silent.
I glance up and see something out of a mafia film. I look up at the second floor where I heard their leader before. Am I in the middle of a mafia war? Is Xavier one of them? Oh my God, have I fallen in love with a criminal?
You know what? That would be my luck. If I get out of this alive, I am going to tell Marisol I’m becoming a nun.
The leader stands at the top of the stairs, six men around him. He is striking. Black hair, green eyes. Impeccable suit. But his eyes remind me of my deceased husband during his bad episodes. He smiles at me, and I shudder.
“Stay down, babies!” I whisper to my children. “Do as I say! Keep your eyes shut!” I can’t let them see this.
“I deed not say to bring zehm,” their leader informs me. “But dey verrr smart to.”
“To scar them forever!” I spit at him.
He shrugs. “Is almost over. Vhat do I care vhat happens to your stupeed kidzzz.”
What. The. Fuck.
His henchmen glance over, guns trained on the windows and front door. They look like they’re wondering what he means by ‘almost over.’ He pays them no mind. He’s listening to the silence. The air is thick with it.
He asks me, “You love him?”
I don’t have to ask who he means. I know this has something to do with Xavier. This man is waiting to hurt him and I have no choice but to wait and see what happens. I wish I had a gun. I wish to God I could get that gun dropped five feet from me by a man who no longer needs it. But now two of the six men upstairs are coming down. They’re a road block. Unless I hurry.
But you don’t protect us, Mommy.
Sofia’s words earlier this night haunt me. If I run for it and try to get that weapon, I will have to leave them to do it. I can’t do that. So I stare at it with thinly veiled longing, wishing it would grow legs and walk to me.
Werewolves of Chicago: Xavier Page 13
