Broken Wolf: Moonbound Series, Book Seven

by Krystal Shannan

  “Remember what Vadik said,” Maggie said, a somber tone in her voice. “Back in the hotel. We were trying to get inside Rossi’s head, and he said, if the madman thinks that he’s lost once before and he’s about to lose again, he’s always got—”

  “An escape plan,” Vadik finished for her. “He would have a way off the island we don’t know about.”

  “And he would go for the babies before he left,” Clara said.

  Rain’s blood almost froze in his veins. The water moved around his legs, dragging him away from Damon just enough that someone pulled the boy into the boat. Vadik.

  “The babies?” Rain repeated, icy blood thudding in his ears.

  “He keeps the babies somewhere,” Clara said. “Not with us in the house, because he doesn’t want the girls raising their own children. Whenever someone has a baby, he takes them away, and he keeps them somewhere.”

  “Do you know where?” Rain sloshed over next to Clara’s boat and grabbed her arm. “Tell me how to find them.”

  “We have to go!” Vadik yelled. “We have to leave this place right now. I need to get Andrea to a hospital.”

  “Clara,” Rain repeated. “Where are they?”

  “I don’t know.” Tears slipped from her bright eyes. “He never told us where.”

  Damon’s head rose, carefully, and Rain caught the movement in the corner of his eye. He whirled on the boy.

  Damon’s lips opened and, at first, no sound came out. Then, with a hard glance at Clara, he said, “There’s a bunker…”

  Chapter Eleven

  Clara looked past the nurse, dressing the wound on her thigh, to Owen’s freshly shaved face. So different. She’d gotten so used to seeing him half naked and shaggy. Now he was wearing light blue clothes just like the nurse had given her after a mandatory shower. But his face…and his hair. It was so light. She’d never seen him without a beard or with close cut hair. The eternally angry grimace on his face had turned up into a hopeful smile. His blue eyes sparkled as they met her gaze.

  “Clara.”

  “Almost done here,” the nurse said, taping a bandage over the angry welt where the hunter’s bullet had grazed. “There you go.” She patted the pair of light blue pants next to Clara on the hospital bed. “Put those on. Do you need any pain killers?”

  “Pain killers?” Clara repeated, not understanding the question.

  “She wants to know if you want any drugs to help dull the pain,” Owen answered, walking to the bedside.

  She shook her head. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  The nurse shrugged. “All right then. I’ll be back with your discharge papers. The doc said you are good to go.”

  “What about our friends?”

  “There’s a whole group of people waiting for you outside the door. But if you mean the woman who came in with the ugly arm injury, the report from the OR is that she’s doing better than they expected.”

  OR? Clara wanted to ask more questions. But she opted to just ask Owen after the nurse left.

  She snatched the pants and slipped them onto her bare legs. The nurse had given her a wispy pair of underwear, but she still felt naked, even with them on. She hopped to the ground and winced. The impact jarred the wound on her thigh.

  Clara pulled up the pants and settled the elastic band onto her waist. Owen pulled her against his chest and buried his face in her damp hair.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  “God, Clara. I love you so much. More than I thought I could love anyone…ever.”

  She smiled. “I think we’re mates. Like Vadik said he and Andrea were. We were meant to be. I can feel it. The way our magick wraps itself around each other.” Clara slipped her arms around Owen’s waist and hugged. His warmth infused her exhausted body.

  Their magick swirled peacefully. The connection she’d felt that very first day in the cages had grown tenfold, but there was something missing. Something deep inside her said there could be more…should be more.

  “I think you’re right,” he murmured. “I talked to the little one…Maggie, I think. We’re going to wait to find out what happened on the island, and then they’ll arrange us a flight out of Choaca.” He pulled back and cupped her face.

  Tears burned in her eyes. They were leaving. He was taking her home just like he’d always said he would. “To your family?”

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  Maggie stepped through the half open door and poked her head around the curtain. She had a large duffle bag in her hand. “Julianna brought clothes for you both. We did our best to guess on the sizes and shoes. She put some money in there for you as well to cover anything you might need to get restarted in Iowa.”

  Owen kissed Clara’s forehead and turned to face Maggie. “Thank you. There aren’t words to thank you eno—”

  Clara touched his arm. “Eventually it will all be a distant memory.” She met Maggie’s gaze. “What matters is that we are together and you and your friends… your team made that possible.”

  “Thank you for taking care of my friends. Vadik told me what you both did for them.” Maggie put the bag on the floor and threw her arms around Owen’s neck and then turned and embraced Clara too.

  Clara patted Maggie on the back before the small woman backed away, wiping a tear from her eye.

  “Andrea wouldn’t have made it without you,” Maggie said.

  “How is she?” Clara asked.

  “She lost a ton of blood, but the doctors are saying she should pull through. Her arm will never fully heal, too much tissue was—” she gulped. “It was really bad.”

  Clara nodded. “I know.”

  Maggie took a deep breath. “She’s going to survive though,” she continued. “She’s in recovery with Vadik. I know he’d like to thank you personally, but he won’t leave her side.”

  “I’m just glad you came back for all of us.”

  She nodded, her gaze disconnecting from Clara’s, almost as if she were experiencing something outside of the room. The look reminded her of Vadik’s stare when he’d said he could feel Andrea.

  “Have you heard anything else from the island?” Clara asked.

  “No.” Maggie wiped her palms along her hips.

  “Maggie?”

  The tattooed woman looked up again. “Yes.”

  “Vadik said he and Andrea were mates. Is there a way to know if Owen and…” Clara paused and looked up at Owen.

  He nodded for her to continue.

  When she glanced toward Maggie again, the small woman had a small smile on her face.

  “Your magick will tell you. A cord will start to form or you will be pulled so tightly together that you can’t think of anything else. It happens differently for different people.”

  “The pull was immediate and—”

  “Crazy strong?” Maggie asked.

  Owen nodded and hugged Clara tighter against his waist.

  “Andrea and Vadik. And you,” Clara pointed to Maggie’s wrists. “You all have these tattoos. There’s something about them. They aren’t like your other tattoos.”

  Maggie sighed. “The tattoos come with the bonding spell. I can bond you two, but let me warn you. It’s not something that can be undone. You’ll live, barring no fatal accidents, for a hundred years. It’s much different than human life.”

  “A hundred years? From now?” Owen stuttered. “Meaning we’ll live to be—”

  She gave Clara a once over, then Owen. “Till you’re about a hundred and thirty or so? Yes. Once the spell ends you’re wolf spirit leaves your body. As a human again, you’ll age more rapidly and pass within about ten years of old age. At least that tends to be the consensus among the packs I know who’ve documented the process.”

  “There’s so much I never knew. I don’t even know about packs. About how any of this is outside of what my father allowed us to know. So much I would never have known if you hadn’t come looking for us,” Clara whispered.

  Owen kissed the top of her head. “We’ll
learn together.”

  Clara’s head was swimming. She’d never been off the island. Never been around anyone that didn’t know who she was. Didn’t know what she was.

  Now Maggie and Owen were talking about how to watch the moon schedule and to be sure their jobs allowed for flexibility so they could go shift every full moon.

  On the island, everyone had shifted, except for the men in the house on the beach. That was the only place they didn’t go during the full moon. Now she had to worry about people seeing her shift. What they might do to her?

  “I want you to bond us,” Owen said, his voice deepening. He rubbed his hands up and down Clara’s arms.

  She sucked in a breath. She was with Owen. That was all that really mattered. They were together. Safe. They could start a life together. Maybe even a family.

  “Are you ready, Clara?” Maggie asked, stepping closer.

  Clara nodded.

  Maggie laid a hand on each of their wrists and murmured a strange litany of words Clara couldn’t understand.

  A tingle flitted across Clara’s skin and then heat flared along her wrists. Beautiful green marks entwined and wrapped themselves around both she and Owen’s wrists. Their magick billowed and, with a rush unlike anything she’d ever experienced, Clara felt Owen. She felt the tugging of the skin where it was healing on his shoulder, and the heat of the tattoos lacing across his wrist. She felt emotion and longing growing inside his chest, matching hers.

  He looked down at her and smiled. “That’s pretty damn amazing.”

  Her mouth parted and she took a deep breath. “This is what was missing.”

  “Not anymore,” he said, dipping toward her mouth. His lips slanted over hers and she was instantly awash in so much emotion and…she could feel how much he loved her.

  How much he was enjoying this kiss.

  They were one, in every sense of the word.

  Chapter Twelve

  VADIK NABATOV

  * * *

  Golden sunbeams glowed in the hospital window and Vadik let them wash over his skin, watching them light a path he never thought he’d see again. The tattoos on his wrists were a deep, rich green, and had loops and whirls that perfectly matched Andrea’s.

  He held her hand and traced one finger along the edge of her tattoos. Please, Andrea. Wake up.

  The blue blanket that covered her body matched the blue of the clothes they’d given him to wear. His skin was caked in mud and grime, where Andrea’s was clean. Other than the green bond marks, her skin was unblemished. Until her shoulder.

  The bandages had been wrapped over her arm and around her neck, and the side of a hospital gown lay open on one side so that her arm hung out, but the rest of her body was covered. Blankets covered her from rib cage to toe, so he wasn’t certain if they’d cleaned her whole body while she’d been out of his sight, or if it was just her torso and face.

  Everything else had healed, except her shoulder. And now, she had human blood swimming around in her, after the transfusion. He had been worried that human blood wouldn’t be enough. But she had turned a corner as soon as they started giving her blood.

  Because he could feel every beat of her heart, now, if he concentrated. Not just hear it, but feel it. In the same way he could feel his own.

  The wolf thing, everyone kept telling him. The bond thing. Or the mate thing. All these words they’d been throwing around, and he had no idea what any of them meant. He knew what they felt like, though.

  He knew the difference between what his old life had been like—when he could easily shut off the pain during a fight—and his new life. Everything that happened to Andrea, he felt it. While she’d been under the knife, she’d gone strangely numb, and it felt like death. It had been all he could do not to rush into that room, just to know she was still alive. To see her with his own eyes.

  The heart monitor beeped at him, and he could feel the ache returning to her shoulder. But he just needed her to wake up.

  After watching her pass out on that boat and being certain she was going to die, he needed to see the blue of her eyes. So his heart could beat again.

  A knock on the door shook him and he looked up to see a blue-clothed blond guy standing just outside. Vadik nodded at him and the door opened. The low hum of the hospital white noise filtered in behind him.

  “Hey, man,” the guy said in English and Vadik’s attention jumped up to his face. He recognized the voice. But the face. It was a cleaned-up, shaven, clothed version of the guy from the island.

  “Owen, yeah?” he said.

  “Right. I guess I look pretty different.” The guy ran a hand across his clean face and the green on his wrists stuck out against his tanned skin.

  “I see you bonded with your girl. Clara?”

  Owen nodded and walked around the bed to take the chair on the opposite side. “She’s showering, and then she’ll probably be in here. She wanted to see how Andrea was, for herself.”

  “There hasn’t been any change since surgery.” Vadik fingered the edge of the blanket.

  “You want me to sit in here while you go get a shower?” Owen gestured to Vadik’s body like it was made of dirt. And to be fair, it nearly was. Someone had put a hospital gown over his naked torso, but the black pants that had been with him in the jungle were still plastered with dirt and grime.

  “I’d like to be here when she wakes up.”

  “I get it.” Owen put up his hands in deference. “I’d be the same way.” He looked over his shoulder and chuckled. “Look at that.”

  Vadik glanced up at the window, and the yellow orb of the sun was half-visible over the mountain that rose up behind the hospital. For a long minute, the two of them stared at the window like a shrine.

  “I didn’t think I’d see that sun again.” Owen shook his head and pushed himself out of the chair, turning to face the big yellow orb. “Did you?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I guess you never know what’s going to happen.”

  “That’s the truth.” Vadik reached out to grab Andrea’s hand. “As Babushka would say, all is well if things end well.”

  The contact of his skin on hers sent a spark through his body and Andrea shuddered. Her lips opened and she breathed. The dark streak of her hair moved with the air, and Vadik felt his heart rush forward. He covered her hand with both of his, and she moaned. The electricity shooting through him wasn’t pain. It was… what had Maggie called it?

  Magick.

  “Vadik?” Andrea whispered.

  His eyes watered and he sank to the floor beside her. “Yes, love. I’m here.”

  She groaned and moved one shoulder, and the pain was back. More than a throbbing this time, it was stinging him and burning. But Andrea was waking up.

  Owen cracked a smile and walked to the side of the bed. He pressed his lips hard together and nodded his head. No words followed, but he looked at least pleased.

  “Vadik? What… where…?” Her words were croaking and slow, but they came. That was all that mattered.

  The blond man settled a hand onto Vadik’s shoulder and patted him. “I’ll leave you two alone.” He walked back to the door, his steps almost halting, and paused with his back to them. “I’m sorry, man.”

  Vadik looked up, his eyes already full, and found the man’s back still facing him. “What for?” he asked.

  “Back in the jungle, I told Clara that I would rather you died than her. I would have left you there if it hadn’t been for her.” His shoulders raised and lowered, followed by a gust of air. “It was wrong of me.”

  A rise of pity slid up through Vadik’s stomach and into his throat. He’d been there before. There had been moments, when he and Luther were in Mexico City, that he’d wanted to leave Luther behind, just to save himself, or to kill someone else, to save himself.

  “Everyone would have done the same thing in your place.” Vadik squeezed Andrea’s hand. “If it had been her, I would have…”

  “No, you wouldn’t.” O
wen’s voice broke on the last word and Vadik chuckled.

  “The old me wouldn’t have sacrificed myself for anyone.” His eyes traveled from Andrea’s toes to her forehead, slowly, as though his body had to recognize the thing that had changed him. “But now that I have her, trust me. On that island, if I would have had to choose between anyone else, and her, I would have chosen her.”

  Owen’s hand slid onto the wall and then fisted. “What the hell kind of cannibalism is that, man?”

  “Don’t feel too bad.” Vadik let a smile spread through him, the warmth lighting him from the inside. “That’s love.”

  The blond man’s laugh was almost hidden under the noise of the hospital coming back into the room when the door opened. But Vadik heard it. Not every man would be able to understand that kind of devotion… that kind of sacrifice… but Vadik did.

  Andrea’s energy continued to grow, the longer Vadik’s hand held hers, and before long, her eyes were fluttering open. Those beautiful, blue-as-Lake-Baikal eyes. Those eyes that belonged to the most beautiful woman in the world.

  She smiled, moving her body until the pain stopped her. “Oooof. That hurts.”

  “I know.” He bent over and pressed his lips to hers, reveling in the soft feel of her kiss. When the pain stabbed again, he pulled away and took his chair, gripping her hand. “I can feel your pain now.”

  Her laugh was short, but it was heartfelt. “Lucky you.”

  Vadik touched her thigh, covered in blankets, rubbing his hand along her leg like he needed reminding that she was really with him. The rhythm helped to calm him, center him.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, looking around the room for a clock and finding none. “After sunrise, though.”

  “Have we heard any—”

  “Nothing.” He kissed her hand and pressed the skin to his cheek. “Maggie will tell us when there is any news.”

  “Where is everyone?” She glanced from the window to the door. “Are we still in Choaca?”