by Mandy Rosko
And of blood and people. Dennis’ pack had been here.
“Anyone here?” Jax stepped forward, moving to one of the far walls.
Garret barked, “Obviously not!” He roared, throwing his fist down onto the concrete floor. He cracked the foundation, sending rocks and grey dust flying. One of his knuckles popped, but he didn’t care about the pain. He punched the floor again, then again with his other fist, until there was just dust and rock beneath him. He couldn’t catch his breath. He couldn’t stop the rage, and his body trembled from the rush of adrenaline he couldn’t contain.
“There might still be something here.” Jax stepped up to him, but he was wise enough to keep from touching him. If Jax so much as laid a hand on his shoulder, Garret would snap it off. “We can smell people here. I can smell Dennis and your sister, and some of the same scents that were on the lawn when the house was attacked. It’s fresh. They were just here.”
“Well they’re not anymore.” Garret launched himself to his feet. He needed something to hit that would feel pain, and Jax was right there.
Jax was quick enough that he should have been able to get out of the way of Garret’s fist. The fact that he didn’t meant he allowed himself to be punched. He flew backwards, hitting the metal wall that was over ten feet away with a hard bang. The fact that he landed on his feet was enough to infuriate Garret all the more.
Jax rubbed his cheek where Garret had gotten him with the back of his forearm. “You got that shit out of your system yet?”
“Come on over here and ask me that again.”
“Garret.” Dane clapped a heavy hand on Garret’s shoulder.
Garret rounded on him. Dane pulled his hand back, but he didn’t back up. Like a real soldier, he locked his feet so he and Garret were practically bumping their chests together.
“You need to calm down. You’re not acting like a proper leader.”
“Fuck you.” Garret pointed his finger in the man’s face. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t be falling apart if it was Lois this was happening to. This is my little sister. She’s never been in a fight. She doesn’t know how to defend herself, and these motherfuckers have her. They knew we were coming. I’m going to rip that piece of shit apart.”
That little cunt in his basement. He had to have known. He had to have known he’d be sending Garret on a wild goose chase. That was the only thing Garret could think of, and he was going to lose his fucking mind if he didn’t get blood.
“I doubt he knew we’d get here just as everyone left,” Jax said. He knelt down, putting his fingers to a streak of red on the floor. “The scents here are fresh. They just left, and something happened that made them leave. A fight.”
Garret took in a deep breath. He tried to calm himself, but the calm he sought out wouldn’t come. “What would they be fighting over other than her?” He nearly choked on the word. Just thinking about those pigs in a power struggle over who would defile her made him sick to his stomach.
Jax looked to Dane for help. “Dane? You were actually a soldier once. Could you figure out what happened here?”
“That’s not exactly what I did, and I don’t have the equipment I would have had at my disposal, but…” Dane lifted his nose and inhaled deeply. “There was definitely a fight. Someone died. Not Anna,” he said quickly when Garret looked at him sharply. “We can figure out what happened here and still follow their scents. There’s still something we can do.”
Garret clenched his fists, hard enough that he dug his fingernails into his palms.
They were right. Garret didn’t want to admit it, but it was his own lack of control that was slowing them down. The longer he had his little temper tantrum, the longer Anna would be in the hands of those monsters. “Right, you’re right. Okay, let’s figure out what we can and move out. I want to be out of here in less than ten minutes.”
“Gotcha,” Dane said, cracking his knuckles and moving to the nearest splotch of blood.
Garret did the same, taking in all the scents he could. Some were vaguely familiar, but most were not. Dennis’ pack changed so often that it was difficult to keep track of how many members he had, what they changed into, and what they’d been doing before and after joining Dennis’ pack. It was a safe bet many moved on when they realized what they were getting into, that being part of Dennis’ pack could mean death for them, but so many people stayed, and Garret didn’t understand why.
There was more blood splatter on the floor than he originally thought. A real fight had broken out here. The thing that worried Garret the most was the scent of Anna in the middle of it all. None of the blood was hers. He told himself that again and again, desperate to comfort himself. If he thought about his sister hurt, or worse, dead, he would lose his damned mind and nothing would be able to save him from it.
He pressed his fingers to the biggest splotch of blood so far, bringing them to his nose, even though the scent was already kind of like…
Garret’s eyes flew wide. He looked down at his hand, as if the scent would suddenly change, but of course it didn’t. He was in total shock. “This is Dennis’ blood?”
“What’d you say?”
Garret glanced to the side. It was Jax’s attention he got first. Garret showed the man his hand. “This is Dennis’ blood over here.”
“Was about to say the same thing over here.”
Garret looked up. Dane stood across the room, glaring down at a red smear across the wall. “Looks like they were fighting with him.”
Garret’s first instinct was to deny it, but then he remembered the information Katie had managed to get from the kid in the basement. Dennis was on his way out. A savage pack like this, well, it made sense. It was a small miracle that Dennis had been able to keep control of it for as along as he had.
“You think he was defending her?” Jax asked.
“More like he was fighting to take her,” Dane said.
Those words brought the beast back out of him, and Garret growled. “I’ll kill him when I find him. With my bare hands. He will die. I swear it. On my pack, I will end his miserable piece of shit life.” Garret looked up at the two men standing with him. Both stared at him with clear expressions, neither had pity in their eyes. They wouldn’t dare look at him with such a horrible thing.
That was good. He didn’t want them to feel sorry for him. He just needed them to do their jobs.
“We’re leaving. We have enough and I want to start tracking their scents.” His friends were good to him for not pointing out how it was his own rage and impatience that caused him to go charging in here and ignore scents in the first place. “If Dennis has her, I want him found. They couldn’t have gotten far.”
Jax and Dane nodded.
“Sure thing, Alpha,” Dane said, back still straight and shoulders together, as if he was addressing a colonel overseas.
Jax didn’t quite have that same aura when he nodded, but his hands were clenched and his legs and shoulders were tight beneath those scales. The man was clearly itching for a fight. Looking at Jax was enough to remind Garret of one important detail.
“Jax, head home.”
Jax blinked, his head jerking back. “What?”
“I’m not taking the risk this is another trap to get us to leave the house. Go home and protect it. Keep everything in order until I get back.”
“We left all the betas there this time.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want anything happening to Miranda.” He looked sharply at the other man. “And you need to be with Katie right now.”
Jax’s face suddenly colored deeply, but he nodded. “All right. I’ll go.”
Garret nodded. He would feel better with one alpha there. He had ordered all the betas to stay behind, but he hadn’t expected the three of them would be away from the lodge for too long. He wasn’t going to take the risk.
Dane rolled his shoulders. “When we find Dennis, you want me to hold him down while you deal with him?”
No need to ask what deal
with him meant.
A coldness swept over Garret’s body. “No. I’ll do it myself.”
Chapter 18
“Okay, it’s okay. We’re here. We’re fine.”
Dennis groaned through bloody lips as Anna pulled him through the doorway. She kicked it shut behind her.
“You…you shouldn’t have done that. You didn’t have to do that.” Dennis grunted a heavy noise of pain as they crossed the thin, worn out carpeting to a bed that was nicely made up, but it appeared as if the housekeeper had done that back in the eighties.
“Come on over to the bed. You can give me hell for it later. Besides, it wasn’t a big deal.”
“Not a big deal?” Dennis abruptly clenched his teeth and tensed, his hand clenching his stomach harder, which couldn’t have been making anything much better for him.
“Yeah, that’s what you get for the outburst. Cut it out with that. You’re injured, you need to heal.”
“You didn’t have to flash that guy your chest to get us a room.”
“Like I said, it wasn’t a big deal, and I don’t have any money on me and I wasn’t about to let you stand in front of him all bloody and sweaty to use your credit card. He’d have called the police on us.”
“He should. You should call the cops right now. Call your brother.”
“Uh huh, stay there. I’ll get something for you.” Anna left Dennis on the bed and rushed into the bathroom. When she opened up the small cupboards, yanked everything out, and didn’t find what she was looking for, she left the motel room.
“Wh-where are you going?”
Anna ignored Dennis. She wouldn’t be long. She just had to go and pay that guy behind the counter another visit.
He seemed to be about Anna’s age, and the poor guy was sporting red patches of acne even as an adult. Anna’s boobs might very well have been the first real boobs he’d seen in his life. He’d handed over a key to an empty room so fast he’d nearly dropped it.
When she asked for a first aid kit, he didn’t so much as look as if he wanted to ask her what was going on. He just grabbed a kit, a very nice and thick one, too, and handed it over.
Anna would have felt bad for him if Dennis wasn’t currently bleeding over a set of blankets and sheets that had been purchased before she was born.
She went to the ice machine next, grabbed a bucket, and returned to the room. The motel was quiet. The few people that were around didn’t stop her, didn’t ask questions, and they didn’t try to kidnap her and take her back to Laurence’s pack.
The adrenaline rush almost made her knees give out when she made it back to the motel room. She locked the door behind her.
Dennis looked as if he was trying to sit up on the bed, but he was almost as white as fresh snow. The layer of sweat on his brow didn’t help his image.
“I got this for you.” She held up the first aid kit. “It should help with the bleeding until you can start to heal on your own.”
Dennis eased himself back onto the bed, gasping for breath, as if it had been a real struggle to hold himself up. “D-didn’t think Laurence got that strong. Fuck.”
The blood was seeping through his fingers. Anna got close and opened the kit. The first thing she reached for was the gauze and the bandages, but then thought better of it and grabbed some disinfectant.
It was supposed to be harder for an alpha to get sick, but she didn’t want to take the risk.
Dennis didn’t hiss from the pain of having his wounds washed out, but Anna noted how every muscle in his body tensed when she washed out the wound with her cloth.
It was deep. Anna found herself hissing at the sight of it. “Are you sure this is going to heal all right?”
Dennis swallowed. “You act like you’ve never seen this deep inside a person’s flesh before.”
She didn’t answer that, but it seemed her lack of an answer was just as damning as giving any answer at all.
“Garret really sheltered you, didn’t he?”
Anna pulled away the cloth when she finished. It was soaked with blood and even dripping. She had to run it to the sink and wring it out before she came back and started with the bandages.
Dennis wasn’t smiling at her like she expected him to be when she came back.
“Well?”
“Well what?” Anna didn’t look at him. She started packing that deep gash in his belly with gauze before the sight of his innards made her too funny in the head.
“You’ve never seen any hardcore violence, have you?”
“I have.”
“Movies don’t count. Don’t the people in your pack fight? Even friendly fighting?”
“Friendly fighting doesn’t usually lead to this.” Anna also didn’t want to tell him that the few times there had been any major blood, she’d been sure to make herself scarce for it. She hadn’t wanted to see any blood. It wasn’t as if she got lightheaded seeing a little of it, but seeing too much of it had been something she’d gone out of her way to avoid.
Dennis watched her closely, but he didn’t say anything to her.
What was he thinking? That she was small and weak? He had to blame her for the state he was in now.
“I still can’t believe you took on all those betas by yourself.”
This time, Dennis did smile. “I had some pretty good motivation.”
Anna paused briefly. She glanced up at Dennis, but looked away just as their eyes met. What was that supposed to mean? She didn’t focus on it. She had a job to do, and just because she didn’t normally deal with blood didn’t mean she was going to let herself flake out now. “Sit up. I need to wrap this around you.”
Dennis groaned even as she helped him, easing him up so he wouldn’t put too much pressure on the healing muscles in his abdomen. More blood poured out of him, but so long as his intestines didn’t slip out, Anna told herself she could handle it. She put the pillows behind him, arranging them so they wouldn’t get in her way too much, but he was still going to have to hold himself up with his own strength a little.
She hurriedly wrapped the bandages around him, holding the gauze in place and stopping his bleeding before she eased him back down.
Dennis exhaled a hard sigh when he was lying flat once more. The sweat had beaded on his forehead by this time, and he was still incredibly pale, but at least now he didn’t look like he was going to die.
“You should get out of here. Give your brother a call. Tell him where you are.”
Anna shook her head. “Not until you’re better.”
“You don’t owe me jack shit. Call your brother and go home.”
“If I call him, he’s going to find out where you are, too. He’s going to come here and you’re not going to be able to defend yourself while you’re like this.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
She couldn’t help but stare at him. “I can’t believe you would say something like that.”
“It’s true. You need to get out of here.”
A stubbornness unlike anything she’d ever felt when handling her brother came over her. She couldn’t fight it, so she just rode that wave. “You’re crazy if you think I’m leaving you behind. You saved my life, and you’re injured. I’m at least going to wait until you’re well enough that you can walk out of here on your own. Then I’ll call my brother.”
Dennis started to cough. Anna rushed to the bathroom and came back with a little plastic cup of water. She held it to his mouth, letting him drink, and cleaning up the drops that spilled down the side of his mouth before she pulled her hand away.
She did it quickly. Her fingers burned from where she touched him. Was that because he was getting a fever? Or was it something else entirely?
She pushed that aside. She had to focus on him.
“Are you positive you’re going to be all right? I mean…it’s been a couple of hours now, shouldn’t this be starting to heal?”
“Shouldn’t you being calling your brother?”
She glared at him this time. “I
said I’m not going anywhere until you’re better, so cut it out or I’ll kill you myself.”
He smiled up at her. “You don’t have the spine, Miss Never-Saw-Blood-in-her-Life-Before.”
“Oh yeah?”
It was mean, and probably a little dangerous, but he was an alpha, he could handle it. Anna pressed her hand down onto his wound. Not a lot, but she gave just enough pressure to let the smug bastard know she wasn’t going to play around with him.
Dennis’ eyes flew wide. His teeth clenched from the pain. “Okay, okay. I get it. Stop.”
Anna did. She looked at the bandages, pleased to see no blood had seeped through the wound.
“Don’t tell me to go again.” It hurt when he told her to go, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. “You look like shit and I don’t want you to die. I said I owed you, and a Maxwell repays her debt.”
“You remember the part where I kidnapped you in the first place, right?”
“So what?” Anna crossed her arms, kicking her legs up onto the bed, lying next to him. “That’s just a detail, and my brother is the alpha. I’ll probably be kidnapped a couple more times in my life as other alphas come along and try to take over the territory.”
Dennis chuckled, then clutched at his chest, stopping himself from laughing anymore. Anna tensed, lifting herself up to stare down at him, ready to spring if he started to choke.
He didn’t. He was still pale, but he wasn’t sweaty anymore, and he was smiling at her.
“I like how you say you’re going to get kidnapped again as if you’re fine with it. That’s the spirit. You’re pretty brave.”
Anna ignored the sudden rush of heat in her cheeks. He’d just called her brave. That was…so nice. “Yeah, well, when I get home, I’m making my brother give me self-defense lessons. That way, if you try to kidnap me again, I’ll be able to properly kick your ass.”
Dennis chuckled again. “Sounds like fun. Let me know when you get to that point. We can have a great time together while I let a girl kick my ass.”
