Chapter 20 Avery #2
“Really, it was just the lion,” I replied.
I flapped a hand at George, who had curled up in front of the fireplace and was snoozing away like he hadn’t choked out two large animals tonight.
“George took the wolf down all on his own, and then he finished the lion off for me. If he hadn’t, I might still be underneath that little bastard, waiting for him to bleed out. ”
Heath scrubbed a hand down his face and groaned. “Shit. Fuck. I don’t know whose throat I want to rip out first—Dad’s or those shitty little assholes’. Clara, I am so sorry this happened.”
“It’s not your fault, Heath.”
He stared at her, his hazel eyes despondent. “We’re going to figure it out, okay? Just keep… being disruptive when they force you to meet these dickhead Primes. Buy us some time.”
Clara gasped. “Oh! Can Avery teach me how to use a sword? That way when someone touches me in a way I don’t like, I can stab them.”
“No,” they both replied.
“Yes,” I said, glaring at them. “I would be happy to, though it’s not like your brothers aren’t good with a blade. You should ask Elijah to teach you to use a dagger.”
“Ooh, you’re right, I should,” she said and hummed thoughtfully. “He doesn’t say no to me either. Not like these two.”
The front door blew open, and Wyatt stomped into the living room. He wore workout clothes and smelled like sweat and delicious male pheromones. “Hey, why the fuck isn’t anyone answering their phone? Willow just called, and she said Clara’s fucking missing—oh.”
Clara waved at him. “Hi, Wyatt. Did my mom call your mom, looking for me?”
“Yep.” His gaze slid from Clara to me, two dark emeralds boring straight into my chest. A red sheen rolled over those emeralds, a fucking siren call to my beast. “What in the actual fuck is going on here?”
“Good, you’re back,” Heath said. “I need you to stay with Clara. She can sleep in my room tonight—I’ll bunk with Aiden.”
Wyatt was still looking at me. “Someone needs to start fucking talking. Why is the wildcat covered in blood and stinking of feline?”
“Clara will explain,” Aiden replied. “Heath and I have to go take care of something, and we need you to watch over her while we’re gone. Do not answer the door for anyone except us, and if your parents call again, don’t tell them she’s here.”
He blew out a breath, his big shoulders dropping. “Okay, I got it. Go.”
Heath held out a hand to me. “Let’s go, Killer. You’re coming with us.”
“Me?” I stared dumbly at his hand. “No, I did my part. I’m going to bed.”
“Yes, you did a whole hell of a lot tonight, but I’m not letting you out of my sight. We’re going to go deal with the two little shitheads who thought they could put their hands on my sister, and then you’re going to the infirmary, even if I have to hogtie you and drag you there myself.”
I lifted my chin. “I don’t take orders from you, Heath Blackwell.”
Clara snickered.
Aiden shouldered Heath aside. He leaned in, hovering over me, and placed one hand on the couch’s armrest to my right, his long fingers curling over the leather in a way that shouldn’t have been hot, but ugh, it was.
He bent down further, our noses nearly touching as he growled softly, “You’ll take orders from your professor, Miss Baxter.
You’ll get that perfect ass off my couch, and you’ll stick with Heath and me until I release you to go back to your dorm. Understood?”
His eyes blazed turquoise behind his glasses, challenging me. Instead of the appropriate response of wanting to bite the head off this presumptuous jaguar, my beast flicked her tail lazily, ears perked in interest.
YOU. ARE. NOT. HELPING.
I glared at Aiden as he stood up again and waited for my response with his bare arms folded over his chest, a perfect brow arched. Heath watched me intently, and Wyatt smirked at my plight. Clara, the ungrateful traitor, just giggled more.
“Fine,” I said. “But no infirmary. Mallory can stitch the cut in my head closed and magic away my headache. There’s nothing else wrong with me.”
Heath and Aiden shared a look.
“Deal,” Heath said. “Let’s go. I want to get to those fuckers before they become wraith food. They’d deserve it, but it would be a hell of a lot harder to clean up.”
Heath and Aiden were silent on our walk back out to the front gates. They marched stoically on either side of me, and I could sense both tamping down the beastly rage that had to be roiling inside them. Few things were harder on our control than threats to a loved one.
I could attest. One of the few times I nearly lost it and let my beast out in the middle of the hallway of my human high school was during my sophomore year, when I’d happened upon a couple of meat-headed jocks spewing homophobic slurs at Ian, who’d been a new freshman at the time.
Ian had to drag me into the girls’ locker room and shove me under a cold shower before I’d been allowed to go back to class.
So, while I was supremely irritated that I was not on the way to my room because the Blackwell brothers had decided to boss me around again, I also understood the need for a cooler head on this little outing, and that could only be mine.
When we approached the gate, we found Harrison the wolf, back in nude human boy form, frantically dragging Paul the lion’s beastly body toward the SUV, leaving a trail of dark blood in his wake.
Even with his enhanced strength as a burgeoning Prime shifter, it would be a feat for him to get that unconscious lion’s bulk into the backseat of the car.
Unearthly screeches and bellows echoed in the woods behind him. The Guardians must’ve been chasing wraiths this way, so he was understandably panicking, and he hadn’t even spotted Clara’s incensed brothers yet.
Heath blew out an angry breath. He stood next to me, his shoulder pressed against mine, as we observed Harrison’s plight.
Aiden, now tragically dressed in a T-shirt and a fleece jacket, was on my other side, as close as he could possibly be without touching me.
He was silent and still as the grave—if you ignored the rapidly coiling aggression leaking from his every pore.
“I see Paul’s still down,” Heath said through clenched teeth. “How many holes did you put in him, Killer?”
I thought back to the fight, counting on my fingers. “Really only, like, three. George is the one who ultimately took both of them down, so make sure he gets an extra juicy ferret or whatever he likes best next time Elijah feeds him.”
“Even so, Paul’s lucky his spine is still intact.” Heath glanced over my head at Aiden. “Think you can force a shift?”
Aiden scoffed. “He’s, what, seventeen?”
Harrison took a break from his efforts, dropping the lion and wiping the sweat from his brow.
At that moment, he finally looked up and saw the three of us watching him from behind the gate’s iron bars.
His eyes went comically wide, and he took off running into the woods without a backwards glance at his fallen brother.
Heath barked a laugh and jumped four feet off the ground, grabbing the bars of the gate and propelling himself over the top in a much more efficient fashion than I had. He took off after Harrison, who had, like an idiot, just engaged Heath’s predator instinct by fleeing like prey.
“Stay here, please, Avery,” Aiden murmured. “Like you said, you’ve done enough tonight.”
“Okay.” I didn’t desire a climb over that gate a third or fourth time tonight, nor was I in the mood to slay any wraiths that wandered this direction, which was a testament to how tired I was.
“Keep it together, though, both of you, or I’ll have to come out there and take you down before you kill one of those idiots. ”
Aiden turned to me, his neon eyes lighting up the narrow space between us. “My brother and I are extremely skilled at restraint,” he rumbled, his voice a low purr rolling gently over me like a lullaby. “When we lose control, it’s because we let it happen. Stay. Here.”
He vaulted over the gate somehow even faster than Heath had, and then he stalked with feline grace toward the prone lion.
I sat down on the ground, crossed my legs, and settled in for a show, a little thrill zipping through my body at the thought of watching Heath and Aiden work those shitty boys over.