13. Vivianna
VIVIANNA
“Take a left up here. We need to take the long way around, so we miss going through the downtown area. No need to give them more chances to track us on traffic cams,” Darius instructed as he wiggled into sweats.
Glancing back in the rearview mirror, I was met with the site of all my men in some state of undress or still naked. Quickly, I gave them a once-over, checking for major injuries. “Everyone okay back there?”
“Nothing some sleep and food won’t fix,” Rik muttered. “What about you?”
It was then I noticed a dull ache in my right hip and left calf area. “I’m fine, just ready to get back in the air so I know we made it out of this.”
“I had the plane moved to another airport that’s north of here.
Typically, they don’t take planes our size—it’s more for light aircraft, crop dusters and such—but money always talks,” Darius shared as he pulled up the directions on his phone.
“Should take us about forty-five minutes to get there and it will be ready for us to take off right away.”
“We have the information you downloaded, right?” I demanded, thinking about how the last twenty minutes had been one giant clusterfuck.
“This might be TMI, but I swallowed it—”
I gaped at Darius. “Won’t that damage it?”
“Since I didn’t have a whole lot of options and I know that the jump drive I used is waterproof, I’m hoping for the best. Once we get on the plane, I was gonna see if I could get it out faster.”
“That’s gross, dude,” Koit interjected. “Although, I have to say that I’m impressed with your quick-thinking skills. Not sure I would have been that smart.”
Darius just grunted before continuing on, “The bright side is, I know that I utterly destroyed the database so they won’t have the information ever again, and we have Violet with us.”
“Do you think we should check the casket over for a tracker?” Orion questioned. “I don’t know how they would do that, but it might be smart before we lead them right to us.”
You don’t think they would actually do that, do you?
When are you going to look at this like a villain? Seriously, they didn’t have our baby girl in a mortuary, they had her in a freezer of a lab. We know for a fact that she is one of the three most valuable werewolves on the planet right now—why wouldn’t they put a tracker on her?
Point taken.
When I found a service road near some train tracks, I pulled off so that we could check out the casket. Hopping out of the SUV, my left leg gave out on me, causing me to crash to the dirt of the road.
“Viv.” Bentley cried as he rushed over to me. “Goddamn it, woman, why didn’t you tell me you’d been shot—twice.”
“I didn’t know. They don’t really hurt so they can’t be that bad,” I grumbled, trying to use him to get me up.
Bentley was not in support of this choice, and he laid me flat on my back and growled.
“The bullets are still in you and my money is on the fact that they’re silver because you’re still bleeding.
Now let the others deal with Violet while I try to fix you up.
Darius, did you ask for a medkit along with all your other items? ”
“Even if I didn’t, Chad would have thought of it. Let me look,” Darius answered.
Bentley ripped off the rest of my pants, which were hanging on by a thread, to get a better look at my wounds. He held a flashlight in his mouth. He started poking around at my hip and pain erupted throughout my body.
“Fuck, what are you doing to me?” I snarled. “It wasn’t hurting at all until you started poking at it.”
He just gave me a patronizing look and went back to what he was doing, ignoring my outburst. Koit appeared with a bag that had a white cross on it, telling me we were going to need to send Chad a gift basket soon.
Bentley handed over the flashlight to Koit and rummaged through the bag, pulling out gauze, forceps, and scissors.
“Okay, Viv, you are really going to hate me right now, but even if I gave you drugs, you would burn them off too fast for it to matter. I need to make the opening bigger because your skin is already trying to heal around the bullet, making it harder to remove it.”
Clenching my jaw, I nodded in understanding as I looked up at the night sky, trying not to flinch as I felt the cool steel of the scissors.
“I wish I had a scalpel, but this is the best that we have right now. Koit, I need you to keep that light right over her wound so I can see the bullet, but I might need you to hold her down if she moves too much.”
“Should we have one of the others help? I don’t think they need five people to examine a casket,” Koit pointed out and Bentley must have agreed. “Rik, we need your help.”
Soon, Rik was placing my head in his lap, combing his fingers through my hair. “This will all be over soon. Just keep your eyes on me and we will get through this.”
“I doubt this will be any worse than a C-section while fully awake and being sliced open with a silver blade,” I mumbled, right before I let out a hiss of pain with the first snip of the scissors.
Rik kept talking to me as Bentley worked.
Thankfully, the bullet hit my hip bone, so it was easy to remove once he got to it.
He flushed it out before bandaging. Then he moved to my calf, but that one wasn’t as easy to remove since it was floating freely in my muscle, burning through whatever it came into contact with as Bentley searched for it.
“God, please make it stop. Just cut open the whole damn thing at this point. I doubt it would hurt any more than it does right now,” I snapped, trying to kick Koit off my leg, as he sat on it to keep me still, while Rik held my torso down.
“Babe, do you really think that’s a smart move? Come on, use your doctor brain,” Koit challenged.
I growled at him, glaring as he looked down at me. “Someone is sleeping on the couch tonight, that’s what my doctor brain is telling me right now. Care for me to share what other insights it has at the moment?”
“Now, now, don’t make threats while you’re in pain. They’re never what you really mean.” Koit pouted. “He’s almost got it, but it would help if you held still.”
My eyes rolled up to Rik. “Did he just tell me to sit still while someone is chasing a hot coal the size of a grape in my leg, or am I losing my mind?”
“Sweetheart, Bentley is working as fast as he can,” Rik stated as he bent down to kiss my forehead. “I know you’re in pain, but it will be over soon.”
“Got it.” Bentley announced. “It shattered when it hit her bone, so I had to find all the pieces. You can get off her now Koit before she really makes you sleep on the couch.”
“What makes you think I still won’t?” I grumbled as Rik pulled me onto his lap, and Bentley cleaned up and bandaged my leg.
I noticed the others were standing at the back of the vehicle, watching the proceedings from a safe distance.
“You guys find anything so we can get the hell out of here, or do we have a problem?”
Darius cleared his throat as he stepped forward, looking as if he was worried to tell me something. “There is no tracker on the casket, but they put one in Violet or that’s what the scanner is telling us. I didn’t want to do anything, since I’m not a professional.”
“Someone find me some pants and I’ll do it,” I ordered, making grabby hands at the guys.
“Or…” Koit started then saw my expression and stopped talking.
I knew he was going to say something about Bentley being able to do it, but I couldn’t stand the thought of someone other than me doing something like this to her. A hugely irrational part of my brain decided that since she didn’t know them, it was wrong for anyone but me to remove the tracker.
They are her fathers. They would never do something to hurt her or you. Why not let Bentley do this for his child and give him some closure on not being there for either of you when you needed them all?
I don’t know. Look, I understand this doesn’t make sense to anyone, but she’s been in the hands of people who didn’t love her or cherish her like I do. It’s not right. They defiled her by putting that thing in her. What else have they done that we can’t see from the surface?
Vivianna, my wolf snapped at me, making me flinch with the force of it. Those men are your mates, Violet’s fathers. Yes, Orion’s sperm might have brought her into existence, but these seven men all are mourning this loss too. Give them this… please.
Wiping the tears from my face, I looked up at Bentley, meeting his hesitant gaze. “I don’t think I’m steady enough to do this… will you please take care of our daughter?”
He stepped up to me and cradled my face in his hands, kissing me softly before resting his forehead against mine. “Thank you for letting me do this.” With that, he stood and took the medkit with him to the back of the SUV.
Gray sweatpants dangled in front of my face. “You requested pants.”
Snatching them out of Koit’s hands, Rik helped me up and let me lean against him as I got dressed. “Thanks.”
“Does this mean I’m out of the doghouse?” Koit asked hopefully.
“We’ll see.”
Koit’s face lit up with a smile as he also handed over a t-shirt. “It wasn’t a no, so I’m taking this as a win.”
Dressed, I cuddled with Rik in the front passenger seat, looking up at the sky as Bentley did what he needed to. Thankfully, it wasn’t long before he walked up and handed me a small pill-looking object with a bunch of wires bundled in it. “What do you want to do with it now?”
“I’m sure there is some clever way to use this to our advantage, but I just can’t process that right now. Does anyone else have any ideas?” I inquired as they gathered around.
Tristan walked up and took it from me. “I think we should find another car to attach it to and lead them on a wild goose chase.”
“That’s a thought but with us having been stopped here for this amount of time, I’m sure they assume we’re looking for this. We might as well just crush it or leave it here, since they already know where we are,” Darius pointed out.
“Hmm, and I wouldn’t want to get an innocent person mixed up in this. They don’t value life in the slightest. Alright, let’s just destroy it and be on our way,” I decided, slipping off Rik’s lap to crawl in the back. “Someone else gets to drive. I need a nap.”
Soon enough, we were back on the road heading to the airport, and I fell deeply asleep, comforted by the fact that despite all that went wrong, we accomplished everything we wanted to.
Violet was with us, the data was gone, and hopefully we had everything we needed on that jump drive to give us a better understanding of what was going on in their heads.
I would bet that under all that research there was a gold mine of information they didn’t know they were giving away.
I was awoken slightly when Orion carried me on the plane and curled up with me for the flight back.
When I woke up a few hours later needing to pee, I found them all in wolf form in a puppy pile on the floor, surrounding me as I laid on top of Orion.
Deciding it would be too much work to get up to pee, I closed my eyes and drifted back off to the steady sound of my mates’ heartbeats, reminding me that I wasn’t alone in this, and how thankful I was for each and every one of them.