22. Val #3
Ryder cocks his head to one side.
“Huh. I didn’t know you could speak that much and actually say anything useful.”
“Fuck you,” I bite out before I can worry over the fact that I’m cursing at a powerful alpha.
Harley does something that makes Ryder yelp again.
“Oops, sorry. Didn’t mean to scrub that gash quite so hard. You really should be nicer to Val.”
“Or you’ll make me hurt?” Ryder asks, sounding offended. “You’ll pick him over me?”
Harley stops swiping at his leg and glances between me and Ryder.
“He’s not being a dick. He’s trying to help you. You’re being a dick, and not helping anyone. Yes, I will take his side over yours, especially when you’re acting like a twat.”
I feel a twinge of sympathy for Ryder.
“He’s been alone for a long time, honey.”
“He had me,” Harley points out.
“I don’t need your sympathy,” Ryder snaps at me.
“And no, Har, I’d never been a good enough person to be around you.
I thought I’d, I don’t know, contaminate you with my drug addiction and shit.
And as a shifter, I was terrified I’d hurt you.
It wasn’t like I knew anything about what I’d been turned into.
I mean, I was a human, then I wasn’t, and no one told me the rules for what I’d been made into.
Maybe if I’d been around, you’d never have gotten taken. Did they...? Were you hurt?”
Harley hesitates, and that answer is answer enough. I know Ryder doesn’t miss it.
“I was scared, and they hit me and stuff, but Joshua Dobson is dead. So are the other shifters who hurt me.”
Ryder snarls and hammers one fist against the couch.
“God damn it! Why us? How did they find you? That Dobson, he must be related to the jerkwad who turned me, otherwise why would they have come for you—?”
Oh hell.
I hate this part.
Harley shoots me an apologetic look.
“Um, because I went out one night when I was really lonely, and I picked up a guy to bring home. He happened to be a shifter, not that I knew it then, and before you ask, no, he didn’t hurt me at all.
Alex was—I’m sorry, Val, I know you don’t want to hear any of this—but Alex was nice, okay?
Good to me, if you know what I mean. It was a hook-up, he left, then a few days later I was out cruising for company and made the mistake of thinking Joshua Dobson was interested in me. ”
Harley sits down and keeps his eyes on the wound he’s tending.
“So that’s what happened. Dobson was being hunted by Alex because Alex was the head of Marcus’ guards and he wanted revenge for Marcus being kidnapped and tortured. Dobson grabbed me just to use against Alex, except, you know, I didn’t really matter to Alex then. I was just a fuck.”
I touch Harley’s shoulder, then run the back of my hand over one smooth cheek.
“You are more than just a fuck.”
“What he said,” Ryder mutters. “You sure that hooking up with the first shifter really was coincidence?”
Harley doesn’t answer right away. I wait, my attention focused on him.
“Yeah. It had to be. I mean, I spotted him first. I knew it was a one-time thing, which was fine. I wasn’t wanting more and neither was he. Honestly, once he’d left, I thought Alex really was a homeless guy who needed somewhere to crash for the night.”
“You weren’t too far off,” I tell him. “That was well after you were turned, Ryder. I don’t see how there could be a connection.
Maybe there is something about you two that attracts shifters?
I mean, Harley and I are mates, so we are of course attracted to each other.
I don’t know, it seems to me you both were victims of circumstance. ”
“I think it’s more likely that we both engaged in risky behaviour,” Harley interjects.
“It put us around people likely to hurt us. Alex was looking for a place to sleep for the night more than he was looking for sex, and he appreciated the food. Granted, he didn’t intend to hurt me, but he was using me as much as I was using him, and I paid a price for it.
If I hadn’t been out looking for a hook-up, I’d never have been abducted by Dobson.
Shifters probably use instincts to guide them to weaker prey, and that would be me, and you, Ryder, when you were strung out.
I bet you seemed a lot less alpha-like then? ”
“I hate that word,” Ryder says as he pokes at a gash on his chest. “I don’t want to be a victim. Look, this place is way better than it was.”
“What happened today, Ryder?” I ask, because either Ryder is stalling, he doesn’t remember the question, or he simply doesn’t care.
Ryder narrows his eyes at me but says, “I just wanted to have a few minutes of not thinking about the fact that I almost died, but okay. I left here, but I didn’t go far.
I kept feeling like you were in danger, Har.
I try to check on you every now and then.
I didn’t do such a good job of keeping you safe, though, obviously.
What a fuckwad I am. You don’t need to say it. ”
“I won’t then,” I say, but I smile a little to let Ryder and Harley know I’m teasing.
Ryder flips me off.
“Anyway, I thought I’d hang around the area a day or two, make sure no one followed me.
Except I was too busy trying to watch your place to keep an eye out for anyone coming after me.
About three this morning, I heard someone behind me.
I took off running, my senses kicking in.
I ran away from your neighborhood, and I thought I lost them.
I never saw who it was, but there was a scent that made me feel ill, ya know?
So I thought it might be the fucker who changed me. ”
“Was it?”
Ryder nods at Harley.
“I think so, because after I doubled back, worried that they’d found me in your area in the first place, I was jumped behind your building. There’s several empty houses back there. Guess they knew I’d come back.”
I feel like I’m having to pull every bit of information out of Ryder.
“What did they look like? How many were there? We need to know these things so I can tell Marcus. He’ll send guards to eradicate the issue.”
“Eradicate the issue?” Harley scrunches up his face as he repeats my words. “Really, I don’t know about your society.”
I shake my head.
“I’m sorry, but shifters like those are beyond dangerous. Do you believe they’ll just come with the guards and decide to be good guys? We don’t work that way, and our justice might not be as forgiving as human justice, but our repeat crimes are really, really low.”
“I’d imagine, since the criminals are all killed.”
“Not every shifter criminal is killed,” I begin, then I see the glint in Harley’s eyes. “Some swear fealty to their Alpha Anax, and they almost always abide by his rule afterwards. But we can be, as you know, a dangerous species. Things can’t be handled the same for us as they are for humans.”
Harley neither agrees nor disagrees. He just turns his attention back to Ryder.
“How many? And are you sure it was the guy who turned you? What’d they look like?”
Ryder rubs at his forehead and hisses when he catches a cut.
“Shit. Ouch. Okay. Um, there were four, but one hung back and didn’t fight.
He got called some nasty names, but he still just wouldn’t fight.
In fact, the second he saw me, he ran out of the room.
I couldn’t tell you what he looked like because I was focused on the fucker who’d turned me.
As soon as I heard his voice, that night came back. ”
I listen carefully as Ryder describes the three shifters he actually saw and fought.
All of them are male, and the one who turned him isn’t anyone I can recall ever seeing or hearing about.
The other two were probably turned as well.
From what Ryder tells us, they’re twinks who do whatever their alpha—whom he heard them call Master Drake—tells them to do.
“Chances are like a hundred per cent they know where I am now,” Ryder points out needlessly. “And there’s gotta be blood all over the place.”
“Shit.”
I stand and go in search of bleach and a mop. I can’t clean the whole building, but I can at least get any blood out of the hallway. It probably won’t deter the other shifters, and if any humans see it they’ll maybe call the cops, but I’ll figure out what to do about that if it happens.
“Should you go outside of this apartment?” Ryder asks when I come back carrying the cleaning supplies. “Don’t you think that might be kind of, I don’t know, stupid?”
“Better to leave a bloody trail for any humans to see and have them call the authorities on us, you think?” I shoot back.
“I’m going with you,” Harley tells me. “Don’t even tell me I’m not because I so am.”
“I’m not staying in here like some princess needing protection.” Ryder sits up and groans, pressing a hand to his ribs. “Damn. Can’t you mop in a few hours?”
“Stay here, princess,” I snap, ready to smack Ryder with the mop, alpha or not. He’s getting on my last nerve.
“Fuck off.”
Ryder stands, naked and still bloody in a few places. Well, I wouldn’t exactly call him naked, because Ryder looks like he’s wearing fur pants. The man is so hairy from his ass on down that I immediately start plotting ways to introduce him to duct tape.
“Let’s do this quickly.”
I head for the door, then point the mop at Ryder.
“Maybe you should put some underwear on, at least.”
“Don’t have any. I think my one set of clothes was ruined.”
Harley makes a sound that’s halfway between a sob and a growl as he rounds on his brother.
“You should have told me! Damn it, Ry, you should have trusted me and at least, at least let me make sure you had more than the clothes on your back! If you weren’t already so beat up, I’d... I’d do something!”
Harley stomps past Ryder, elbowing him when Ryder tries to reach for him.
“Don’t touch me! I’m so mad I could scream. Ugh!”
I arch a brow at Ryder and give him a thumbs up.
“Way to hurt him, Ryder. Don’t cut Harley out again, please. He doesn’t deserve that.”
Then I turn away and look through the peephole while Harley handles getting his idiot brother dressed.