Chapter Seventeen #2
We stared each other down for a moment, neither breaking, until Henry sighed.
“You win, as usual, Lennon,” Henry finally gave in, holding his hands up in surrender. “And if I had a white flag on me, I’d be waving it very solemnly.”
“Good, now let’s get these guys into cars and keep your hands to yourself. Carter said if you try to touch me he’ll chop off your hands and throw them into the Boston Harbor.”
“What is it with you Bostonians and throwing things into that damned harbor?” Henry asked as he and his brothers followed, ready to wrangle a bunch of drunk British diplomats into the nearest vehicle before we ended up on CNN in the morning.
“Is that the last of them?” I asked Arthur as I stood in the center of the now empty garden.
The staff were working on cleaning up after the boisterous party guests and as I looked at the garbage everywhere I had half of a mind to tell my mother to never invite the UK delegates to the White House ever again.
Arthur nodded. “Edwin and Henry are getting the duke into his car now and he doesn’t want to go.”
I rolled my eyes at that. “And I didn’t want him to hijack what was supposed to be a nice evening, so I guess we’re both disappointed.”
A ghost of a smile lit up the prince’s face.
“Are you all right, Arthur? I know Edwin was joking earlier…” I trailed off, thinking about Edwin’s earlier comments about Arthur.
Arthur shrugged. “Are any of us really? I’m clean right now, I suppose.”
“You should call Carter,” I told him. “He misses you, you know.”
I wasn’t sure what had happened between the two of them, but they used to stay up all of the time playing video games. They were attached, probably in more ways than I could ever really understand.
“Miss Holloway,” Maverick’s voice came from behind me and I turned to find all four of them waiting for me. “It’s time to get you inside for the night.”
“Right,” I said, turning to look at Arthur again.
“Tell your brothers goodbye for me, and please take care of yourselves. I don’t want to have to look on the news and see what crazy stunts you three have gotten yourselves into. You’re usually the voice of reason, Artie, so act like it.”
This time Arthur’s grin was genuine as he pulled me in for a hug.
“Bye, Lennie, see you later.”
Then he was gone, heading back through the East wing where his brothers were still probably wrangling the drunken, irate duke into his car.
“So you’re pretty close with those princes, huh?” Dallas asked as we started to cross the garden.
“They’re childhood friends,” I explain, suddenly feeling the events of the day catching up to me, the exhaustion weighing heavily on my shoulders.
My feet were aching and I was about two seconds away from needing to be horizontal or I would scream.
“Yeah,” the alpha muttered, his voice flat behind me.
I paused before turning to look at him.
He and Brooks had been my body men all night, meaning they had a front row seat to my interactions with the three princes, so they should have seen more than anyone else that our interactions were more like a sister and her annoying brothers than anything.
“Do you have something to say, Agent Wilson?” I asked coldly.
“No, he does not,” Maverick said, stepping in between us. His back was to me, so I didn’t see what sort of face he was showing to Dallas, but whatever it had been seemed to cow the other alpha because he looked sheepishly ashamed by the time Maverick had stepped aside again.
“No I do not, ma’am, I apologize.”
His formal words almost irritated me more than anything else. Before, my stupid self thought that, maybe, he had been jealous of the three princes.
Now I wasn’t even sure of that either.
“They’ve been my friends since I was born. The Holloways and the royal family have been close for forever,” I said, suddenly feeling like I was on trial.
“Friends who kiss?”
We all whirled to look at Brooks who had been quietly watching our interaction up to this point.
“When it happened when I was sixteen, yeah… wait, why am I even explaining any of this to you four,” I realized with a huff as I looked around and realized that several of the staff members who were supposed to be cleaning up the party had stopped to watch the veritable soap opera happening in front of them.
I was about to open my mouth to tell them to mind their business when something whizzed by my face and shattered the glass panes of the door next to my head.
Pain lanced across my cheek.
I lifted a hand to touch it, frowning when my fingers came away shiny and red with blood. My brain felt foggy and confused like it couldn’t compute what it was looking at or how I had gotten a cut on my cheek in the first place.
Looking over at the four alphas around me, I saw their faces in varying stages of registering the situation we had found ourselves in.
“Get down!” Maverick shouted, his words slowed down and dull as he reached out a hand for me.
But he was too far away to actually reach me as more objects whizzed by my head.
Then a pair of arms were wrapping around my torso and dragging me to the ground as the world erupted into chaos around me.
“Stay down!” Dallas barked into my ear as gunfire filled the night and I clenched my eyes shut, the scent of apple whiskey filling my nose as I tried in vain to drown out the sound by clapping my hands over my ears.
Then I felt it, something warm and wet dripping down my chest.
“Dallas?” I asked, looking up at his face that was bunched with pain.
“I’m fine,” he told me, but my eyes were already moving to where the source of the blood was coming from.
Through his dark jacket, I could already see blood blossoming on his shoulder.
“You’ve been hit!” I squawked, remembering that night with Agent Brady before he died.
I tried to sit up but Dallas wrestled me back down. “You need to stay down, damn it, they’re shooting up there!”
“But you’re bleeding,” I protested, my words hitching on a sob. “You’re going to die.”
“Lennon, look at me,” Dallas said, but I was too lost to the flashbacks to hear him.
“Shit,” I vaguely heard him curse. “I don’t really know how to do this…”
Then his arms wrapped around me and he pressed my face into his neck, right where his scent was.
“Breathe in, Lennon,” he told me as people continued to shout and fire off guns around us. “Just breathe.”
I sucked in one, long shuddering breath, then I felt it. His throat had begun to vibrate.
It was thready and unsure, unlike Maverick’s which had felt steady and strong, but even still it worked like a charm.
I melted against Dallas, our legs tangled together, and focused on his purr until the gunfire stopped and we were safe again, his scent filling my lungs and his purr dulling my panic.