Chapter Nineteen
The only reason Erica sat cross-legged on the toilet seat while Ronan bandaged himself up, was because she couldn’t stand to be in the living room with Nathan’s wolfish body in the body bag in plain view in the kitchen.
Her godfather confirmed his identity as soon as he shifted back into his human form, not with a little difficulty.
He saved her the trauma of watching the shift by conducting it outside and she fetched him a pair of jeans from his room since he’d torn up the ones he had been wearing.
Knowing this shifter was a convicted and wanted criminal, who had raped and murdered innocent people, eased her conscience somewhat.
Still, she couldn’t stand to look at the motionless vinyl bag on the floor and for the last half hour, she’d tried to shake and wring out the tremors in her hands.
The blood hadn’t been mopped up yet and she could almost smell the potent odor of death from the other side of the house.
She watched as Ronan carefully wound the white gauze across his hulky bicep to cover the deep gash across his skin.
He had wrapped up the grisly open wound on his neck first, which was the worst of the injuries he’d sustained in that brief fight.
She wondered just how strong Nathan had to be in order to take down a beta shifter of Ronan’s caliber.
He had stopped bleeding, and Erica swore she saw the puckered and flayed tissue begin to stitch itself back together.
It’d take longer for him to completely heal, but he was on his way to being good as new.
She imagined the bandages were for her benefit to hide the carnage.
With his shirt off and jeans hanging low around his hips, Erica realized that his tattoos were not exclusive to his arms. The collage of tribal patterns and various bits of artwork carried on down his chest and partially over his ribs.
At first, she tried to focus her attention on the faded black depictions, but her gaze repeatedly trailed back to his battle wounds.
Her stomach lurched each time she caught a peek of the gnarled flesh, but the rapid healing proved too fascinating for her to look away for long.
When he started to wrap his way up to the equally nasty wounds in his shoulder, the bandages wouldn’t stay in place. Ronan struggled with getting the right angle of the dressing and cursed when it slipped off.
“You need some help?” she offered, her voice little more than a whisper.
One corner of his mouth tilted up. “This isn’t my first rodeo patching up war wounds … I know you can’t enjoy watching this. Why don’t you go into Cole’s office or something? It’s the—”
“First door on the right. I know.”
Right now, no place in the house seemed safe.
The living room was too close to the kitchen where Nathan’s body lay, the office had that damned picture sitting on the desk, this bathroom was becoming a little too crowded, and their bedrooms were far too personal for her to even think about going in there.
The only thing she knew was that, despite his intimidating presence and the fact that he was riddled with lacerations, cuts, and bruises, Ronan was the safest person in this house.
“I’m almost done,” Ronan said as he pinched a bit of the bandage between his chin and chest to keep it in place.
Without being asked, Erica stood and held her finger where his bearded chin met the gauze. He brought his head back up and continued, but didn’t say another word.
Erica, however, couldn’t stay silent. “Thank you for trying to protect me.”
He snorted. “More like you protected yourself. I don’t think that gun’s been fired in years. Cole keeps it clean, but he probably never thought he’d have to use it.”
“Those bullets … They’re silver, aren’t they?”
“Sure are. Your dad keeps some with a spare Glock in his glove compartment too.”
“In case some …” She replayed the moment when she shot Nathan, how his body crumbled backward, and the blood gushed from the massive hole in his chest.
Ronan’s green eyes flickered in her direction, a bit of worry behind them. “In case a shifter gets out of hand. It can happen, like it did tonight.”
Erica removed her finger when he seemed to be past a tough part in the wrapping process. “Why was Nathan even here?”
Ronan grimaced. “Who the hell knows? That guy was fuckin’ crazy to begin with. And before you go thinking I’m a pushover, the dude must have been high on something. I’ve never seen a shifter go so ballistic.”
“Would he have been the one to plant the drugs at my house?”
“Maybe. His record had some drug-dealing charges on it, so it wouldn’t surprise me.” Suddenly, Ronan let out a long breath. “Your father’s here. He probably got a call about the gunshot, and he’ll smell Nathan from the driveway, no doubt.”
Not two seconds later, the front door opened.
“Erica!” her father shouted.
Without understanding why, she fled the bathroom and rushed to the living room.
Cole’s arms were around her instantly. She returned the embrace and felt his taut shoulder muscles beneath her palms. There was something familiar about his cologne, warm and a little spicy.
Like a recessed memory from her childhood, she instinctively knew it as her father’s scent.
He held her tighter, and she could feel the hard buttons of his uniform shirt dig into her chest and stomach.
Erica felt all the tension leave her body as she gave in to this hug that proved to be more therapeutic than she expected it to be.
She never thought she’d ever be in her father’s arms this way.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded and buried her nose in his collar. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Ronan came out of the bathroom, and Cole went rigid.
“What the hell happened?”
“The dude just came in like a fuckin’ berserker,” Ronan replied. “If Erica hadn’t shot him, he would have—”
Cole yanked her away to give her a look of shock. “You shot Nathan?”
Erica could only nod, too choked with a thousand emotions that she couldn’t put into the right order. Some of them she wasn’t even sure were hers, but they came in a jumbled lump through her mate bond with Dominic. Where was he?
Her father glanced over his shoulder toward the bagged body and sighed at the burgundy streaks of blood on the tile. “I’ll get Hank to …” But his voice trailed off, and Erica thought she heard a car door slam in the driveway.
The living room began to feel a little overcrowded when Hank, Dominic’s beta and the guy she remembered from the spring festival, appeared and stared at the same homicidal mess.
Hank let out a similar sigh to Cole’s, laden with the unspoken complaint that they would have to find a way to dispose the body. “There goes half of Wyatt’s endgame.”
Cole turned to regard the beta with knitted brows. “What endgame? Where’s Dominic?”
“Xavier spilled the beans and told me more about what Wyatt’s been planning,” Hank told them. “Nathan was being used by Wyatt in his scheme to make Dominic give up Tolstone. He found out and must have wanted to get even by taking away Wyatt’s bargaining chip.”
The alarm was shared by everyone in the room, and Erica could feel herself tighten like a wound spring again.
“Give up Tolstone?” Ronan interjected. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Hank came to stand with them. “Wyatt wants to be Prime Alpha, and he’s using his relationship with Erica to persuade Dominic to step down and let him take over.
If he agrees, Nathan was going to get pinned for the cocaine possession, and Wyatt would make sure Erica went free.
If he didn’t, we’d all be at Wyatt’s mercy. ”
“Dominic would never …” Cole stopped himself, and a thoughtfulness dawned in his eyes that made her want to know what he could possibly be thinking. Maybe it was the same thing she was. Even Dominic confessed to her that he was willing to give up Tolstone to be with her.
Ronan looked to Hank, who in turn kept his intense gaze on Erica, as if she were the cause of all this trouble. It wasn’t her fault that Wyatt was power-hungry, but it was her fault for giving Dominic a weakness that could be exploited. He only needed the right push, and Wyatt had given him that.
Cole continued, “He knows the consequences of turning over the town to Wyatt. This place wouldn’t be a sanctuary anymore.”
Hank didn’t seem convinced. “He’s gone down to confront Wyatt now.” He then turned to march toward Nathan’s body. “You gonna help me?” he asked Ronan.
Erica straightened, brows high. “You just let him go alone?”
“He wanted to go alone,” Hank answered. “It’s his job to defend Tolstone, not ours.”
“You’re kidding me, right? What if he’s in trouble? Doesn’t he deserve some backup?”
Hank narrowed his eyes. “You do know what being the Prime Alpha means, right? He doesn’t need backup.
He’s more powerful than any of us, even Cole.
It’s in his blood. If he thinks he can handle it, there ain’t a damn thing I can do to convince him otherwise.
” He looked again at Ronan and motioned toward the body bag, meaning he was done coddling Erica.
The other beta, though his arm might have still been torn up under the bandages, came to Hank’s side to help lift the makeshift body bag. Erica heard Nathan’s fur scrape against the plastic and his blood slosh around inside.
As if sensing her distress, Cole squeezed her shoulder. “You did the right thing. Nathan would have killed you if you hadn’t got him first.”
Erica forced herself to watch the men carry the body toward the front door. Mostly just to prove to her father that she wasn’t as torn up as he believed.
“They’re going to take him to the animal shelter,” Cole continued. “They have an incinerator there that they use for animals that have died. No one’s going to convict you for murder.”
“I’m less worried about that bastard than I am about Dominic. Do you know where he’s meeting Wyatt?”