Chapter 24 #2
“Of course he did.” I used to walk those shifts beside him every evening, both of us quiet enough to hear the people sparring back at the training ground. “Anna?”
“She misses you.”
“I feel so bad. Everyone being uprooted like that.”
“Nobody blames you,” Ezra says. “For any of it.”
“I didn’t say they did.”
“Your face did,” Megan says. “It’s doing the guilty martyr thing.”
“I don’t have a guilty martyr thing.”
Megan tips her head while Ezra waits me out.
“Fuck you both.”
Megan’s grin comes back. “Much less annoying. We left buildings, bitch. We got the people out.”
Ezra nods once. “The decision was ours. We’d make it again.”
I pick at the edge of the blanket over my knees. “What did you lose?”
“Food. Tools. Some equipment. Personal things.” Ezra’s gaze stays on my face. “Not your bow.”
The blanket edge slips from my fingers.
Megan points toward the front of the house. “It’s in the van with the ugly bowl I made you.”
“I’m sure it’s not ugly, M.”
She points at Ezra. “This asshole tried to leave it behind.”
“It’s cracked,” Ezra says.
“That’s how it was made, Ezra.”
“It doesn’t hold water.”
“Neither does a colander, and people still keep those.”
I laugh again, softer this time. I think I saw this relationship coming.
“No one followed you here?” Weller asks.
“No. We checked.”
Megan’s eyes snap to my face and her mouth flattens. “What happened out there?”
I look down at the blanket. “They spotted me in the village.”
“One of them grabbed me outside the shop, but I stabbed him and got loose. They crushed my phone. The golf cart cut off the boardwalk, and after that...” My scraped shoulder pulls when I shrug. “There weren’t a lot of places left.”
“So you went into a red-flag current,” Megan says.
“It looked better than getting into their golf cart. Their sons were bad enough, and they’re probably worse.”
“Low fucking bar.”
“Drowning is preferable to... whatever they might’ve had in mind for me.”
Her eyes shine again. “Yeah, well. Put it on your calendar next time so I can schedule some mental health days because you scared me to death.”
“What happened to them?”
Tristan hasn’t taken his eyes off me once. “They didn’t come out.”
“None of them?”
“No.” Weller’s answer startles me. He’s been so quiet. “I watched for them, but never saw anyone come back to shore.”
I can still feel his arm locked beneath my breasts. His mouth beside my ear. This will be fun.
“You saw them?” I ask Tristan.
“Two of them, but I was looking for you.”
Megan squeezes my fingers.
Ezra shrugs. “Pretty cut-and-dried.”
I snort. “They just didn’t have a handsome former lifeguard to give them mouth-to-mouth.”
Megan’s mouth twitches. Then she leans closer, her nose wrinkling. “Hey, you don’t smell good.”
“Thank you.”
“No, babe. You smell like heat.”
Weller goes rigid under me.
“It started on the beach...” I rub the heel of my hand over my breastbone. “Then everything happened.”
Ezra studies my face. “The shock pushed it back. Stress can interrupt the onset.” He doesn’t hesitate. “It’s delayed but will likely happen soon.”
“How long would you say?” Weller asks.
“Hours, maybe a day,” Ezra says. “Her scent is already building again.”
“Fantastic.”
Megan drops to her knees beside a canvas bag. “I brought one emergency dose. It’s all I could hunt down.”
Ezra reaches over her before she gets the zipper open and pulls a small pouch from the side pocket. She takes it without looking up, like she knew his hand would already be there.
She tears through the pouch and holds up a silver packet. “If you take it before the heat kicks back in all the way, it should buy a few days. Should.”
I take the packet from her and tip the pill onto my tongue. It starts dissolving before Weller gets the glass to my mouth, chalky and fucking awful, so I swallow twice and keep drinking until he lowers it.
“A few days gets us somewhere safer,” Ezra says. “We came prepared to stay through your heat. Food, perimeter, sleep, whatever you need.”
I look at the canvas bag by Megan’s knees. It’s stuffed so full the zipper bows, with a rolled sweatshirt trapped in one side. They packed for days.
“You think I’d let four alphas be your only supervision? Please. Somebody has to protect you from their terrible ideas.”
“Our number one priority is keeping her safe,” Weller says, mildly offended.
“She smells like the inside of an alpha gym bag and has four of you making decisions for her.” Megan turns to me and waits until I meet her eyes. “You need me.”
“I really do.”
A phone vibrates against my hip.
Weller’s palm stops moving over my side. He pulls his phone from his pocket, opens a message from Winston, and turns the screen toward me.
Dad arrested at Montgomery’s for trespassing and threats. Not hurt.
I push upright in his lap. “My dad threatened Montgomery?”
It shouldn’t be the part I get stuck on, but my dad is one of the gentlest, most apologetic men I’ve ever known. I’ve seen him genuinely angry maybe five times in my life.
I shove the blanket off my legs and wobble as I stand. Weller steadies me.
“I need to go home. You came in the van?” I ask.
“Yeah.” Megan gets to her feet. “It’s down the road. We walked the rest of the way.”
“We can grab the other car,” Ezra says. “But we have enough room in the van to all get there.”
Megan looks down at my bare legs. “Do you own pants, perhaps?”
I roll my eyes and start toward the nest.
Megan brings me sweatpants and a buttery-soft shirt. Owen finds me in the hall and corners me. “You left me.”
I scoff. “I left you?”
“Drove like a maniac to get here. I’ve never been so scared.”
I lean into him. “I’m okay. Tristan found me. Colleen is safe.”
Freddie comes out of the bathroom, his curls flattened on one side and the crease from the blanket still pink across his cheek. “And my dad is dead.”
“Shit. Are you okay?” I grab his arm, and he wraps it around me.
“I’m relieved. He can’t hurt anyone anymore.”
“What happened?”
“He tried to climb off the balcony while we were packing the equipment.” Freddie looks down at me. “I caught him, but then I shook him off.”
“He can’t hurt you anymore,” I whisper.
“Sorry about leaving like that, Princess,” Owen says, pulling a shirt over his head.
In the hall, Megan clears her throat. “This is touching as fuck, but we need to go.”