by Selena Scott
“He used a paralyzing agent on me,” Quill said, each word costing him another year off his life.
“And you’ve lost a lot of blood. Jesus.”
“You’re that cop,” Quill said, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
“Officer Jajka,” the cop said, his eyes sweeping the perimeter. “I had a bad feeling. Followed you. Saw the girl leave but knew you were still in here. I broke in when I heard the gunshot. Do you know where your assailant is?”
“I passed out.” Quill was almost out of breath, blood, and life. Things were starting to get very blurry. “You gotta get out of here. He’ll kill you too.”
“I’m not leaving you here,” the cop said. A sound echoed in from the hallway and the cop dropped into a crouch behind the metal table that was partially obscuring them from view. He held perfectly still for a long moment and then, when no other sounds came, whispered to Quill again. “Any idea why the lights went out?”
Quill looked around and only now was it striking him as strange that the power was out. It had happened almost simultaneously with him getting shot, so he’d had a few things higher on the priority list to think about at the time. “No.”
The cop was just starting to creep out from behind the metal table when a deafening roar echoed down the hallway.
“What the fuck was that?” the cop asked, his eyes round, his gun at the ready.
“A bear,” Quill grunted. “Not a grizzly.” He’d know a grizzly bear roar in his sleep. “Maybe a polar bear.”
“I’m sorry,” the cop said slowly. “Are you telling me there’s a polar bear loose somewhere in this facility?”
A huge crashing sound came, a group of men shouting and running, another crash, a few gunshots, and then the roar again.
“Sounds like it,” Quill said, stretching his feet. He still couldn’t move his thighs, but he could feel his calves again.
“Fucking shifters,” the cop grumbled, looking like he regretted coming in after Quill. “Hey, hey, don’t move too much. You’ll lose more blood.”
“I’m not going to wait here for a polar bear to come find me,” Quill whispered, starting to move his shoulders. Perhaps he’d made his peace with dying by gunshot wound. But did he want his throat ripped out by whatever militarized polar bear shifter the Director had up his sleeve? Absolutely not.
“Good point,” the cop whispered. And then he hooked his hands under Quill’s armpits and started to drag him.
Pain ripped through Quill, almost sending him under with its intensity.
“It’s good that you’re feeling pain,” the cop said. “If you were numb, I’d be more worried.”
Quill gripped the paper towel roll against himself and internally banished the cop to the stinkiest, hottest pits of hell, while simultaneously being extremely grateful for his existence.
The polar bear roared again and they instinctually froze.
“You don’t know anything about the polar bear, huh?” the cop asked.
“I’ve never met a polar bear shifter in my life,” Quill grunted. “Now, if it was a wolf—”
They froze again when a perfectly timed wolf howl echoed down the hall.
“That’s some party trick,” the cop muttered.
Quill’s heart galloped in his chest. He suddenly bent up his legs and it halted the cop’s progress as he dragged him across the floor.
He hadn’t heard Dawn’s wolf howl often enough to be able to identify it, but it didn’t matter. He knew, in the deepest parts of his soul, that that had been her howling. She was here. In her wolf form. Fighting a polar bear?
Jesus. His feet scrambled against the floor but his thighs and most of his arms were still useless. He could not fucking lie here like a sack of flour while Dawn fought a battle out there.
His gut ached. Was she alone?
Just then the wolf howl came again and this time it was joined by another. And then a third.
Relief and fear came in tandem. At least she was with her brothers. Unfortunately, they were storming a military complex together.
“Any idea what’s going on out there?” the cop asked with a grunt as he finally dragged Quill against the wall, propping him up.
“I think she came back for me.” Quill’s voice was a disbelieving shell of itself. He’d known, intellectually, that there was a chance that Dawn wouldn’t go quietly. It was why he’d called her brothers to come get her. But this right now, this was him suddenly knowing, in his heart, that she wasn’t going to leave him behind.
“Look,” the cop said, “I know you were lying about the proposal when I caught y’all screwing. I’m not an idiot. But I’m just saying, if you two make it out of this thing alive, you should probably marry that girl. It’s not every person you date who’ll come back for you.”
Quill groaned.
This exact feeling was why he hadn’t let her tell him she loved him. Because now? Now there was no bleeding out on the laboratory floor. Now, he was in a fight for his life, fight for her life, fight for the love that he deserved situation. And this shit was about to get bloody.
Quill started testing his arms and legs, moving around little by little.
“What are you doing?” the cop asked, trying to gently push Quill back to a lean. “If you move, you’re gonna aggravate your wound.”
He pushed the cop’s hands away. “I have to. I don’t care. I’m not lying here while she fights for me.”
The door to the lab swung open and brought a flood of synthetic emergency lighting.
Both the cop and Quill froze, hidden back in a poorly lit corner. A figure rushed into the lab, looking back over their shoulder to see if they’d been pursued, and it was then that the orange light lit his face and Quill saw it was the Director.
“That’s who shot me,” he whispered to the cop.
The Director, moving quickly, barely glanced at the spot where he’d shot Quill not half an hour before. But when he saw there was nothing but a smear of blood left behind, he did an almost comical double-take. He was suddenly looking over both shoulders, turning a circle, trying to figure out where the hell Quill had gotten to.
That was when the door to the lab kicked open again and another figure stepped inside. This silhouette didn’t take Quill any time at all to identify. She was graceful, curving perfection.
But when the door slammed behind her, locking her in with the Director, lit only with the emergency lighting, she looked nothing like the peaceful, sweet Dawn that he was used to. This Dawn came to kick some major ass.
Quill saw through paralyzed eyes the two people who stood on either side of the room. Dawn on one side and the Director on the other. It was like a gladiator match. Two competitors for Quill’s soul.
“Not another step,” the Director said in a hoarse voice. “I’ll shoot you if you so much as breathe.”
Quill saw with a strangely calm clarity that the Director was holding up the same gun that he’d shot Quill with. He was calm because everything had just suddenly become very simple. There was no more deliberation about whether or not Quill had it in him to kill. It was an easy and almost elegant truth. There was a man who was about to kill Dawn. So, Quill was going to kill him first.
Through the numb limbs, the excruciating pain in his side, the dizziness from blood loss, Quill threw himself forward into his shift. He came into his bear with an earsplitting roar. Even more bone-chilling than the polar bear’s.
The Director spun toward him, blank amazement in his eyes. Shots rang out and then the cop was shouting.
“Drop your weapon!”
But Quill got there first. He was on the Director, flinging him backward with a bear paw to the chest.
The man flew through the air like a rag doll.
Quill was on him, his huge teeth sinking into the Director’s thigh. His animal instinct had taken him over. He shook him this way and that. And then there was resistance and when Quill looked up, he saw it was because Dawn, in her wolf form, had her teeth sunk
into the Director’s shoulder.
His screams echoed around the laboratory and something hard banged against Quill’s skull. The gun. The Director lifted it, pressed it into Quill’s ear.
A gunshot rang out and everything fell away.
The Director fell limp back on the floor, his head kicked to one side, shock still written in the lines of his face even as the breath and warmth left his body.
Across the room, the cop lowered his weapon.
Outside, sirens blared, getting closer and closer.
“If—if you could shift back to your human forms, that would be better,” the cop said hoarsely, his eyes on the Director’s face still.
Dawn and Quill did as he asked, shifting back into their human forms, and Quill turned to her, completely ready to have a big, tearful reunion. But Dawn had other ideas.
“You’re bleeding out,” she said, true fear in her eyes. “I can’t believe you shifted while you were shot in the stomach, you idiot.”
“He was going to shoot you,” Quill murmured, his palm going back to his side, trying to stanch the bleeding.
“Here.” The cop knelt next to them, handing over a stack of medical gowns he’d obviously just found. He handed one to Dawn for her to change into and the rest he pressed against Quill’s side. “The cavalry is here. When I heard the gunshot, I called for backup. There’ll be an ambulance too.”
Now that Dawn was here, her cool hands on his face, safe and sound, the adrenaline started to recede from Quill’s body, dissolving into the air.
He felt hollow and weak.
“Oh, don’t you dare pass out,” Dawn hissed. “I’m not going through this alone, Quill. If you’re going to make me this scared, you better believe you’re holding my hand through it.”
He chuckled but cut off with a hiss. “You came back for me.”
“Don’t act surprised,” Dawn said, adding pressure to the wound with her own hand. “You knew it was possible. That’s why you called my brothers.”
“The cop thinks I should marry you for coming back for me.”
The cop in question suddenly looked pretty embarrassed, his cheeks going pink. But he didn’t have time to say anything because just then, EMTs came through the door of the lab.
The next few minutes were a blur as they strapped Quill to a gurney and started wheeling him out.
He was wheeled down the hallways, blinking in amazement at the wreckage around him. Whole walls were burst through, there were injured guards everywhere, some of them crying, cops swarmed the hallways. There were claw marks on the floor and walls, and even with his less refined nose, he could scent the adrenaline and aggression that defined this so clearly as a battle between man and shifter.
When he was finally out into the balmy, humid night, the sound of tired applause, cat calls, and exhausted cheers had him craning his head to one side. Quill’s eyes widened as he saw Orion and Phoenix, Ida, Diana, Sasha, and some guy Quill sorta recognized all sitting on a curb, flanked by about ten cops. A blackbird sat in the tree above them and Quill would have bet a lot of money that it was Wren, way too smart to shift back to her human form.
They’d come for him. All of these people came back for him. He could barely tear his eyes away.
“Way to not die!” Orion shouted across the noisy, crowded parking lot.
“Don’t jinx it!” Dawn shouted angrily back, jogging alongside the gurney.
Officer Jajka, who’d apparently been jogging along the other side of the gurney, spoke up. “I’ll stay with them. With your people. I’ll make sure they’re taken care of.”
And then he was off toward them.
“How’d you know about jinxes?” Quill asked through a grunt of pain. “You grew up a wild, uncivilized wolf.”
“I must’ve had a really good mentor,” Dawn said with a soft smile as an EMT helped her up into the ambulance.
***
The group—minus Dawn and Quill, who were still at the hospital—all sat in a windowless room at the police station. They weren’t in a cell and they weren’t handcuffed, which all of them knew was due to the officer who stood at the doorway.
He looked halfway torn between guarding the world from the ruffian shifters and guarding the shifters from the problematic world.
“You got some kind of shifter fetish?” Wren called across the room to the cop.
Diana laughed and nudged her with her foot. “Don’t antagonize the cop who has been advocating for us.”
“I’m just wondering,” Wren said quasi-innocently, “why he won’t leave us alone.”
“Florida isn’t known for treating shifters fairly,” Jesse said quietly. “I’m grateful for the assist, officer…” He trailed off, waiting to hear the officer’s name.
“Jajka. Officer Jajka.”
“That’s an interesting name,” Sasha commented.
“It’s Polish,” the cop said, shifting on his feet. “It means egg.”
“The psychic,” Wren said carefully. “What was it she said about eggs and the police force?”
The group stilled but Jesse just laughed. “That’s Celeste for you. Even when you think she’s just rambling, she’s busy telling the future.”
Sasha frowned and scratched the back of his head.
“This is making my head hurt,” Phoenix grumbled.
“No, that’s probably from the guard with the rifle that you tackled through a wall,” Orion guessed.
“You what?” Ida screeched.
“Jajka!” A man’s voice summoned him from outside the room.
The cop glanced around at all of them. “I’m gonna go see if I can’t get you all out of this mess.”
He left the room and they all just sort of stared after him.
“Weird guy,” Wren grumbled after a minute.
“I like him,” Ida decided.
“You like everyone,” Diana said. “You were the only one who thought Quill might redeem himself in the end.”
“And I was very right about that! Jesse was on team Quill too.”
Jesse nodded. “I was. Well, I was really on any team that was gonna try to beat the shit out of the Director.”
The group quieted again.
“You think Quill’s gonna be all right?” Sasha asked.
“I hope so,” Orion said quietly. And the crazy thing was, he meant it.
***
Dawn woke up to something gently tugging at her hair. Her nose was filled with all the same awful hospital scents as when Phoenix had been laid up for all those months. But underneath that was the very, very familiar scent that she didn’t think would ever get old. Sleepy Quill. Yum.
She lifted her head from where she’d been sleeping on her hands on the edge of his hospital bed and there he was, smiling at her.
“You look different,” was the first thing that came out of her mouth.
He kept playing with her hair. “Well, I just came out of surgery…”
“No, not that. I mean, you look younger. And lighter. And happier.”
Quill looked down for a minute, hiding those icy eyes from her before he blinked back up, emotion filling his gaze. “He’s gone, Dawn. He’s really gone.”
He wasn’t just gone, he was dead. And Dawn knew that over the next weeks, months, years, the confluence of feelings around the Director’s death was bound to become more and more complicated. There’d be regret and guilt and pain, she was sure of it. But today, and maybe for a little while, there was only relief.
And that’s really what she meant when she said he looked different. He looked relieved. He looked as if a thousand pounds had been lifted from each shoulder. He looked younger because he no longer looked as if he believed he deserved to die. He looked as if he wanted to see what was going to happen next.
“He's not gone just for you, Quill. He’s gone for every single shifter he’s ever harmed.”
Quill let out a long breath. “It’s gonna be a long road, Dawn, making amends to everyone I’ve ever hurt in his name. Th
ere are people that I brought to him. Scouted, enlisted. How can I ever make that right?”
She slid her hand into his. “We’ll make it right together, Quill. We’ll do some good. You and I, we can travel around the country and tell our story. We can show people that we love each other. We can help shifters who’ve been taken advantage of get back on their feet. We’ll raise money for them. Get them in housing. Get food on their plates. We’ll write a book together!” That last idea hit her like a bolt of lightning. “It can have two sides to it. You’ll tell about your time in the camps and I’ll tell about my time in the mountains. We’ll talk about all the different ways there are to grow up as a shifter. All the hardships. All the money from the book will go to helping other shifters.”
She lifted his hand to her lips. “Quill, you don’t have to be everyone’s favorite person in order to live a worthwhile life. In order to do good in this world. There might be people who never forgive you for what you did, but that won’t stop us from trying to make the world a better place.”
Shiny tears lined his eyes and for a long while, he looked out the window instead of at her. “So, you’re just completely determined to stay by my side, huh?” he finally asked.
“Are you kidding me?” She tipped her head down and eyed him quizzically. “Oh, jeez, you’re serious.” Leaning forward, she gently took his face in her hands. “You couldn’t shake me when you were being held captive in a military complex by a psycho. You think you can shake me now? No way. I’m yours for life, my friend.”
He covered his face with his hands and when he looked at her again, there was an expression in his eyes that she’d never forget as long as she lived.
“Mine for life?” His voice was hoarse.
“You heard me.”
“So, that means…”
“I thought you said fishing for compliments was unattractive,” she deadpanned.
He laughed. “Cut me some slack here.” Kissing her hand, he turned those beautiful eyes on her. “Tell me what I want to hear.”
“Oh, fine. If I must.” But she dropped all jest as crawled into the hospital bed alongside him, very careful not to jostle him. She pressed her lips to his for one perfect moment and then leaned back to get a good look at his face. “I love you. Forever.”