by Roxie Ray
“My drink,” she whispered. I watched the bottle of beer in her hand, the one not captured against my stomach, fall to the floor. Shifting my body, I leaned over with Abby in one hand and caught the beer with the other.
Abby blinked several times at me. I focused entirely on her, even though I knew Maddox and Perry, my cousin, were taking care of the scumbags.
I slid the drink onto a table behind me, then focused on Abby again. “My drink,” she whispered again. She narrowed her eyes, but I could tell they were unfocused. She was about to pass out. “I...”
I caught her in my arms as she slumped forward. She didn’t weigh enough to even make me grunt as I slipped my free hand under her knees and pulled her tight against my chest. My heart thumped with relief to have her in my grasp again, and Nyx nearly purred. But still, I was so angry at her, Rico, and the fucker that was pressuring her. I wanted to hand her off to Maddox for a minute and rip their heads off. But no way I could put her down. Even if I was being forced to save her, again. Against my will.
Nyx growled, reminding me it wasn’t against his will.
I looked around the bar to see that Maddox and Perry had Rico on a bar stool. They stood so close there was no way he was going anywhere. I didn’t see the big guy as I walked toward them. “Where’d he go?” I looked around. “I think he drugged her drink.”
Maddox’s face darkened. “I took him outside and taught him a lesson he needed to learn. As far as I know he’s still out there.” I appreciated my cousin doing that while I focused on Abby. “Thanks.” Perry looked down at his nephew. “Take her and Rico to the room. The owner is on his way. I want to fill him in on what happened before heading back.” Perry nodded toward Abby. Not that I needed him to tell me what to do.
When we walked out the door, the dickhead was still sitting against the wall of the bar. It took everything I had to walk past him and not let Nyx tear him apart. But I just want to get Abby away from here and make sure she was okay. I’d prefer to take her to her home, but I didn’t know where that was and didn’t want to take the time to track her scent if she had really been drugged.
She had to go with us. We’d rented all the rooms in an Airbnb, so we had privacy. Maddox unlocked the truck we’d rented and held the door open so I could slide in beside Rico. “I’ll take you three back then come back for Perry, so he doesn’t have to call a cab or something,” he said. We had no idea if they even had rideshares in this small town. We only had one back in Black Claw.
“This is ridiculous,” Rico muttered as Maddox backed out of the parking spot. “I’ve just been blowing off some steam.” He eyed Abby in my lap. “How do you know her?”
Nyx growled at Rico when we saw him eyeing her, and since Rico was a part of our clan, he heard him clearly. Rico blanched and pulled back as I tugged Abby’s shirt down to fully cover her abdomen where it had ridden up. I could’ve squeezed her in the seat beside us, but I preferred her in my lap. “None of your business,” I replied. “I don’t even know how she was in the same bar that you were. Do you?” It had occurred to me that Rico could’ve somehow found out she was my mate and caused this reunion.
“No. I’ve never seen her before. That fucker claimed her, and I was minding my business.”
I snorted and gave him a flat glare. He smelled like cheap perfume. “Your business and someone else’s.”
He shrugged. “Hey, it’s a free country.”
“I hope your partner was more willing than Abby was,” I seethed.
Rico smirked. “Of course she was. Look at me.”
Ah, he was the same cocky jerk that he’d always been. It used to make me laugh, but now it was just immature and petty.
“Grandpa has been pressuring me about taking my place in the pack,” Rico said. “I’m an alpha. I’m not needed in his pack. I don’t know why he’s so bent out of shape that I go to school and join the company.”
Gramps had a private investigation company back in Arizona. As dragons, it was easy to track the movements of humans. Harder to track other dragons, but I knew he sometimes took on cases from other clans. He’d reached out several times to get me to work for him, but I wanted to stick to Black Claw.
“I was always going to go back home,” Rico whined. “Why did you guys look like you wanted to murder my friends?”
I couldn’t stop myself. I settled Abby’s head against the armrest of the truck door, then reached over and smacked Rico upside the head. Maddox chuckled with his eyes on the road. “What the fuck?” Rico roared.
“Your friends stood around while that asshole harassed Abby. You should’ve stepped in. They were dragons, too. We’re born with a certain amount of honor, and all of you ignored it.”
“She’s Abby?” he asked and looked at her again.
I glared at him as Madd shot me a sidelong glance. “Don’t worry about Abby. You certainly didn’t before.” But then the fury rose in me again. “How would you like it if someone was harassing your sister like that? She’s almost eighteen, in a few years it might be her in a bar, too drunk to be responsible for herself, and instead of someone helping her and being kind and chivalrous, they might take advantage of her, maybe against her will!” By this point, I was yelling at the top of my lungs in the truck. Abby didn’t move a muscle. I was beginning to fear she had been drugged after all. I’d have to try to wake her up when we got to the room.
Maddox pulled into the driveway and looked over at Rico. “Yeah,” he said fiercely. “I can’t imagine anyone treating my little sister like that.” He didn’t know Rico as I did, but they’d met a few times. “You should’ve known better than this shit.”
Rico slumped forward and dropped his head into his hands.
“You’re an alpha,” I said and opened the truck door. “Start acting like one.”
We left him in the truck. Possibly a risk, but he seemed pretty defeated. I was pleased to see Rico trudging up the walk as Maddox unlocked the door. “Make him go back with you,” I muttered. “I’m going to take care of Abby.”
Maddox nodded and locked the door behind us. “Come on, cousin. Let’s go get Perry.” I heard him through the door before heading up the stairs to the bedroom I’d thrown my bag into earlier in the day.
Having Abby in my arms made me feel the calmest I’d been in weeks. Mostly because Nyx wasn’t trying to come out of my skin.
I carried her straight to the bathroom after grabbing a pillow off the bed. I threw it on the floor and said a short prayer that the bathroom floor was as clean as it looked, then yanked a towel off the rack and spread it over the pillow.
After settling Abby’s head on the cushion, I grabbed a washcloth and wet it with cold water from the tap. I wiped Abby’s face and neck with it until she stirred. She mumbled something, then made a heaving motion.
Bingo. I pulled her to a sitting position and pulled her strawberry blonde hair back as she heaved into the trash can.
I wished I could’ve clamped my nose when the smell of alcohol hit me. She didn’t throw up enough to make me happy, but she stirred a bit more.
“Here,” I said. Filling a paper cup at the sink, I held it to her lips. “Drink.”
She was able to drink the whole cup, so I carried her to the bed and laid her on her side with the garbage can within reach. I found new can liners with a little searching in the bathroom and got the offending smell out into the hallway.
Mine.
Nyx had been repeating the words since the moment we lifted Abby into our arms at the bar. I didn’t know why he’d chosen this woman who was so wrong for us. She had the opposite values that we did and was incompatible. Why her?
I pulled a chair close and settled into it. If she needed to throw up again, I’d help her. She was wrong for me, wrong for Nyx, but she was ours somehow. I had to take care of her. Even though I’d just be leaving her the next day.
Nyx growled at me when I thought about that, but what else could I do? This wasn’t some caveman society where I could just pack her
up and take her with me.
All I had was tonight, so I watched her sleep until I couldn’t hold my eyes open any longer.
5
Abby
“Hey, come on. You need to eat.”
The voice made me feel warm and fuzzy inside, but it also made my head pound to the beat of a thousand drums. I ignored it and went back to sleep.
Several minutes later—or perhaps several hours later, I couldn’t tell—someone shook me. “Abby, wake up. You need to eat something and drink water. I let you sleep as late as I could.”
Why did I need to get up? It was Saturday, wasn’t it? Why couldn’t I sleep in? The voice was melodic and soothed my troubled heart. I’d woken up with a heavy heart every day for months, but even through the headache, that voice made me feel something else. Hopeful, maybe.
Wait a sec. I lived alone. Who in the hell was shaking me awake? I moaned and clenched my eyes harder shut. Oh, no, had I brought someone home with me? With that thought, my mind sharpened into razor focus, but I didn’t open my eyes.
Bringing a man home after getting fall-down drunk was something my mom would’ve done. What had happened at the bar? What horrible choices had I made?
I pulled on my memories of the night before and tried to think who I might’ve taken home with me. Then it all came flooding back. I remembered everything, in fuzzy detail. Drinking too many shots, then leaving my sister a voicemail—ugh—then that disgusting man trying to corner me. The last thing was definitely Jury scooping me into his arms.
How? He didn’t have a clue where I lived. Could it really have been him?
I put my hand over my eyes and peeked out to see Jury’s face above mine and a worried expression on it. Or maybe annoyed. It was hard to tell from between my fingers. Whatever he looked like, it was definitely him.
“Urgh.” I tried to talk, but my throat felt like the desert. Rolling to my side, I pushed up with my toes until I could sit up and look around the room. Curling my legs under me, I squinted until the room came into focus. It was flowery. Not what I’d expect to wake up to after going home with Jury. It was also very generic. Maybe it was a hotel room or bed and breakfast.
The bed shook as Jury stood up. “Come on. We made breakfast downstairs. You need to eat.”
He was a dragon. There’s no way he couldn’t hear my racing heart as I watched him walk out of the room.
“Okay,” I whispered.
It took me several minutes to uncurl myself and get off the bed. Two doors to the left of the bed were open, one with an empty closet, and the other a bathroom. I made quick work of letting all the alcohol out of my body with a sigh of relief.
Then I washed my hands, and as I dried them, I looked up into the mirror and nearly shrieked at myself. Holy shit, I looked insane. Hideous. My eyes had black circles around them—not from lack of sleep. My mascara had broken down in the night and caked my under eyes with grime. I washed my face, then searched the bathroom for any toiletries. A cheap toothbrush still in the package was in a drawer with a tiny toothpaste tube. Moaning with delight, I brushed my teeth, then put a thin layer of the toothpaste on my under eyes to tighten them up. I’d heard it worked but had never tried it. This was an emergency if I’d ever seen one.
It tingled, but I kept it well below my actual eye, so it was fine. After finger-combing my hair and wiping off the toothpaste, I searched for my purse, which had somehow made it to the room. It was on top of the dresser. I grabbed it and found a hair tie to pull up my thick, unruly strawberry blonde hair, then checked my phone. It was dead. Damn. I had no idea who I might’ve drunk-dialed. I remembered calling someone, but not who I’d called.
Time to face the music. I slipped my sneakers back on. They were neatly waiting for me at the foot of the bed. At the last second, I turned back, made up the bed and wiped down the bathroom counter. I didn’t want anyone to come in and think I was spoiled and left a mess.
With my purse on my shoulder, a clean face, and fresh breath, I tiptoed downstairs.
It was a huge room, and, damn, I hated open floor plans.
Three men sat at the kitchen table across the room, and they’d spotted me already. Hell, they probably heard me coming, even as quiet as I was trying to be. “Hey,” I said weakly.
Jury looked up at me, then nodded to an empty chair.
Maddox grinned from ear to ear, but I didn’t know the third man.
“Abby, this is my cousin Perry. Perry, this is Abby.”
The stranger stood and held out his hand. I hurried forward to shake it. “Nice to meet you,” I murmured.
He waited for me to take a seat, so I pulled out the chair and tried to be as small as I could. “Um, where are we?”
Maddox looked at Jury, but Jury put a big bite of bacon in his mouth, so Maddox answered. “An Airbnb not far from the bar you were in. We can take you home whenever you’d like.”
I ducked my head. “Thank you.”
“Eat,” Jury said. “I think you were drugged last night.”
Keeping my eyes from widening, I looked at him. “How do you know?”
“You tried to tell me, then you passed out pretty hard,” he said. “Have you ever been passed out drunk before?”
I shook my head. “No. And though I did drink a lot, it wasn’t enough to affect me like that.”
He cleared his throat. “Might I recommend you not get drunk in a bar alone again?”
Trying not to bristle, I gave him a tight smile. “I hadn’t thought of that, thanks.”
I didn’t owe him any explanations about my behavior, as grateful as I was that he showed up when he did. “I appreciate your help, truly.”
“Do you normally put yourself in situations like that?” he asked. “Is this a regular occurrence?”
I set my fork down and glared at him. “No. And I wouldn’t usually give you any explanation, but I hadn’t eaten. I was feeling down and I stopped for a mixed drink, but my normal bartender wasn’t there.”
“Normal bartender?” he asked with one arched eyebrow.
I sighed. “I stop in there once a week or so for a drink. A mixed drink. That they usually water down. But as I said, it was someone new, so I got a couple of shots. The next thing I knew, I’d had half a dozen shots. I stopped and was going to let it work its way through me a bit and then go home. But the next thing I knew, I was being harassed. Then I think he put something in my beer.”
“You were in real danger last night,” Jury said stiffly. “What would you have done if we hadn’t turned up?”
“Jury, man, her explanation is reasonable. She wasn’t thinking, which isn’t great, but we’ve all been there.” Maddox gave me an encouraging smile. “I’m glad we ran into you, though. Harley called and was worried.”
Harley called them? “Why? And while I’m asking, how did you find me and why were you there?”
A noise on the stairs took my mind off the question. “They were looking for me.”
Another man walked into the big room and toward the table. He had dark hair and hazel eyes like Maddox and Jury, but he was shorter and stockier than both of them. More pronounced muscles. “Sorry I didn’t step in before and keep that man from bothering you.”
“You were there?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’d noticed you at the bar, but didn’t say anything to you because you looked so sad. I should’ve stopped him from intimidating you, though, and maybe that would’ve stopped you from being drugged. I was a bit distracted, though.”
He looked contrite, but Jury glared at him with eyes full of anger.
“It’s okay. I wasn’t yours to save.”
Jury’s gaze flitted to me, and he looked surprised.
“Don’t worry, Jury, I’m not yours to save either,” I said a little more waspishly than I meant to. “But I’m really glad you did,” I amended. “I’ll strive to make myself less of a burden in the future. But please, tell me, how did you find me?”
“Total coincidence,” Jury said. “We were t
racking Rico and he was in the same bar you were. What are you doing in Texas? I thought you lived in Colorado.”
I blushed when I realized the mistake. “Something that didn’t occur to me to tell you guys was that my father made me tell you all I lived there. I never knew why he wanted me to. But when I left, I realized you didn’t know. But by then I was so ready to go, and I knew none of you wanted me there, so I never told anyone the truth.”
“So, you live here?” Maddox asked.
I nodded. “All my life.”
“You should call Harley,” Maddox said. “When we texted to tell her we had you, she freaked, said you’d called and said a bunch of stuff that had made her worry.”
Oh, geez. She was the one I’d drunk-dialed. Of course.
“I didn’t know she cared,” I murmured, then looked down at my empty plate. I wasn’t hungry, my stomach was churning still from all the alcohol.
A phone slipped onto my plate. “Her number is there,” Maddox said. “Call her. From what she said last night, she’s starting to come to terms with everything and wants contact with you.”
He had an encouraging smile on his face. Jury’s expression was pretty blank, but his gaze was glued to his plate.
“Okay,” I said. “I will, thanks.” Grabbing the phone, I walked across the big room and out the front door.
The line only rang a couple of times before Harley picked up. “How is she?” she asked.
“I’m fine, Harley.”
“Oh, Abby, hey. Are you sure? You really had me worried.”
I considered putting on a brave face but decided to go with the truth. “I’m struggling,” I said. “Coming to terms with everything has been difficult.”
She was quiet for a few minutes. “Me, too,” she whispered. “This has been rough.” I didn’t reply, so she spoke again. “I’d love it if we could work through our past and become friends. We are the only sisters we have.”
“As far as we know,” I muttered darkly.
Harley burst out laughing, and I had to giggle, too. “It’s funny because it’s true,” she said.