by Erica Woods
Jason followed the line of my finger. His eyes widened, and threw himself in front of me while spitting a curse. The force of his hand against my chest had me stumble back several steps. By the time I regained my balance and looked back, a strange man had come out of nowhere and was leaping at Jason.
“Run!” Jason yelled an instant before the man hit him in the chest, and down they both went.
“Jason!” Heart pounding, I launched myself at the man who’d hit him. They were both on the ground, rolling in near silence, fists flying through the air with a speed I could barely comprehend. Fear tightened my throat, squeezed my ribs, but I grabbed hold of the man’s arm and yanked as hard as I could.
It was enough for them to get to their feet, apart. The stranger half turned, looked at me like I was crazy, and shook me off.
Then he attacked in a flurry of arms and something that flashed white. A weapon of some kind? And somehow Jason blocked and countered each hit like he’d been born to fight.
The fear fled, a distant, strangled cry in the back of my mind. Not important. Not when Jason was in danger. Not when I’d brought danger into his life. Though I didn’t recognize the stranger, there was no doubt in my mind he was a Hunter sent to bring me back, and having recognized Jason as the greater threat would try to eliminate him before grabbing me.
I looked around for a weapon. Anything I could use to hurt the man trying to hurt Jason.
Grass. More grass. A stick. Too small. But then . . . a rock? It was big enough to fill my palm. I tested its weight. With a good hit in it could probably do some damage.
While they traded punched, big bodies reeling from the force of each impact, I snuck up behind them. I lifted my rock. Swung. And hit—
Air?
They’d somehow moved several feet in the second it had taken me to raise my rock.
“Leave him alone,” I cried, heart nearly stopping when Jason ducked under the strangers arm and threw his hand out too fast for me to see.
When the Hunter stumbled back, his cheek was split open in four long gashes. I blinked, but still saw no weapon.
A terrifying rumble rose through the air, then the two men crashed again. Jason must have spotted me, for he roared and threw the Hunter over his back, spun around and snarled at me. “Fucking run!”
While his attention was at me, the other man managed to somehow leap to his feet from a prone position on the ground, and was running at Jason.
“Look out!” I screamed, and started running too. The hand holding my rock waved wildly as I prepared to attack.
Jason’s jaw dropped open, and when he tried to turn I realized my mistake. I’d distracted him.
The Hunter’s fist connected with the back of Jason’s head.
A sickening thud sounded, and Jason crumbled to the ground.
“No!” I rushed to his side, threw myself over his body and used my own as a shield. “Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him!” Sobs tore from my throat. “I won’t run again, just don’t hurt him.” I’d go back. I’d go back right now if only he wouldn’t hurt Jason or the others.
Oh my god, the others! If they came out now, the Hunter would probably kill them.
My grip on the rock tightened. I’d bash the Hunter’s head in before I’d let him hurt the guys who’d saved me!
I waited for him to draw one of their horrible weapons, for metal to pierce my body and shred my flesh. Maybe it wouldn’t go through me. Maybe Jason would be okay.
“Please,” I cried, “please.”
A hand on my upper arm, the touch gentle. I swung my rock at his head, but he ducked and plucked it out of my fist with startling ease.
I blinked up at the Hunter, wondering how someone so evil could look at me with such concern, with such warm, compassionate eyes.
Then I was in the air, my stomach meeting the hard edge of a shoulder, and the scenery flew by with such speed I thought I was going to be sick.
I must have passed out. When I next opened my eyes we were deep in the woods, and the man had come to a stop. He lifted me and placed me gently on my feet. He even supported me when I swayed.
“Lily,” he breathed. The name set my brain to throbbing. One hand rose to brush my hair away from my face.
I batted it away. “S-stay back.”
“It’s me.” His voice was low. Smooth. Much too captivating. “Kieran.”
“I . . . I don’t know you.”
Kieran stepped closer, and I instinctively flinched. The silence that followed had me fold my arms around my stomach and shiver. It was threatening. Cold. Filled with as much rage as a silence could be. “What,” he bit out, “have they done to you?”
My head snapped back and I looked at him, really looked at him. He looked . . . furious, and his eyes. Something was wrong with his eyes. “W-who?”
His nostrils flared, his eyes closed. He leaned closer, breathing in. Then all color drained from his already pale face. When he looked back down at me, it was like seeing a man whose hope had been suddenly and irrevocably killed. “Lily?”
That name . . . it itched at my mind like a slippery needle. I should have been able to catch it before it burrowed, but each time I reached for it, I pricked myself at the sharp point and had to retreat before the discomfort in my mind bloomed into pain. “I’m . . . I’m Hope.”
The main recoiled.
Not a Hunter, then?
My knees gave out and I dropped to the ground.
Please, please, please.
Cold, slightly damp leaves met the seat of my pants. “Are you . . . are you here to take me to the compound?”
I couldn’t afford to believe otherwise. Not until I knew for sure. To believe I had escaped yet again only to be forced back there . . . I stared down at my hands while I waited for the answer that would seal my fate.
“The compound?”
The confusion in his voice was too real to be faked.
A horrible sound born in the pit of my stomach forced its way up my throat. I wanted to weep with relief, to rail against this stranger for making me taste the despair that had once haunted my every waking moment. But instead, my mind whirled and thoughts of Jason moved to the forefront. “Why did you attack Jason? Will he be okay? Oh, god, tell me he’ll be okay!”
“I . . . I thought you were her.”
“W-who?” I glanced up, took in the dark eyes, the inky-black hair, and a face that I might have found attractive if not for what he’d done. And suddenly an explosion of rage swelled from the depths of my soul. “You hurt him because of a mistake!”
“I thought you were she,” he muttered. “I—Of course I noticed you were much too young but I thought perhaps you had been turned. That she had been turned.” It was his turn to look away. “You are so . . . so much like her.”
A mistake. It was all a mistake.
I staggered to my feet, keeping a wary eye on the stranger. There was something wrong with him. What he was saying made no sense. “Okay. I’ll . . . I’ll just go then.”
He waved a hand. “Please. And my sincerest apologies to both you and your males.”
I edged backward, keeping the unbalanced man in my sights for as long as possible. When he remained still—face averted, a slump to his shoulders that spoke of emotions I’d rather not attribute to my kidnapper and Jason’s attacker—I turned and ran.
The guys were not happy.
I counted my lucky stars they’d found me on the forest floor after a root snared my foot, and not sprinting and weaving through the trees like I’d never been injured. Not that any of them had reacted well at seeing me sprawled on the ground.
“You sure you’re okay, love?” Jason asked me for the fifth time since we’d returned to the house, earning a sour look from Ruarc. The bigger male seemed to blame Jason for my short stint as a kidnap victim.
“I really am fine. Though my pants need a wash.”
A vein throbbed near Ruarc’s temple. He grabbed my elbow and led me past the others, depositing me on the
oversized couch in the living room.
Earlier, after they’d assured themselves I wasn’t hurt, they’d brought me to the kitchen, made me drink a swallow of some disgusting, brown-ish liquid that had burned on the way down and filled my stomach with an almost pleasing heat, and asked me question after question about what had happened. The temperature had seemed to drop several degrees when Jason, in a much too quiet voice, had explained how I hadn’t run, but had instead thrown myself at Kieran in an attempt to help. And now that they were done interrogating me, it seemed Ruarc had something to say about that choice.
I crossed my arms over my chest and looked down at my hands. I couldn’t bring myself to meet Ruarc’s furious gaze. Standing with his feet a good distance apart, arms crossed over a wide chest—a chest that heaved with the force of his breaths—he reminded me of a warrior preparing to battle.
Or a bull about to charge.
If he grew horns and tossed his head, he wouldn’t need to change anything else. He already had the wide shoulders, the powerful build, the rage I imagined flowed through the big animals when they attacked to defend their herd. Yes, he was definitely bull-like, except he was too tall to be stocky, and his neck wasn’t that thick. Muscled, but tall. Wide and strong, but also somehow lean. Or, not lean but . . .
Proportionate.
A chilling growl shattered the thoughts I was hiding behind and brought my attention back to the man towering above me. “Should’ve run.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off with a look. The kind that seemed so very male and so very confident he was right, that I ended up gaping up at him like an idiot.
“Happens again, you run. Got it?”
“But Jason was—”
“Don’t care,” he growled. “You should’ve run.”
A dip in the couch and then the scent of horses and hay. Ash grabbed my hand and gave it a light squeeze. “We can take care of ourselves, banajaanh.”
It wasn’t the same as saying I couldn’t take care of myself, but it sure felt that way. I peeked at him, once again unable to reconcile this Ash—calm, steady, in control—with the Ash I’d caught a glimpse of earlier. When they’d first found me there’d been something off about him. Something in the stiffness around his mouth. The dangerous tilt of his head. The unnatural stillness he’d exhibited as Jason and Ruarc rushed to my side while Lucien took off in the direction I’d fled from.
He’d brought to mind a lethal predator at the verge of losing control.
“I couldn’t leave him there.” I directed my explanation at Ash rather than the raging energy that was Ruarc. “Not while that lunatic was trying to hurt him!”
“We appreciate your bravery,” Ash said, ignoring both the angry sound coming from Ruarc and the exasperated sigh from Jason. “But you are more of a hindrance than a help in a situation like that. Not because you are weak,” he added gently when I hung my head. “But because you are not trained to fight. We are.”
He made no mention of my size or the fact that I was severely lacking in muscle. If not for my adrenaline, I’d probably have collapsed after my first minute of sprinting through the dense woods.
I need to get stronger.
“And because I told you to run, dammit,” Jason added.
“Should’ve made her run,” Ruarc grumbled.
“How was I supposed to have done that? Ask the v—ask Kieran to stop the fight and wait while I escort Hope back to the house?”
Ruarc growled.
“Do you guys . . . do you know him?” I realized then that while they’d listened to my story—seeming as confused as I was with Kieran’s actions—they hadn’t shown surprise when I told them who had taken me.
“No,” Ruarc snarled, but the look he shot Ash was filled with recrimination.
“I do not know him, Ruarc,” Ash said. “We met him for the first time today.”
“Was he . . . was he here for me?”
Lucien’s mouth tightened in the way it always did when I’d said something that displeased him. “Not everything is about you.”
“He called me Lily.” Saying it out loud had a weird sensation snake through my head.
“Lily?” Lucien stalked across the room. Grabbed my chin. Tilted my head up. “Anything else you’ve failed to tell us?”
Ruarc snarled and broke Lucien’s hold on me before stepping between us. “Not the point!”
“Then what is?”
He spun around, Lucien forgotten, and scowled down at me. “Should’ve run!”
“I don’t know any Lily,” Jason muttered. He took a seat on the other side of me and paid no mind to the furious male looming above all three of us. He looked at Ash. “You?”
“None Kieran would risk so much to help.”
Help? It hadn’t felt like he’d been trying to help.
“Did he say anything else when he called you Lily?” Ash asked.
I thought back. “Nothing except what I already told you. Although he did seem a bit . . . crazy.”
“Crazy how?”
“Well . . .” My eyes shifted to the side. “Something about me being too young to be the one he was looking for. But then why would he take me?”
“Fuck’s sake.”
Startled, I looked back at Ruarc.
“Pointless,” he snapped, then pointed an accusing finger at my chest. “You run when someone attacks you. Hear me? You run!”
“But he didn’t attack me. He attacked Jason.”
A strangled sound from Jason. Dark thunderclouds rolled across Ruarc’s expression. He looked ready to blow.
“You. Run.”
“I . . . sorry?”
Ruarc glared down at me.
“I won’t do it again?”
Ruarc glared harder. Was it the question in my voice that had the vein in his temple pulsate? I didn’t want to lie to Ruarc, but of course I would do it again. I’d do it again in a heartbeat if it meant saving one of the guys.
They’d saved me first.
“Really, I—Won’t you say something?” The silent glaring was making my chest feel tight, like I was letting him down, and that outraged disappointment had become a vice squeezing me tighter and tighter until I either popped or he gave in.
Ruarc kept glaring.
“Please?”
The glare narrowed. His jaw bunched as he opened his mouth, closed it again. Anger churned in the flat press of his lips.
“Ruarc?” My voice quivered.
A beastly sound erupted and silver eyes flashed. Then I got my wish. “Don’t you fucking ever do that again!”
A spark of fear lit at all that anger, and I flinched back. But before the spark could grow from a small flame to the blazing terror I knew myself capable of, Ash squeezed my hand.
My whole world narrowed down to rough calluses over warm flesh. To the heat of his thigh pressing against mine. To the gaze burning my cheek, wanting to capture mine, waiting for me to turn my head and take refuge in the peace, the comfort, the protection he offered.
And suddenly it didn’t matter that Ruarc snapped and snarled. It didn’t matter that I had been kidnapped by a lunatic, however briefly. Nothing mattered except this. Except them. I was safe. They were safe.
I listened with half an ear to Jason half-heartedly scolding me for not running, to Ruarc’s scathing lecture, to Ash’s low reassurances. I listened to Lucien drawing Ash away and quietly discussing whatever was on their minds, to the low huff Ruarc made as he took Ash’s spot next to me and the pat-pat of his reluctant forgiveness as he tapped my knee. And then I listened to Jason teasing Ruarc, to the low rumble of Ruarc’s response, to the laughter that response inspired in Jason, and I thought to myself that this, this was what it was like to have a family. This was what it was like to have a home.
And then I couldn’t breathe.
23
HOPE
The next morning I was bent over, rummaging through the cupboard under the sink, when my skin started prickling. The fine
hairs at the back of my neck rose with a chilled shiver, the kind that lets you know someone is watching.
“Ow!” In my haste to turn around, my head banged against the sink. I rubbed at the offending spot, blinking back unbidden tears as I tried to make out the blurry figure standing in the doorway. Correction, the blurry figure marching across the white tiles and coming to a crouch in front of me.
“You all right?” The low, deep rumble couldn’t belong to anyone other than Ruarc. The wild, clean scent of forest and man swept over me, and when my vision cleared I came face to face with broad shoulders and a wide chest.
“I’m fine,” I muttered, embarrassed at how easily I startled.
If the Hunters don’t get me, maybe someone will frighten me into stepping off a cliff, I thought dryly.
One of Ruarc’s big palms cupped the back of my head, protecting it from further harm as he helped me to my feet. “Good.”
Even while standing, the sheer size of him threatened to overwhelm. It wasn’t fair that a man could grow so big, look so powerful, and yet still be so gentle. It went against all the laws of men I’d been taught at the hands of the Hunters.
The wide expanse of Ruarc’s chest was covered by a tight-fitting, black shirt, showing off his strong shoulders, and the muscular torso tapering down to his waist. The same color sweatpants hugged his powerful legs, allowing me to catch a glimpse of corded muscles beneath the fabric.
“What’re you looking for?”
My eyes shot to his, heat creeping up my neck and staining my cheeks a color I could only guess was a deep, startling red.
Oh god, he caught me eyeballing his body like a piece of meat.
I hadn’t meant to, really, but I couldn’t stop my eyes from roaming when he was standing so close, when his raw, masculine scent overwhelmed my senses, and his very essence—that of a potent, fierce male—seeped through my skin.
“E-excuse me?”
His molten, silver eyes left a scorching trail of heat where they raked across my body, causing a strange warmth to spike in my blood. After a leisurely study of my face, he jerked his chin at the cupboard I’d been riffling through. “Need something?”