Wolf Rising

by Paige Tyler

  She expected an argument, but Jayden merely nodded. “I understand. But if you start feeling like you’re about to lose it, you have to tell me. I’ll get you out of there before you hurt anyone, then we’ll figure out another way to get Ruben out. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she agreed. “But I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that.”

  As she followed Jayden across the street, she shot off a quick text to Marguerite, asking the girl where she and Ruben were.

  Second floor. End of the main hallway. Haven’t seen Ruben in a while. Worried.

  “Marguerite’s waiting for us at the end of the hall on the second floor,” Selena told Jayden as they began skirting through the cars in the parking lot, heading for the crowd of people hanging around the stairs leading up to the front door of the building. “She can’t find Ruben.”

  “Can you track him by his scent?” Jayden asked.

  Selena wasn’t sure why the question was so jarring. Considering how good her sense of smell was now, it only made sense she’d be able to pick up on a particular person’s scent. But the idea that she could track any scent through a crowd like this still seemed crazy.

  “I don’t think so,” she admitted. “I don’t know what he smells like.”

  Jayden looked like he would have answered, but they had already reached the crowd of people standing on the stairs. Instead, he took her hand and started up the steps. Some people complained, but the moment they caught a glimpse of his size, most backed off.

  As they neared the landing, two large guys stepped out and put their hands on Jayden’s chest. Both men had a hand behind their backs, and Selena had no doubt they were carrying some kind of weapons. “Private party, and you’re not invited.”

  Selena tensed, wondering what Jayden would say to that. But instead of trying to talk his way in, Jayden grabbed the guy on the right by his throat, picking him up and walking up the last few steps, then slamming the man’s body into the double doors. Some people screamed, but most just scattered as the glass in the doors broke and fell out of the frames. The second bouncer seemed stunned, but he recovered quickly. Yanking a gun out from behind his back, he headed after Jayden.

  Selena froze at the sight of the pistol. But when she saw the man aim it at Jayden, a snarl ripped from her throat.

  One moment she was on the fifth step from the top, and the next she was in the entryway, one hand wrapped around the gunman’s throat while the other crushed the fingers holding the gun. She heard a shout followed by small cracking sounds, only vaguely realizing it was the man in her grasp screaming in pain as she broke the bones in his hand.

  She panicked as her fangs came out. Crap. She was going to lose it right in the main entryway of the building with people all around. But then Jayden was by her side, his hand on her shoulder, his scent filling her nose.

  “Selena,” Jayden said softly. “He dropped the gun. You can let go now.”

  A part of her wanted to growl at Jayden for getting in her way, but then she felt one big hand massaging her shoulder, the other pressing gently against her lower back. It was the distraction she needed to regain control, and she released her grip on the second bouncer. The guy dropped to his knees, cradling his broken hand for a moment before scrambling to his feet and running out the door and down the stairs. She noticed he’d left the handgun where it had fallen.

  “Breathe, Selena,” Jayden entreated, his voice still low and calm. “Just breathe.”

  She did just that for a few seconds, letting her heart rate slow.

  “You okay?” Jayden murmured, his mouth close to her ear, his warm breath stirring her hair.

  She nodded, surreptitiously sliding her tongue across her teeth, checking for fangs. They were there, but just barely. Maybe she hadn’t lost it enough for anyone to see anything. She glanced down at her fingertips, relieved to see her claws hadn’t come out.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Sorry. I thought that guy was going to shoot you.”

  Jayden nodded, then led her toward the middle of the loud, music-filled building and the stairwell they found there. On the way up, they passed by dozens of people, an alarming number of them carrying those familiar colorful energy drink cans, glazed looks in their eyes.

  “I’m the one who should apologize. Not you,” Jayden said, glancing at her over his shoulder. “I thought I’d be able to finish off the first guy, then get to the other one before he could get his weapon pointed in my direction.”

  “I almost killed him,” Selena said when they reached the top of the first set of stairs and headed down the long hallway in the direction she hoped they’d find Marguerite. She’d been worried about hurting someone, and she’d almost done worse than that.

  “No, you didn’t,” Jayden said, stopping to look at her. “You broke his hand and kept him from shooting me. Those bullets wouldn’t have hurt me much, unless he got a lucky shot off to my head or heart, but you didn’t know that. You could have ripped out his throat easily, but you never even squeezed. You only hurt him as much as you had to, and you kept yourself in control. The wolf inside you can make you violent, but it can’t change who you are. You shouldn’t be upset at yourself. You should be proud.”

  Some of the tension in Selena eased as she realized maybe she wasn’t the monster she’d feared. She was still considering that when she heard a familiar voice calling her name. She looked up and saw Marguerite squeezing through the crowded hallway, tears in her dark eyes.

  “Thank God you’re here, Ms. Rosa. I’ve been looking for Ruben everywhere and was starting to think maybe he’d left, but a friend told me they saw him heading up to the roof with a bunch of Locos and Riders. My friend said Ruben looked really out of it. Like he was high.”

  “Was he drinking that energy drink in the colorful can?” Jayden asked.

  Marguerite looked up at him in suspicion, but then her eyes widened in surprise. “You’re that cop who saved Ms. Rosa.”

  They really didn’t have time for this.

  “Yes,” Selena said. “He’s here to help. But before he can do that, we need to know if Ruben was drinking the stuff in the cans.”

  Marguerite nodded. “Yeah, I saw him drinking a couple of them. He’s probably had a lot more since then. I can’t imagine how many. There are coolers full of them all over the building.”

  Jayden turned and headed for the stairs, Selena right behind him. She thought about yelling back to Marguerite to call the police and let them know there was a kid about to overdose. Probably more than one. But before she could even consider getting the words out, she heard shouting coming from somewhere overhead.

  Crap. The roof.

  By the time they reached the last flight of stairs heading to the roof, they had to fight through a stream of humanity coming down, most of them looking freaked out and a few commenting about the whacked-out guy on the roof trying to kill himself. Selena didn’t know what they were talking about, but her insides were screaming it had to involve Ruben.

  She and Jayden came out onto the roof to find more than a dozen guys standing around, laughing and pointing as Ruben walked precariously along the parapet of the roof. The men shouted at him to jump, accusing him of being a coward for being too scared to do it. Even from halfway across the roof, Selena could see Ruben was completely out of it as he moved along a concrete coping that couldn’t be much more than six inches wide. Her heart nearly jumped out of her chest as she saw him stumble over his own feet, almost going over.

  Between seeing Ruben on the edge of the roof and the jackasses shouting at him to jump, Selena was already on the verge, her claws threatening to extend at any second. She fought for control, but then she saw a group of men converging on Jayden as he tried to reach Ruben, telling him to stay out of it. That’s when she stopped worrying about controlling herself and decided those assholes deserved anything she did to them.

  When one of the men p
ulled a knife, Selena growled and tore across the roof after him. There was a thud as she slammed into the man’s chest. She felt a dull pop in her shoulder, but it didn’t hurt, so she didn’t care. She snarled at the man as he tumbled away, his knife skipping across the rooftop. Dismissing him, she then turned toward the next man. That one must have seen something he didn’t like, because his eyes widened to the size of golf balls as she leaped on him and drove him to the edge of the roof. She slashed his face once with her claws, wanting to do it again but knowing she didn’t have the time. Jayden was fighting at least ten drunk gangbangers by himself, and Ruben was barely staying atop the parapet.

  Selena jumped up just in time for the first man she’d knocked down to come running at her, the knife once more in his hand. She felt the tip of the blade slice through her right forearm, instinctively knowing the stinging wound was deep. But she ignored the pain, reaching out with a claw-tipped hand so fast, it was nothing but a blur, and grabbed a wrist that snapped easily under her grip. Then she was slinging the man aside. She saw Marguerite’s wide-eyed expression as the man crashed into the doorframe the girl had just run through. Marguerite looked terrified, but Selena didn’t have time to worry about that, either.

  “Get Ruben!” Jayden called out to her.

  He wasn’t fighting as many men now, but the ones still standing looked furious. Something in Selena urged her to go after them first, to protect her mate at all costs. But she fought those instincts, turning toward the edge of the roof where she’d last seen Ruben.

  He’d stopped dancing around on the parapet now, standing in one place, swaying back and forth like there was a breeze moving him. His eyes were so glazed over, Selena doubted he even noticed her approach. His skin was ghostly pale, and his heart was thumping like a tiny bird. Selena knew he was about to die.

  His knees collapsed, and Selena threw herself forward to grab him as he tumbled over the side. She was stronger than she’d ever been in her life, but Ruben was a big kid. On top of that, he was unconscious and falling fast. She got an arm around his chest, growling in frustration and anger as his weight pulled her over with him.

  She grabbed the coping of the roof with her free hand, getting her elbow locked over the edge as his weight snatched at her, trying to rip her off, too. She looked down at the pavement three stories below, wondering if she could live through the fall, knowing Ruben couldn’t.

  She fought for a better grip, sure they were both going to fall, when a big arm looped around her, dragging her and Ruben back to the safety of the rooftop. She knew without looking it was Jayden. Even if his scent hadn’t filled her nose, no one else would have been strong enough to lift two people up like this.

  They all thumped to the graveled roof hard. Then Jayden was doing CPR on Ruben, yelling for Marguerite to call 911, to tell them they had a fentanyl overdose.

  Marguerite did as he ordered, her terrified eyes locked on Selena the whole time. Selena knew her fangs were out, but there was nothing she could do about it. She only hoped the paramedics would get here in time for Ruben, to somehow make everything that was about to happen worth it.

  * * *

  Ruben looked confused as hell when he finally came around, his glazed eyes darting around the hospital triage room like a man desperate to understand what was happening to him. When he saw Brooks standing beside the bed, he looked relieved.

  “You’re that cop who saved Ms. Rosa the other day in school, right?” the kid croaked out, his voice dry and rough. Then he frowned, as if remembering something else. “You were on the roof, too. Fighting with the Locos and Riders.”

  Brooks nodded. Luckily, Ruben had come out of the overdose with his memory intact. That wasn’t always the case. He was about to ask the kid what else he remembered about tonight, but before he could, Ruben lifted his hand to his chest and groaned in pain.

  “Shit. What the hell happened? I feel like an elephant sat on me.”

  “I gave you CPR until the paramedics showed up and got your heart beating again,” Brooks told him. “You have a few cracked ribs that are going to hurt like hell for a while, especially since the doctors can’t give you any pain medication.”

  That seemed to catch the kid by surprise, and he stared at Brooks in confusion for a second until a lightbulb flickered on. Ruben’s face crumpled, and he closed his eyes. “I overdosed, didn’t I? Up there on the roof.”

  Brooks sat on the side of the bed. He would have preferred a chair, but they didn’t have any in the triage cubicles in the emergency room. They were trying to find Ruben a room, but that was going to take a while. The paramedic had transported fifteen patients out of that party—nine ODs in addition to the six gangbangers with broken bones and concussions from the fight on the rooftop. People were lined up in the hallways of the emergency room, waiting to be seen.

  “Yeah, you overdosed,” Brooks said softly. “Your heart stopped beating on its own multiple times. There was synthetic heroin in those energy drinks you were downing. If Selena and I hadn’t been there…”

  Ruben looked up sharply, another frown crossing his face. “I kinda thought there were drugs in those cans, but I drank them anyway. Everything was like a dream—a bad dream. I remember you fighting the guys I’d been hanging with and Ms. Rosa grabbing me as I fell off the roof.”

  There was silence for a time, and Brooks let it linger so Ruben could process the memories and deal with what happened. “Any chance you heard who put those cans on the street? How they got into that party?”

  Ruben shook his head. “I heard a bunch of guys from the gangs talking about the stuff, saying they were making a lot of money off of it. But I didn’t hear anything specific.”

  Brooks cursed silently. If they didn’t get this drink off the street, it was going to kill a lot of kids just like Ruben. But there was nothing he could do about it right now. They’d have to keep digging for a clue that would lead them to the person making this crap.

  “Did I really fall off the roof?” the kid asked. “Did Ms. Rosa catch me? Was that real?”

  Brooks nodded.

  “It’s all so blurry, but I swear Ms. Rosa had fangs when she lunged at me. Her eyes were glowing, and at the time, I thought she was a monster or something.” He looked at Brooks. “Pretty crazy, huh? The drugs I guess.”

  “You had a lot of drugs in your system,” Brooks agreed, glad there was a reasonable excuse for what the kid had seen. “Your memories are going to be a mess for a while. But that’s okay. The important thing is that Selena was there to save you. That’s the only part you need to remember clearly.”

  Ruben nodded, his eyes closing again and his big body crumbling in on itself once more. Brooks thought the kid was going to start crying, but he didn’t, somehow holding it together. “Is Ms. Rosa here at the hospital?”

  “She’s in the cafeteria with Marguerite, getting something to eat.”

  Ruben opened his eyes, chagrined. “Marguerite knows I OD’d, too?”

  “Yeah. We would never have been at that party looking for you if it wasn’t for Marguerite,” Brooks said. “She knew you were in trouble and did what she had to do to get us there. I think she cares about you a lot, something you might want to keep in mind when you get out of here. It’s not a stretch to say you owe your life to both of them. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  Ruben winced as he tried to sit up. “Grandma. Damn, does she know? Did anyone call her?”

  Brooks gently nudged the kid back down. “Yeah, Selena called her. But she downplayed the worst of it and made sure your grandma knew you were okay. Selena convinced her to wait until morning to come see you. I’m not sure how she cleared all the paperwork with the doctors, but she did.”

  “Grandma. Ms. Rosa. Marguerite.” Ruben sighed. “I guess I really let everyone down, didn’t I?”

  Brooks got the feeling Ruben wasn’t the kind of kid who wanted the truth sugarcoated
. “Yeah, you did. I guess the big question though is why you did it. You saw what getting involved with the gangs did for your friend Pablo. Why go down the same road unless you want to end up in prison just like him? Why go to that party and let them give you drugs?”

  Ruben shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “I’m pretty sure you do,” Brooks pressed. The kid needed to hear this, even if he didn’t want to. “Why did you start hanging out with the Locos and Riders all of a sudden?”

  Brooks didn’t think the kid was going to answer. In fact, he thought Ruben might retract into a ball and shut down completely.

  Instead he sighed, shoulders slumping in defeat. “I just wanted to belong. To be part of something. For people to stop laughing at me all the time. Is that so bad?”

  “No, it’s not bad to want to be part of something or have that feeling of knowing where you belong. And nobody likes being laughed at,” Brooks said. “Your only mistake was thinking the gangs would give you what you needed. That’s not how gangs work. They don’t give you anything. They take from you until there’s nothing left.”

  Ruben was silent for a moment. “What do I do instead?”

  Brooks remembered a time in his past when he’d been looking for someone to tell him which way to go. Jack Walker had changed his life. Now he hoped he could change this kid’s.

  “You decide who you want to be and if you want to be something more than you are now,” Brooks said, telling Ruben the same thing Jack had told him all those years ago. “Then you find people who will help you be that person. If you’re looking for a place to start, I’d suggest Marguerite. Because something tells me she’s seen something more in you all along.”