Startling Revelations

by Becca Van

  He couldn’t wait to see Krista in action as she taught the four kids. He had a feeling she was a great teacher and would be a fantastic mother. So far she hadn’t mentioned her family and that made him curious. He wondered if she didn’t have any living relatives like the other women with the exception of Kenna, who was the legal guardian of her young brother, Bentley. Ben was a great kid, and he was grateful that he didn’t have any adverse effects after being kidnapped and threatened by the MC gang who’d been hell-bent on revenge after Kenna had ended up shooting one of the members to save her brother’s life in a bank hold-up.

  Bas couldn’t wait to get to know everything there was to know about Krista. She was shy and wary, but she was also feisty. He smiled as he remembered her trying to stare him down last night when he wouldn’t let her help clean up. He’d also practically ordered her to bed, which she hadn’t argued about. He’d known then that she must have been more exhausted than she looked. He had a feeling if he ever did something to piss her off, she’d be right in his face. He couldn’t wait and hoped that a confrontation between them would end up in bed.

  He and his brothers had laid everything out on the table for her and now the ball was in her court. Bas just hoped she didn’t wait too long to make up her mind on whether she was interested in being their mate. He was hot, horny, and with each passing minute feeling more and more agitated. He knew that was because the mating heat was kicking in and hoped that she’d put him and his brothers out of their sexual misery soon.

  However, this wasn’t all about sex. He, Beck, and Byron had fallen in love with her the moment they’d seen her, and though he’d loved to tell her that, he didn’t think she’d believe him.

  Human women liked to be wined and dined, to be romanced and to know the person they were going to hop into bed with. At least that’s what some of his acquaintances in the SEALs had told him. The ones involved in serious relationships, anyway. He’d have to take their word for it. The only experience he’d had with the opposite sex had been for hookups. Of course the women he’d had sex with had known the score since he and his brothers had told them they weren’t interested in anything serious. Most of the females they’d had sex with had only wanted bragging rights. They’d wanted to be able to tell their friends that they had sex with a SEAL and hadn’t really cared about the man or men they were screwing.

  While that had been fine while they were serving, he’d begun to yearn for his mate when Campbell, Calvin, and Clint had been fortuitous enough to meet the one woman meant for them. Kiana was a wonderful woman, but it had become more difficult to keep his wants hidden from his friends as each of them found the woman of their dreams.

  He and his brothers were the last left in their group, but now they’d found the love of their lives, and he was going to do everything he could to convince her they were meant for each other.

  As he hammered in another board to the outside of the house, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He quickly finished up then gazed about looking to see what had set his internal alarm off. When he glanced at his brothers, he knew they felt it, too. Byron was clenching his jaw and looking around, too. Beck had actually moved away from the house to get a better view of town.

  “Something’s wrong,” Bas said.

  Clint frowned at him. “What?”

  “I don’t know, but something’s not right.”

  Clint’s eyes grew hazy, and Bas knew that he was communicating telepathically with Kiana. He blinked and met Bas’s gaze again. “The women are fine.”

  “Does that include Krista?” he asked. As soon as he said her name he knew she was in trouble. How, since they weren’t mated he didn’t know. His sabear charged forward, trying to get out and get to their woman, but Bas shoved his beast back.

  Without saying a word to anyone, he spun and took off running toward his home. Byron and Beck were right beside him. A minute later, he rounded the corner and roared with fear. Krista was lying on the steps and not moving. The metallic and acidic stench of blood and sickness reached him just before he saw the dark red frozen stain pooling on the step near her head.

  “Granger bring your brothers. Krista’s hurt,” Bas shouted through the pack link.

  “What’s happened?” Granger asked.

  “Krista’s unconscious and bleeding from the head,” Beck snarled.

  Bas tuned out as he skidded to Krista’s side. Vomit coated the step close to her mouth, and he could see that the back of her head was split open. It looked bad, and he quickly checked for a pulse. It was faint and too slow, which scared the absolute fuck out of him. He and his brothers had only just met her. Surely, the fates wouldn’t be so cruel as to take her away from them before they had a chance to woo her.

  “Fuck, this is bad,” Byron said from between clenched teeth.

  Bas swallowed around the constriction in his throat and nodded. He wished he could pick her up and take her inside out of the cold, but he didn’t know what other injuries she had, so he left her where she was.

  He ran his hands down her back, checking her for other wounds, but it couldn’t feel much since she was wearing a thick jacket to keep her warm.

  “She’s too fucking cold,” Beck said. “Her hands are like ice, and her lips have a blue tint to them.”

  “Granger, where the fuck are you?” Bas asked impatiently.

  “We’re here. Move out of the way,” Granger ordered.

  Bas, Byron, and Beck shoved to their feet and got out of the way. He watched Granger, their one and only doctor, start working on his woman. Thank fuck Granger was a surgeon and his brothers were paramedics. If they hadn’t been here, Bas wasn’t sure he’d have known what to do.

  When Granger started an IV, Bas’s knees buckled and he had to grab onto the banister to stop himself from falling.

  Granger turned toward him, his face and eyes grim. “We need to get her inside, and you all need to claim her.”

  “What?” Byron asked hoarsely.

  “The hit to her heat must have been hard. She has a fractured skull and could be hemorrhaging from the brain. I don’t have the right equipment or the skills to operate on her brain, and I don’t think there’s enough time to get her to the nearest trauma center. The only way to save her is to claim her. Now!”

  Bas shook his head as tears burned his eyes, but he sucked in a breath and pushed them back.

  “Hold the back board steady,” Granger told Garth, who nodded. Granger and Gideon carefully rolled Krista onto the back board, and then Garth and Gideon carried his mate up the steps to the front door. Byron leaped from the ground and up and over the railing before racing to the door to open it. Bas and Beck followed everyone inside.

  Krista was carried to the bedroom and gently placed on the bed with the backboard still beneath her. Granger and his brothers moved away from the bed.

  “I know this goes against everything we stand for, but if you don’t claim her she’s going to die. Her heart’s getting more sluggish with every beat. She’s only minutes away from breathing her last,” Granger explained.

  “How do we do this?” Beck asked with determined resolve.

  “All at the same time,” Gideon answered.

  “Just make sure you don’t move her again,” Garth said. “We don’t want her body jolted any more than it has been. I think another shock to her brain will be too much.”

  Bas gulped as he carefully climbed up onto the bed on Krista’s left. He positioned himself so that his face was close to hers and very gently brushed her hair away from her left shoulder. After undoing her coat, he tugged the neck of her clothes down to expose her skin. Byron was on her right and he did the same. Beck was kneeling near her feet and he grasped hold of her hand, gently shoved the sleeve of her coat and sweater up and turning the pale soft underside of her wrist over as he bent over her body.

  “On the count of three I want you all to bite her and make sure the bites are deep. We want as much of your DNA in her as possible so that she lives,
” Granger ordered, then he started counting down. “Three, two, one. Now!”

  Bas had already brought his sabear to the fore in preparation of claiming his mate, as had his brothers. As soon as Granger said now they all struck at the same time. His sabear moaned with exultation as his elongated fangs sank into the crook of Krista’s neck and shoulder. Bas wanted to cheer with elated excitement, too, but they weren’t out of the woods yet. It could be minutes, hours, or days before Krista began to heal. He hoped it would only be minutes before he saw those pretty blue eyes again, but no matter what, he and his brothers would remain by her side until she was conscious.

  He didn’t care about anything but Krista Oscar. She was the love of his life, his entire world, and if he had to give up his own life to save hers, he would do so without blinking.

  As soon as his teeth retracted from her shoulder, Bas bathed the wound with his tongue and groaned when the sweet taste of her blood coated his taste buds. He couldn’t wait to find out what she tasted like everywhere. Would her pussy cream taste just as sweet as her blood, or would it be spicy and musky? When he realized where his thoughts had headed, he felt like a fucking asshole. His mate was currently injured and in a possible coma, and all he could think about was his hard, aching dick.

  He raised his head and tuned in to her heartbeat as he stared at her pale face. The blue tinge around her lips was gone, but he wasn’t sure if the color had been because of the cold or her injury. Either way, he was glad that she didn’t seem as pale as she had before.

  “Let me check her over,” Granger said, causing Bas to jerk. How could he have forgotten the Quinn brothers were still in the room and had probably watched as he, Beck, and Byron had marked and claimed their mate?

  Anger churned, threatening his normally cool demeanor. No, that wasn’t true. He was only calm when he was surrounded by others of his own kind on their little remote island. Whenever he was crowded with humans, he found it really hard to control his temper and impatience. How the fuck he’d served in the SEALs and managed to keep their secret, he’d never know.

  Thankfully those days were behind him for the most part. He and his brothers still dealt with humans since they had a security company, but mostly they did all their work from their homes. Only occasionally did they have to leave their home town of Gambell to do a job.

  Now that Krista was theirs, he didn’t like the thought of someone else touching his woman, but he swallowed back his wrath and moved out of the way so Granger could do his doctoring. He watched avidly as the other man listened to Krista’s heartbeat before carefully turning her head and looking at her wound. Then he examined the responsiveness of her eyes.

  “She’s starting to heal,” Granger said as he stepped away from Krista.

  Bas sighed with relief and unfurled his aching fingers. He hadn’t noticed that his hands were clenched so hard until his digits and knuckles had started hurting. That slight ache was nothing compared to the pain Krista must have been experiencing.

  “How long do you think it will be before she wakes up?” Beck asked. He was lying on the bed with his arms wrapped around Krista’s legs, and he didn’t look as if he’d be moving anytime soon.

  “I wish I could answer that, but I can’t,” Granger replied.

  “Each person is different, Beck,” Gideon said. “Everyone responds to pain differently and heals at different rates.”

  “She should heal a lot faster than a human, though,” Garth said. “I’d say a week at most.”

  “A week?” Bas growled.

  “She hit her head hard enough to fracture her skull, Bas,” Granger said. “Some people never recover from that. Others take years to come around. I think a week is a pretty accurate prediction.”

  “So, how do we keep her alive in the meantime?” Byron asked.

  “We’ll leave her hooked up to the IV to keep her hydrated. As soon as we leave, you need to get her out of her wet clothes. I would have done it, but I know you wouldn’t have dealt with that.”

  Bas nodded his agreement.

  “How’re your aggression levels?” Gideon asked, meeting Bas’s, Beck’s, and Byron’s gazes one after the other.

  “Bearable,” Beck answered.

  “It’s getting harder to keep control though, isn’t it?” Garth asked.

  “Yes,” Bas answered honestly.

  Granger sighed as he scrubbed a hand over his face. He’d already put his equipment back into his medical bag. “Let me know if it gets too much. I can give you all sedatives to keep the edge off for a while if you agree.”

  Bas didn’t want that so he shook his head, but if Krista was out for the count for a week and he became aggressive to the point of insanity, it might just keep them from tipping over the edge until they waited for their woman to come back to the land of the living.

  He’d do anything he could to have a chance to hold and love his mate. Even let the doc and his brothers knock him out if it was only for a few minutes, however unlikely that was with their fast metabolisms.

  What worried him the most was whether or not Krista would accept them even though they’d already claimed her. He shook his head. That wasn’t the issue on the top of his list.

  He was scared shitless that Krista would never wake up at all.

  Chapter Six

  At first the agony in Krista’s head was so bad she hid deep within herself trying to escape it. Then there was an intense pain on either side of her shoulders close to her neck and her inner left wrist. It hurt so much she would have screamed if she’d been able to, but all she could see was darkness.

  She had no idea where she was or what had happened, and for a moment or two she’d thought she was dead, but a dead person didn’t feel pain. Did they? Not unless she wasn’t in heaven and had been sent to the other place deep in the heart of the Earth. Was she being punished for staying away from her parents? Had she been such a bad person? She shook her head. She’d done everything she could to please her mother and father and everyone else she’d ever come in contact with. Surely she wouldn’t have been sent to hell because she was finally taking a stand. She’d helped her mom and dad as much as she could, and all she ever got for her efforts was another kick in the guts.

  “I’m sorry for being such a disappointment. I tried so hard. Why couldn’t you love me the way I was, the way I am?” Tears welled but she didn’t think they fell because she couldn’t feel anything on her face.

  Maybe she was dying and that’s why she was suffering so much pain.

  She frowned. After the sharp stabs to her shoulders and wrist, the agony had lessened. Krista wondered if she was on the cusp of ceasing to exist. Was the pain diminishing because her soul was about to leave her body behind?

  She had no way of knowing, and to be honest, it was just too exhausting to try and work anything out.

  With a sigh of resignation, she sank further into the black bottomless pit.

  * * * *

  Seventy-two hours later

  Beck sat up straighter on the bed when Krista mumbled, “I’m sorry.” Everything she said after that was slurred, but when a few tears rolled down her cheeks, his heart broke. He wished Granger and his brothers hadn’t left after coming over again to check on Krista, because if they were still here, he’d have demanded they give her something for the pain she had to be in. Granger, Gideon, and Garth had visited every day to examine their mate, and while the men were pleased with her progress, Beck wanted to see her pretty blue eyes. As gently as he could, he brushed the hair from her forehead. “We’re here, darlin’. Don’t you dare give up. We need you, Krista.”

  “Do you want me to get Granger back over?” Byron asked.

  Bas shook his head. “She seems to be settling. It’ll take a bit of time for our DNA to work its way through her body. If she was still crying and moaning, I wouldn’t hesitate to get Granger or his brothers back here, but she’s already stopped crying.”

  Beck blotted the tears from her face with the edge of his T-s
hirt and sighed. Just as he leaned back against the pillows and the headboard, Krista started talking again.

  “Why…hit…me? I…was…kid…all those beatings. What…I…wrong?”

  “What the fuck?” Bas snarled as he scooted closer to her.

  Byron was on the bed on Krista’s other side, and Bas had been reclining across the bottom of the mattress. None of them were leaving her side until it was absolutely necessary. The only time he and his brothers would depart the room was to use the bathroom and to get food.

  Her next lot of words were so clear Beck wondered if she’d wake up soon. She was becoming more and more cognizant even if what she was saying broke his heart and made him rage at the same time.

  “I don’t want to walk to school by myself, Mommy. The scary man on the tractor will run me over and bury me in one of the graves. Please, don’t hit me, Mommy. I just want you to hold my hand and walk with me. No! Please?”

  “Motherfucking son of a bitch,” Beck snapped, glancing at his brothers before looking at Krista again. “She was abused by her fucking parents? Are you fucking shitting me?” Beck rolled to his feet, his hands curled into tight fists, and he began to pace.

  “You told me not to lie. Why are you hitting me with your belt when I told the truth?” Krista sobbed out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Beck couldn’t believe what he was hearing and hoped like fuck he never met her parents, because if he did, he was likely to rip them a new one. He took a deep breath after deep breath trying to get his rage back under control, but when he gazed at her and saw the tears were now rolling down her face, he needed to be close to her again.

  Climbing back up onto the bed, he wrapped an arm around her hips below the arm Byron had around her waist. Bas was caressing up and down her thighs over the covers, but their touch didn’t seem to have any effect. Krista continued crying and pleading to whoever was abusing her to stop. He leaned close to her ear and began whispering to her. “You’re safe, darlin’. Bas, Byron, and I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again. Open your eyes, Krista!”