Fuck.
Swallowing the bitter venom that wanted to spew from his mouth about the type of cretins who’d impregnate a girl her age, he watched silently as the girls communicated with their hands. He knew only enough sign language to communicate orders.
They were holding a tense conversation, with the pregnant girl shaking her head constantly.
He opened his mouth but Alex must have sensed what he was going to do and put his hand over his mouth. Turning, Kaisie looked at Alex with raised eyebrows but Alex just shook his head repeatedly, his eyes huge.
He got the hint. No sound. Fine. But they had to move now.
Holding up one hand got the attention of both girls and, now that he got a good look at the pregnant one, his heart dipped. Tinia’s teat, she looked like Alex. Not a perfect copy, like Amy for Grace, but enough alike that she and the boy had to be related.
What a fucking clusterfuck this was turning out to be.
With one hand, he pointed to the door, hoping Amy understood what he was saying.
She shook her head and pointed to the other door in the room. The pregnant girl started to shake her head furiously, hands curved over her belly protectively.
He smelled her fear as Amy grabbed her arm and pulled her off the bed. The girl’s short hair swung around her chin as she continued to shake her head. Still, she followed Amy to the door, just as Kaisie and Alex did.
Inside the bathroom, Amy pointed at the window.
They were on the second floor. Did she expect them to jump?
No way could Alex or the pregnant girl make it without being injured.
Then he saw why she’d picked this spot for their escape.
The tree was just close enough to reach. If it’d been trimmed even inches, they wouldn’t have been able to reach it.
It wasn’t all that big but it looked sturdy enough to hold her weight. His and Alex’s… Well, they didn’t have much of a choice.
And the pregnant girl…
Shit. How the hell was he going to get them out safely?
In the hallway, he heard the faint sound of footsteps. He drew in a deep breath and caught the scents of Nic and Duke.
Thank fuck.
Without waiting to explain, he reached around to shift Alex off his back, handing him to Amy. She reached for her brother and, as soon as she had him, he raced back out to the hall.
Duke caught sight of him as he stuck his head out of the doorway. As Kaisie motioned for him to stay silent, Nic’s wolf appeared by Duke’s side.
Duke and Nic raced down the hall toward Kaisie and they all made it inside the room just as another scent, one Kaisie didn’t recognize, got stronger.
Time to go.
Shutting the door to the bedroom behind him as silently as he could, he pointed to the bathroom, where the kids were huddled together against the far wall.
Duke nearly tripped over his feet as he took in the situation, his gaze flipping to Kaisie’s for a brief moment before he looked at Alex and Amy.
Nic ran for the window, his front paws making no sound as he looked out. When he turned back to Duke, he motioned with his head for Duke to come closer.
Kaisie joined them and again had to make a conscious effort not to swear.
Two men stood below, not directly but close enough to fuck with their escape.
Shit.
Duke caught his eye then deliberately looked at Nic. Two guards. Two lucani. Didn’t seem quite fair to the guards, but Kaisie would have no remorse over killing two Mal. He could smell the evil on them.
Kaisie nodded, making the motion for silence. Duke nodded but rolled his eyes. Yeah, Kaisie didn’t know how quiet they were going to be. The window didn’t open. It was set into the wall and they were going to have to break it to get out.
He looked around for something to break the window with, settled for the stool in the corner.
But as he picked it up and moved back to the window, Amy grabbed his arm. She opened her mouth to speak then closed it tight and held up both hands, fingers spread.
Then she turned to the window, raised her hands with her palms facing the glass. She turned to the pregnant girl for several seconds, as if seeking reassurance. Her arms tight around Alex, the other girl nodded, though fear showed plainly on her face.
Noise in the stairwell from the third floor. Kaisie whipped his head around as he caught the sound of running feet.
With his hand, he motioned for Amy to do whatever she was planning. They’d run out of time.
With a short nod, her mouth firmed and her eyes closed.
Then she drew so much power, Kaisie felt his wolf rise with an almost manic rush.
Before he had time to worry about whether he was going to shift, Amy sent all that power outward.
And blew out the wall.
*
“Now that you’re here, you’re going to want to see your children, aren’t you? I’m sure you’ll agree they’re healthy. Our son may be somewhat happy to see you but I don’t think our daughter will share his enthusiasm. After all, you did abandon her.”
She knew better than to respond to his taunts, even though fury burned in her gut.
The bastard yanked her hair again, hard and she caught John’s expression out of the corner of her eye. He was beyond angry and well into pissed but he was holding it together. Plotting to get her away from Ettore.
She caught John’s eyes and shook her head, just once. The tight hold Ettore had on her hair made it painful, but she had to get John to stay away. This might be the only way she could see her children. If Kaisie and the rest of the lucani had failed…
“Yes, tell the eteri not to be stupid.” Ettore dragged her closer to the door he’d entered through.
If he got her through that door, there was no way she’d be leaving this building. At least not alive.
And dead would be preferable to what he would do to her. She couldn’t live like she had when she’d been with him.
But John wasn’t going to let her go without a fight. He leaped off the floor and flew at them.
Grace felt the knife cut into her neck, the pain instant and sharp.
Blessed Goddess, he really was going to kill her.
She had a moment of sheer terror that turned into an icy numbness.
And then the house rocked beneath Grace’s feet.
The floor shook, throwing Ettore one way and Grace the other. The blade caught her arm as they both fell, slashing so deep, it nicked the bone. The pain blazed through her like acid, but she bit back a scream as she pushed herself as far away from Ettore as she could manage.
It wasn’t far enough.
His features twisted in a snarl, he came after her. “You bitch. What did you do?”
She hadn’t done anything. But she believed she knew who had. That explosion could only mean the lucani had to blast their way out.
Ettore reached for her but he never got to her. John tackled him.
“Get Kaine and get out!” John yelled just before he hauled back and hit Ettore with a fist to the side of his head.
Yes. Kaine. Get Kaisie’s daughter out.
She ran for the wolf, finally coming out of unconsciousness. Kaine shook her head, huffing as she tried to stand. But she gave up with a yip as her left paw folded under her.
Grace gritted her teeth against the pain shooting through her arm and wrapped both of her arms around Kaine. The wolf weighed at least a hundred pounds and her arm screamed bloody murder but she carried the wolf toward the door.
Behind her, she heard the sound of flesh on flesh. John may be eteri but he was a trained soldier. Ettore usually surrounded himself with bodyguards who took care of any physical threats. He could throw a few punches but he’d never been a fighter.
She hoped John beat the shit out of him.
Through her labored breathing, she heard shouting but she had no idea what they were saying. The sounds were muted, distorted. She ran for the door they’d entered through and stopped to look
out. She reached for the doorknob and nearly screamed as Kaine’s weight shifted against her injured arm.
But she couldn’t make a sound. Two men ran by the door. Not part of her little party. Must be Ettore’s men on their way to wherever the explosion had been.
Okay, that had to mean she’d be able to get Kaine to the rendezvous point and make it back to get her children out.
She looked out the window. Seeing no one, she opened the door with her good hand and bit back a groan. The wound at her neck no longer bled or stung, but damn, her arm hurt. And the blood flow from that wound hadn’t slowed. She should be worried about that but there was no time for it.
Instead, she ran as fast as she could for the screen of trees across a half acre of open grass.
*
Out of the corner of his eye, Kaisie caught sight of a flash of color and movement on the ground to his left.
Alex dangled from his hands out of the hole Amy had blown in the wall. Duke stood on the rubble below, reaching for Alex. The girls had already been lowered and stood against the wall, arms around each other, clinging.
The pregnant one was crying. Though obviously younger, Amy hadn’t cracked yet, her expression determined as she stared up at him. Tough girl. And a powerful one.
She willed him to move faster with those dark eyes so like her mother’s.
As he dropped Alex into Duke’s waiting hands, he turned to look for that flash of movement.
His heart nearly stopped when he realized it was Grace, running from the house with a wolf in her arms.
Kaine. Had to be Kaine. Nic’s wolf stood below with Duke and Seth’s wolf guarded his back in the bedroom.
Vaffanculo, they were perfect targets. The guards… Where the hell—
There. Two guards rounded the corner of the building farthest from Kaine and Grace but nearer to them.
The men had guns but the stregone Kaine had asked to accompany them lifted his hand toward them, drawing power to him in a rush that brushed against Kaisie’s arus, his magic, like velvet on bark.
Neither gun went off but Kaisie didn’t have time to wonder what the stregone had done.
“Drop him. Now.”
The urgency in Duke’s voice registered and Kaisie let go of the boy.
Duke caught Alex and practically tossed him at the stregone.
“Get them out of here. Seth, Race!” he called to the men in the room behind him. “Let’s go.”
The pull of power was so strong this time, Kaisie actually shivered as the stregone transported the girls and Alex back to the den in Pennsylvania. He’d never get used to seeing people disappear right in front of his eyes but he didn’t have time to dwell on it now.
Marrucini’s men had reached them. And they were pissed.
And well trained.
Fists and legs flew, wolves’ jaws snapped and growls split the air.
Kaisie got clocked in the head with a lucky swing from one of the two men trying to take him down.
Guess he should be honored he rated two men. Everyone else was paired off with one.
The fight devolved into a brawl worthy of a Saturday night at a biker bar, except those guys didn’t usually fight with their teeth.
The lucani had the advantage but they weren’t putting Marrucini’s men down fast enough to be able to get away.
One of the guards fell to the ground, knocked out by Duke, who moved over to help Kaisie with his two.
“We need to get out of here now.” Duke’s quiet voice carried over the noise of the fight.
“I know.” Kaisie dodged a fist aimed at his gut and landed his own on his opponent’s jaw. “We could shift and run for it but John can’t keep up.”
“Then we need to give him a head start.”
Kaisie nodded, throwing another punch. “Do it.”
Duke let himself take a punch to the kidney then stumbled backward. Right into John, who’d burst out of the doorway from the kitchen seconds ago and landed straight in the fight.
Kaisie dodged another punch that came much too close to landing because his attention was fractured.
They had to get out of here…
John broke off from the group and started to run like hell for the trees Grace had disappeared into.
When he was almost there, Kaisie gave the order that he hoped would get them all the hell out of here.
“Commuto.”
Chapter Four
“Kaine! Shit. Grace, get in the goddamn van. We’re out as soon as they get here.”
“She’s gonna bleed out. That cut’s too deep.”
Grace heard John swear and forced herself to open her eyes. But even that much motion made her arm throb in agony, even as the rest of her felt curiously numb.
She bit back a groan and tried to speak. Had to know. “The children. Did the—”
She cried out as John did something that made her arm feel as if it was on fire.
She must have passed out because when she came to, she knew there were more people moving around her.
“Shit, this is— Kaisie, she’s coming around. Keep her still.”
She sensed motion, even through the fiery ache that used to be her arm. Panic boiled in her lungs, making them constrict until she could barely breathe.
“Grace. Stop struggling. You’re hurting yourself.” The blatant command in Kaisie’s voice pissed her off enough that the panic receded the slightest bit and she could think a little more clearly.
“The children—” She hissed as the van hit a pothole and her arm shifted. When had they started to drive? She fought against the oblivion at the edges of her consciousness. “Kaisie, did you get them?”
“Yeah, we got them.”
She forced her eyes open because there was something in Kaisie’s voice she didn’t like.
His face hovered above hers, looking as if he’d gotten hit with a two-by-four to his face.
“Alex? You got Alex? And my—”
He laid two fingers on her lips. “We got them both. Now shut up and save your strength.”
She fought against the lethargy that threatened to take her under again. “How bad’s my arm?”
His mouth tightened and his eyes flashed away for a several seconds before returning to hers. “Just stay still.”
That bad. She must have lost a lot of blood. “You’re not lying about the children, are you?”
His eyes narrowed down to slits of bright green. “You’re starting to piss me off, lady. I’m not lying. Just don’t fucking move.”
“Tell them I love them.”
Kaisie leaned even closer, until she could barely focus on him. “You can tell them yourself when we get home.”
Home. She liked the sound of that. Even though she knew that home was only temporary. That even though the lucani king had sent his men after her children, it didn’t mean he’d let them stay forever.
Not her, a former Mal pawn, or her daughter, a full-blooded Mal. They’d have to run. Find somewhere to hide. Find…
She let her eyes close then, too tired to keep them open any longer.
*
“The bleeding’s stopped but I don’t know if it’ll be enough until we get home,” John said. “She lost a lot of blood.”
The pilot had gotten them into the air the second Duke had shut the hatch and locked it. They hadn’t lost anyone but Kaine had a broken front leg that would need to be set before she could shift. Seth had a few broken ribs and Race’s face looked as if he’d taken a running leap into a stone wall.
Nothing life-threatening. Except for Grace.
“She’s gonna need a transfusion when we get back,” John continued. “I already contacted Dane and he’s calling Nica as well. But… It might be too late, Kaisie. She lost a lot of fucking blood.”
He understood what John was saying. He just refused to believe she was going to die.
He looked at Kyle, sitting on the other side of the aisle. “How long until we land?”
Kyle shook his head. �
�Another ninety minutes. At least.”
She wouldn’t make it that long.
Tinia’s teat. What the fuck should he do?
Helplessness wasn’t a state he typically found himself in. The last time he felt it was more than twenty-five years ago when Tekeias, Kaine’s mother, had shoved their baby into his arms and told him she couldn’t stay. He’d never seen her again. She’d been killed by the Mal shortly after that.
Kaisie had panicked. He hadn’t had a fucking clue what to do with a baby. And the lucani had been in the middle of a war back then. A secret battle against a group of eteri fanatics who called themselves Zuhno, an old Romany word that meant pure.
They’d made it their job to wipe out the lucani. The lucani had fought back and won. But it’d been a long battle and he’d let the den rear his daughter more than he had. He’d felt helpless in the face of her cries and the overwhelming responsibility of caring for a tiny baby utterly dependent on him.
He’d loved his daughter at first sight but at the age of nineteen, Kaisie hadn’t known how to juggle his duties as a tracker and his responsibility as a father.
Luckily for him and Kaine, the lucani hadn’t let him fail her. They’d taken care of her when he’d had to leave and they’d taught him everything he’d needed to know to take care of her himself when he was home. His parents had helped as much as they could but they’d been close to seventy when Kaine had arrived. And gone by the time she was ten.
He looked at his daughter across the aisle, still in her wolf pelt and spread out across two seats. They’d wrapped her paw and given her a shot for the pain from the med-kit and now she slept.
Grace had carried his daughter out of the house with that gash on her arm while John had kept Marrucini busy so they could all get away.
Kaisie met John’s solemn gaze. “She’ll make it. She’s too stubborn not to.”
*
Dr. Dane Dimitriou met them at the private hangar at the airport.
He glanced at Kaine before he said she could wait to be seen back at the den by their resident veterinarian, Ryan Maguire.
Kaisie watched Dane’s face tighten as he examined Grace before he started hooking her up to tubes and packets.
“We need to get her back to the den. I need to close that wound. She’s lost a lot of blood.”
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