A good chunk of the animals and men just booked it, running either inside or past the attackers who were circled around. Those who stayed began to converge on her, but that left their backs open to the Hunters.
Jaelle charged forward, swinging her claw-tipped arm this way and that. They collided with prisoners left and right, sending them flying.
That dreaded hunger started to burn in her middle, urging her to dig her teeth into someone and let them know what it meant to be devoured. But she shoved that down and focused only on slaying everyone who stood in her way. She had a feeling that, should she succumb to the ravenous twisting in her belly, she would never be able to free herself from the Wendigo form. And the last thing she wanted to do was end up as another monster when she had fought so hard to accept herself as someone who wasn’t necessarily a murderous beast.
Something slammed into one of her long legs, and pain licked up the limb like fire. Looking down, she saw that a cougar had latched itself onto her, wrapping its legs around her and burying its claws into her calf while its teeth tore into her thigh.
She bellowed and reached down, pointing her claws straight toward the top of the beast’s shoulders. They plunged into the flesh there, and the large cat released, collapsing in a heap and slowly returning to their bleeding and very much human form.
The tide of the fight clearly began to turn and it was only then that she realized that someone was missing. Lifting her antlered head, she looked around for a certain Aberrant. He had to be near… right?
Then again, maybe not. With what the doctor had told her, Jaelle knew that this place was simply his back-up plan. A distraction to buy him the time to do whatever it was he was going to do at the upstate location. And it was certainly turning out to be one hell of a distraction. Even with the Hunters winning the fight, there would be the cleanup and the arresting and organization of prisoners, the treatment of the wounded. Valuable resources would be wasted here while Creed moved onto the final leg of his plan.
She scented the air to be sure, trying to ignore the siren song of the fresh blood all around her. It was difficult, bordering on painful, but she pushed through it. And she couldn’t find a single sniff of Creed anywhere.
Dammit! He was already gone. She had had a chance to stop him before his big crescendo, and she had failed.
Rage bubbled up in her, chemically egged on by the cocktail of uppers in her body. She plunged herself into battle, snarling, punching, kicking, lashing out with her claws and goring others with her horns. The only weapon she didn’t use was her teeth, to terrified of crossing the line in the cursed form she was borrowing.
She couldn’t say how many she fought, or even what wounds she received. Wendigos cared little about such things without adrenaline flooding their systems, and she found they barely registered in her starving brain.
She was unstoppable, untiring and relentless. She found joy in those she cut down, but it was an unsatisfying and fleeting type of happiness. All that she knew was that she wanted more, more, more of the fight! She wanted to bury her teeth and fangs into the wounded until her belly was full to bursting. She wanted blood!
But eventually, she ran out of opponents. She whirled, looking for her next foe, but she was standing in a circle of bodies. Some still groaning and trying to crawl away, some utterly still in their death. Perhaps she should have felt guilty for the slaughter, but all she felt was hunger.
“Jaelle!”
That voice. So familiar. She knew that voice…
Her eyes roved the landscape, looking for the source. She found it in a single man standing within her reach. While everyone else cowered, he stood firm.
“Jaelle, it’s over. You don’t have to fight anymore.”
It was Bradley. What was he saying? It… it was over?
It took another moment for her to look around and connect what he was saying with what was happening around her. She supposed it was over, but she didn’t want to stop fighting. Her body still thrummed for battle, for more rending, more tearing.
But also… she was so very tired. The drugs seemed to be burning off and she wanted nothing more than to lay her head down and truly recover. Slowly, she let go of the hunger pushing her onward, and her body began to shrink.
It didn’t take long for her to return to her human form, and when she did, her legs could no longer support her weight. She collapsed forward, but instead of colliding with the hard, hot earth, or some corpse, she fell into strong arms.
“It’s all right,” Bradley said. “I’ve got you.”
And indeed, he did. Her eyelids fluttered but for the first time in a while, she could see clearly. She wasted no time taking in the chiseled angle of his chin, the strong nose that stood over his kissable lips, and most importantly the intense eyes that looked down at her like she was some sort of miracle.
“Took you long enough,” she managed to murmur, allowing herself a single smirk before her body gave out and she fell right back into unconsciousness.
Chapter Thirteen: Recover, Recap, Relieve
Jaelle could not remember the last time she slept so deeply and without interruption. While she wasn’t quite aware of the time in her slumber, she could feel her body restoring itself to her standard level of health.
When she was ready to awaken and her eyes finally opened, she was in a fairly decent mood. However, that all fell away when she realized that she was right back in one of the hospital beds in the infirmary.
No! Had she imagined it all?! Had the whole battle been some sort of wolfbane brought on delusion?
Jaelle bolted upright, a terrified scream ripping from her throat. A moment later, both the doctor and Bradley came rushing in.
“Are you all right?” the Hunter asked, crossing the distance between them in only a couple of steps.
But if he was here, then she couldn’t have imagined the battle…could she?
“I told you we should have had someone at her side in case she woke up,” the doctor snapped. “Jaelle, it’s all right. You won the battle, but you passed out. You’ve been recovering in the infirmary while I tend to the other wounded.”
Jaelle let out a ragged breath, her mind catching up to the moment. Of course, she hadn’t imagined it. That would be impossible! She might have felt embarrassed about her mistake if she wasn’t so damned relieved.
“How long has it been?”
“A touch over a day. You recovered quite quickly, I must say.”
“Thanks,” Jaelle muttered before she realized exactly who was in front of her. “Hey, you were supposed to run.”
“Well, I did. You never told me that I had to keep running, however. So, I just waited for the battle to end and made my way back to tend to the wounded. You know, Hippocratic Oath and all that.”
“Do Shifters have a Hippocratic Oath? I thought that was more of a human thing.”
She shrugged. “Does it matter? Either way, I knew I couldn’t flee. Besides, I might have perished in the desert. It wasn’t like I had supplies or any other necessary equipment to survive.”
“Oh. Good point.”
“Thank you. I do make them every so often.”
Jaelle smiled weakly. “Wanna give me a recap on everything I missed? And how you managed to show up and start a fight with only a handful of men.”
Bradley pulled up a chair, his large, warm hand wrapping around her smaller one. “I had more than a handful. I called some reinforcements from the local populace.”
“Are you serious? And they agreed to risk their life to save an Aberrant?”
“Well, they might not know that you’re an Aberrant. And they also came here because they only know that Creed took over the place and was planning some sort of grand rebellion to take over the resources in the area.”
“Oh. So, you lied to them.”
“I don’t know if it was lying as much as it was emitting the whole truth.”
She rolled her eyes at that, but she also couldn’t help her dry laugh dryly
from escaping. “It worked, so I guess I can’t exactly complain. What’s our next move?”
“As far as I recon, the good doctor here needs to give you a bit of a workup and make sure you’re ready to go, and then we leave while the local Hunters take care of the mess here. Dannon says he’s got a pretty good lead on Creed’s scent, so I guess that we’re back to the chase now that we’ve ruined all of his grand plans.”
“Not all of his grand plans,” the doctor started to say. Jaelle’s eyes widened at that and she realized that she didn’t want Bradley to know about Creed’s machinations. Not yet. She had this feeling in the back of her head that she knew exactly what to do to stop the Aberrant’s insanity, but he would never approve of it.
“After all, Creed always has some sort of ace in his pocket,” she said, giving the doctor a hard eye. “We’ll need some time to figure out exactly what he’s up to next.”
“I hear that.” He nodded and stood, reluctantly letting go of her hand. “I’ll go gather my men and tell them what’s going on. I’ll send Javi and Micah to fetch our cars that we left behind. You two ladies try not to gossip too much.”
“Ah, yes, mild sexism. What a great note to leave on.” She stuck out her tongue and he ruffled her curls before departing, leaving her alone with the doctor.
“You wanna tell me why you cut me off there?”
“I’m not ready for him to know.”
“I’m going to need a little more reasoning than that. As far as I can tell, that guy risked his life for you.”
“He did. And he won’t like me risking it to stop Creed. But you were stuck here with him—he’s insane. I can’t let Bradley do what he wants to do.”
“All right. Fair enough. But you will tell him eventually, right? Before it can put him in danger.”
“Is that your Hippocratic Oath talking again?”
“Maybe a little. But also, I might like you a little, and him by extension. Your chances of survival will be a lot higher if both of you know the whole story.”
“I will tell him. I promise,” Jaelle said softly, leaning back into the bed. She just needed to find the right words, some way to convince him that her putting her life on the line again would be worth it.
But for the moment, she would have her rest. She had the feeling it was going to be in awfully short supply.
*
It was decidedly surreal to look out the Jeep window as she lay across the back seat. Both Bradley and the doc had made sure she was propped up on pillows and swaddled with blankets. As much as Jaelle told them that she was fine over and over again, they insisted that she needed to rest.
They had a point, of course, she had been through hell and back and had her mind scrambled more than a couple times, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t complain, anyways.
The doctor was particularly insistent about her recovery, which amused Jaelle to no end. She didn’t know quite why her drugged up mind had connected the woman so intensely with her mother—it wasn’t like the medic was the first fox Shifter that she had ever met—but she couldn’t deny that looking at the survivor as she tended to the wounded made Jaelle feel… well, she wasn’t quite sure what the word for it was, but it was a positive thing. Closure, maybe? It was hard to say. It wasn’t like she could go back in time and save her mother, but it made a difference to have fought this time.
“You look like you’re thinking deep thoughts.”
Jaelle glanced to the front passenger’s seat, where Dannon sat. “You couldn’t possibly know that.”
“True. But you’re being quiet and your heartbeat is slowing down. That usually means a fair amount of introspection is going on. Penny for your thoughts?”
Jaelle scoffed at that. “Please, I saw you guys buy this car in cash. You’ll have to pay me more than a penny.”
“Now that’s extortion!”
“But is it, though?”
“Leave her be,” Bradley said from the driver’s seat. “She needs to nap.”
“I just woke up from a nap like, fifteen minutes ago.”
“Good. Then you should be able to catch another fifteen minutes of sleep.”
“Stop babying her,” Dannon said, tilting his dreadlocked head back and laughing. It was such a wonderful, booming sound. Jaelle hadn’t even realized how much she had missed it. She had only been gone a couple of days, but it felt like a solid month. “She singlehandedly turned the tide of the entire fight. Despite having all those Hunters to back us up, the inmates were winning, and you knew it.”
Bradley shrugged. “Doesn’t mean that she shouldn’t take it easy now.”
“Ah, yes,” Jaelle mused from the back seat. “I love it when grown men talk about me like I’m not here.”
Dannon chuckled again. “Sorry. Forgive me for defending your honor from Mr. Overprotective here. I’ll change the subject.” His cloudy eyes drifted for a moment while the corners of his lips curled mischievously. “I’m honestly surprised that you didn’t ask Maggy to come along with us. She would have been quite the asset.”
Jaelle’s interest piqued and she sat up. “Maggy? Who’s Maggy?”
“Just a Shifter,” Bradley answered without actually answering at all.
“He means a Hunter,” Dannon corrected, smile only growing. Jaelle sensed that he was just making trouble, but she was caught, hook, line and sinker. “And possibly the only sensible one in the entire bunch. She flew over the facility to get us the best info on their guard formation. If it weren’t for her, we probably would have spent a couple more hours infighting and trying to figure out some sort of plan.”
“Huh, this Maggy does sound awesome.” Jaelle leaned back, crossing her arms and smirking. “You know, it’d be nice to have another woman around.”
“I’m sure it would. I’ll look into her transfer after Creed is stopped. Until then, I don’t think it wise to mess with our formation in any way, shape or form. Impressive avian Shifter or not.”
He was being surprisingly stiff about something he should have been laughing at. Something about the teasing was bothering him, but Jaelle couldn’t put her finger on it. She would have to ask him when they had a moment alone.
That thought made her cheeks color.
It hadn’t been that long since they had shared a roll in the hay, and yet she found herself longing for his touch like it had been years. Maybe it was almost dying. Maybe it was the way he was always there for her every time she got herself into trouble. Or maybe it was just possibly… potentially…feasible that she might love him.
The thought made her breath hitch, and she looked to both Dannon and Bradley in embarrassment. Neither of them seemed to notice however, and Jaelle was left alone with her thoughts.
Was it possible to love someone so soon after David? Just a few months ago, she would have thought she wasn’t capable of such feelings. She had denied that David was anything more than a boy toy and hopped into the bed of the first man who saved her.
But once it had been revealed to her that her Aberrancy wasn’t an automatic sentence to murderous madness, she realized that maybe she was capable of more tender emotions after all.
When she had seen David again, she had finally allowed herself to admit how much he meant to her. And when she had given up on their future together, it had broken her heart in two.
Her first roll with Bradley certainly hadn’t been planned, and she remembered telling herself that it was just companionship and comfort. But as she lay in the back, gazing out of the window as the landscape whipped by, she knew without a doubt that she loved Bradley as much as she had ever loved another person.
And that was why she was going to have to leave him, too.
She certainly had some shit luck.
*
They drove for what seemed like forever. Funny how just a few days off the road had caused her to grow unused to the long legs the Hunters like to pull. It was somewhere around two a.m. when they finally pulled into a mini-rest stop with a camping area to the s
ide.
The men set up with surprising efficiency. She guessed that there had been so much waiting and fighting and recovering that they were happy to be back on the road again. Especially Micah, whose name she had a tendency to forget. The guy didn’t do a whole lot of talking, and she had the feeling he was a bit anti-social.
Meanwhile, Javi had taken a bear paw to the jaw during the battle, and the lower half of his face was still healing and Dannon seemed to be occupying himself with reading a book that he had gotten from who knows where.
Maybe after so much time only interacting with their cluster, all of them were worn out by all the extra people they’d had to deal with over the past few days.
Whatever the reason, Jaelle soon found herself watching as Bradley pitched a fancy-looking tent for them.
“So, we’re not sleeping in your car tonight?” she asked, crossing her arms as she watched his frustration with the new shelter.
“Who says this tent was for the both of us?”
He wanted to play that way, did he? Well she could outdo him in that category a hundred times over. “If it’s not, I’m happy to be corrected. Just give me your keys and I’ll curl up in the back seat that’s already so cozy.”
“No, stay. I’m almost done.”
“So, then it is for both of us.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He finished putting certain posts into the holes at the corners of the multi-segmented tent, then stood. “After you, m’lady.”
“Ew,” she said, unzipping the flap and waltzing past him. “Never call me that again.”
“You know, I heard the cringe as I said it.”
She chuckled at that, then settled herself onto the floor inside. Just when she found a stone-less patch to settle her butt on, two rolled sleeping bags were chucked through the open flap.
Somehow both managed to knock into her and she sputtered momentarily. So much for those incredible Shifter instincts. Bradley followed soon after the improvised projectiles, holding a couple of pillows, a blanket and some water bottles.
The Aberrants Box Set (Books 1-5) Page 45