Outside, she heard Brett's growl and then the heavy thuds of two bodies hitting the back wall of the cottage.
Okay, four hostiles down, possibly four more to go.
She hated not knowing for sure, hated having to go into a situation like this without good intel.
She moved cautiously down a short hallway that led to a bathroom—clear—a guest bedroom/home office—clear—and the master bedroom at the back of the house, also clear. At least there was less smoke here.
Catrina backtracked to the cottage's galley-style kitchen, which was narrow and L-shaped with counters and cabinets on both sides of the wall.
From a previous visit tour of the premises during Hal's orientation for the shifters selected as bodyguards, she knew the kitchen connected the living room at the front of the house with a big, airy dining room that had a pair of French doors leading to the backyard. It also provided access to the basement via a door set into the kitchen wall.
That door stood ajar, and she could hear the sounds of a struggle going on below—the roaring snarl of a bear and crashing sounds interspersed with two shots. She smelled jaguar shifters mingled with bear.
It looked like Drake had managed to reach the basement. Hopefully, he'd had time to lock Dr. Joyce in the panic room before the fighting started.
During the bodyguard orientation, Hal had assured them that even a bear shifter would have a difficult time breaking into the locked panic room. He had personally supervised its construction when Dr. Joyce first arrived in Elysia last summer, and Rafe had built a matching room in a disused storeroom in Shannon's clinic to keep his mate safe in case of another abduction attempt.
Catrina put her hand on the basement doorknob and prepared to descend the steep, narrow stairs to aid Drake if she could.
Then she caught movement at the bottom of the stairs and hit the floor as a deafening staccato of shots rang out, shattering the kitchen window opposite the basement door.
She rolled to her feet, raised her weapon, and found herself confronting Captain Marin, now framed in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room.
He hesitated a fatal fraction of a second, his eyes widening in shock when he recognized her.
Catrina didn't hesitate. She fired into his chest.
His body armor absorbed the bullets, but the force of their impact sent him sprawling onto the dining room floor.
As she had with Dig, she aimed her gun at Marin's legs and shot him once in each knee to disable him.
He grunted with pain as the bullets hit him and his pants began to rapidly darken with blood.
Marin dropped his rifle and pushed himself up slowly. His back against the dining room wall, he raised his hands. "I surrender!"
She stopped in shock. Marin's surrendering?
Knowing him, she had expected him to fight to the death. She felt a sneaking sense of relief that she wouldn't be forced to kill a man she admired and respected.
She had just kicked away his rifle and relieved him of his sidearm when she heard a step behind her. A smug expression flickered across Marin's face, and Catrina knew she'd just made a horrible mistake.
Shit! I knew he wouldn't just surrender like that, not with a gun still in his hand!
With her cat-like reflexes, she managed to spin around just in time to see an enormous, airborne gray-and-white wolf flying towards her an instant before it barreled into her.
Leif! He and Svein had been inseparable to the last, it seemed.
She managed to keep his huge jaws from clamping onto her throat but couldn't get her weapon up in time to shoot him before they hit the hardwood floor.
Leif's jaws snapped shut on her raised forearm. She heard bone snap an instant before a wave of sickening pain hit her and her rifle dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers.
The wolf snarled in triumph. He released his grip on her arm to lunge at her throat, hind paws scrabbling frantically on the polished floor.
Catrina made a superhuman effort and managed to get a knee up under his belly. She used the momentum of his lunge to catapult him over her head, then completed the motion in a reverse somersault to roll up to her feet.
The movement jarred her broken, bleeding arm, and the pain was bad enough to make her feel nauseated.
Leif hit the wall next to Captain Marin and fell to the floor before gathering himself for another leap at her.
Catrina automatically reached for her sidearm, and gasped with the pain of the movement. Her right arm was completely useless—she couldn't even close her fingers. The wolf's fangs must have severed nerves.
Black speckles floated through her field of vision as a fresh wave of pain assaulted her. She swayed and took a deep breath, fighting not to pass out.
Then Leif, his huge fangs bared, leaped for her, and she knew she was fucked.
And Catrina hadn't even gotten the chance to tell Brett that yes, she wanted to be his mate.
Then the French doors exploded inward in fragments of safety glass and painted wood, and a huge golden-brown bear hurled himself into the dining room.
Brett roared and smashed Leif out of the air with a swipe of one mighty paw. Catrina heard the wolf's bones shatter on impact with the floor. Blood sprayed from long gashes in Leif's side, where Brett's long, curving claws had ripped through skin and muscle.
He had saved her!
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Captain Marin move.
Catrina had just enough time to see that he had a second sidearm in his hand before he fired.
A spray of bullets slammed into her, hammering punches that turned into red-hot arrows. A vast sense of disbelief engulfed her as her knees collapsed beneath her and she felt herself falling.
As the world went black, her ears were filled with the sounds of Brett's anguished howl.
Chapter 13 – Vindicated
The sound of the rapid shots was shockingly loud in the confines of the dining room.
Frozen with horror, Brett watched his mate fall to her knees, a dark stain spreading across the front of her T-shirt. A couple of spare pistol magazines fell out of her jacket pocket and skittered across the scratched, splintered floor as she toppled over.
He vented an ear-splitting howl of anger and loss.
And then the scent of her blood mingled with the reek of smoke, gunpowder, and adrenaline fueled a red rage that swept up from Brett's chest like a blood-tide.
It had been decades since he had been seized by a berserker fury, but now he yielded to it with something like relief. It meant he didn't have to think.
He just needed to kill…beginning with the two shifters in this room, who had harmed his mate.
Catrina. His life. His.
And he had just failed to protect her.
Distantly, he heard the sound of shots and felt a hot sting as one struck him in the leg. But in his berserker state, he didn't feel pain—or weakness.
Leif was the first to die. Still in wolf-shape, he tried vainly to rise and face Brett, but it was useless. One more blow from Brett's wicked claws, and the wolf shifter drowned in his own blood.
Marin struggled to reload his rifle as Brett lumbered toward him. The jaguar shifter had just begun to raise his weapon when Brett tore his head from his body.
"Catrina! Brett!"
Brett smelled more wolf shifters and swung around to face the newcomers as they came through the kitchen. He snarled and advanced.
"Whoa!" said Erik Redclaw, and the three wolf shifters behind him halted.
Redclaw hastily holstered his gun and raised both hands. "Brett, we're here to help you." He looked around. "Though it doesn't look like you need much help at this point."
The wolf shifter’s gaze moved past Brett. He gave a soundless whistle as he spotted the large gouts of blood splattered against the dining room wall and the motionless bodies lying in red pools.
Leif had reverted to man-shape at his moment of death and sprawled naked and face down in the middle of the dining room floor.
<
br /> "Hey, is that Hunter?" Redclaw continued. He motioned with his right hand, and one of his wolf shifters stepped forward with a first-aid kit in his hand.
Brett roared and lunged forward a couple of paces, warning them away. No wolves were getting near his mate, not when she was so badly injured!
"Hey!" Redclaw snapped, as he and his men retreated a couple of paces. "We're just trying to help."
It was a wolf who had hurt Catrina.
Kill. Kill them all.
"Jarl Erik, he's gone berserk," said the wolf holding the first-aid kit. "If we're not careful…"
Brett heard the sound of more vehicles arriving outside.
Car doors slammed, a man's voice shouted orders, and suddenly, more people—bear shifters this time—were approaching the cottage.
It was now or never. Brett had to kill all the wolves before they could harm his mate further.
He roared again and charged into the kitchen.
Then the basement door flew open, and another bear hit his side, sending Brett crashing into a row of kitchen cabinets.
Brett yowled with fury and turned to attack his new opponent, fangs bared. The newcomer had dark brown fur, nearly black, and he smelled familiar…
They grappled, each hooking the other with claws as they snarled and bit savagely at each other.
Then, as Drake momentarily immobilized him with a bite to the back of his neck, Brett felt something sting his shoulder.
Coolness spread through his blood, quenching the berserker fury that ruled him, forcing it to retreat.
As Brett's head finally cleared, he recognized the other bear as Drake.
Drake released his hold and hastily backed away.
Breathing hard, Brett stood swaying in the middle of the kitchen for a moment, surrounded by tense wolf shifters. Then he sat down on the tiled floor, all his fury drained away.
"Looks like the sedative did the trick," he heard Redclaw say. The wolf shifter raised his voice. "Hal, we're in the kitchen with Brett and Drake. All hostiles have been neutralized, but Ebbe and Catrina are badly hurt."
Brett felt the Wolf Team commander's gaze rest on him, and he hung his head, ashamed of how close he had come to killing his allies.
"Brett's been shot, too."
* * *
An interval of controlled chaos followed as Hal took command of the scene and organized the first-aid efforts as well as the removal of the Jaguar Team survivors to the town jail.
Ambulances and the fire department's paramedic van arrived, and the newcomers began triaging the wounded.
Brett took the opportunity to shift back to human. Due to his injuries, it hurt more than usual, and whatever he'd been drugged with to dissipate the berserker fury left him feeling a bit woozy and disoriented.
Dave Thorvald's daughter Elle, who served as one of the fire department paramedics, bustled up to him.
"One gunshot wound and a dose of some kind of sedative," Brett told her wearily. The bullet had embedded itself in his right thigh muscle, and it hurt like hell.
Elle made a sympathetic noise and pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves before setting to work.
As always, the treatment for gunshot wounds was almost worse than being shot.
But Brett didn't care about that. The only thing he cared about was lying on the floor in the room next door, being worked on with frantic haste.
Once Elle had finished her work by stitching him up, only Drake, still in bear form, was able to prevent Brett from rushing to his mate's side.
Rationally, Brett knew that he would only get in the way of the first aid efforts. But it felt as though his heart and soul were being shredded as Drake sat on him to keep him away from Catrina until she could be stabilized.
From what Brett could overhear, it sounded bad. She was bleeding internally as well as externally, and even her enhanced shifter healing powers couldn't keep up with the hemorrhage.
Given the all-clear by Hal, Dr. Joyce finally left his basement panic room and hurried upstairs to help with Catrina's injuries.
By this time, her blood pressure was dropping rapidly, a sign that she was bleeding out, so Dr. Joyce called on his rarely invoked healer powers to fix the worst of her injuries.
Tense minutes followed as Brett prayed to every god he had ever heard of. He couldn't lose Catrina, not now, when he had finally found his fated mate!
He never took his eyes off Dr. Joyce and saw the moment the doctor decided to abandon medical science in favor of his mystical power. The silver-haired man bowed his head in concentration and summoned the same white glow of healing energies that Shannon had used to save Brett's life last summer.
Brett watched with bated breath as Dr. Joyce laid his glowing hands on Catrina's blood-smeared belly.
As the seconds ticked by with painful slowness, nothing seemed to happen. Then, gradually, the flow of blood from the gunshot wounds in Catrina's torso slowed to a trickle before stopping entirely.
A few moments later, Brett saw the edges of the wounds shrink together, until only a patch of red scar tissue remained.
With a long exhalation, Dr. Joyce lifted his hands and opened his eyes. He looked exhausted and much older than he usually did. His powers were nowhere near as strong as Shannon's, and a healing like this took a lot out of him.
But Brett saw him smile as he examined his patient.
"I believe she'll be all right with some rest and time to finish healing," Dr. Joyce said.
Then he sat back, shoulders slumped, and breathed out a long sigh of weary relief.
Then, and only then, did Brett let himself hope.
Drake finally relented enough to allow Brett to crawl slowly and painfully out of the kitchen.
Ignoring the pain of his own wounds, Brett made his way to Catrina's side and lifted her head into his lap, stroking her tangled dark hair away from her bruised, blood-smeared face.
"Is someone going to tell me what happened here?" Hal asked, coming into the dining room.
He squeezed Brett's shoulder briefly before kneeling at Catrina's side to examine her.
"My alarm system never went off. It was only by luck that your young man Drake saw someone moving through the garden. Then all hell broke loose. We had just enough time to grab my laptop and backups," answered Dr. Joyce. "Then Drake hustled me downstairs to the panic room while Ebbe set off a smoke grenade to hide what we were doing. Ebbe stayed upstairs and tried to hold them off while Drake guarded the basement. After that—" Dr. Joyce shrugged. "All I heard were gunshots and a lot of thumping around."
"Most of that was Catrina," Drake said grimly. "I fought two jaguars in the basement. Wounded one, and the other one managed to get away."
Brett said, "I took care of the jaguars posted outside the house, while Catrina went to see if Dr. Joyce was all right. Leif and Svein led Jaguar Team right to this cottage, those bastards." He sighed heavily, looking down at his wounded mate. "Catrina got Svein, and I got Leif."
Hal looked around. "I thought I recognized the pattern of carnage. And what about him?" He indicated the headless corpse slumped against the base of the dining room wall.
"He's the one who shot Catrina," Brett said simply.
Hal nodded and looked like he was getting ready to ask another question when he was distracted by the sound of a new arrival in the cottage.
"Shannon," he heard Rafe say angrily a moment later. "What the hell are you doing here? I told you to go to your panic room and stay there!"
"And Hal called and gave me the all-clear," she replied hotly. "He told me that there are some badly hurt shifters here. Catrina—"
"—is going to be fine, Shannon. It was touch-and-go for a while, but your grandfather healed the worst of her injuries," Hal called, rising to his feet and heading to the living room. "However, Ebbe and two of the jaguar shifters need immediate attention."
"I'll see what I can do to help," Dr. Joyce said, climbing slowly to his feet.
Everyone left Brett and Catrina al
one for a while as cleanup operations commenced. Brett held his mate's unconscious body, listening to the beating of her heart, hearing the renewed promise of a life together in its steady pulse.
Then Brett saw Redclaw passing the dining room and signaled to him.
"Yeah?" the wolf shifter asked. Before Brett could say anything, Redclaw continued, "How is she doing? Will she recover?"
Brett nodded. Then he asked his question: "Erik, you had the perfect chance to grab Dr. Joyce and bring him back to WSS just now. Why didn't you take it?"
He knew that none of the wolf shifters had really wanted to stay in Elysia. They were unhappy here and resentful of the suspicion with which the bear shifters regarded them.
Erik scowled at him. "Because I gave my word of honor to Hal Sigurdsson that I would serve as his ally."
Right. Erik Redclaw was an old shifter, nearly as old as Hal, Brett, and Rafe. His word was truly his bond.
"I apologize for doubting you," Brett said with sincerity. "And thank you for coming to our aid."
Erik blinked, as if surprised by Brett's apology. Then he added, "Plus, this was Wolf Team's chance to prove its loyalty to Elysia."
It was Brett's turn to be surprised at the other man's answer.
Redclaw continued, "Maybe now, you bear shifters will be more accepting of us wolf shifters, and we can truly make a home here…especially now that those troublemakers Leif and Svein are gone."
* * *
"On the bright side," Catrina said, several hours later, as Brett brought her a third bowl of soup. "At least I had the chance to prove my loyalty to Hal and Elysia too."
"Very funny," Brett snarled as he sat down with the bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other. Clearly he intended to feed her. Catrina wasn't sure how she felt about that.
Brett had certainly gone into full overprotective mode since bringing her back home. It was nearly 10 p.m., and she was ensconced on one of the downstairs sofas, propped up with pillows and with blankets piled over her. He had been plying her relentlessly with food since she had gotten settled in.
She ate it all—healing made her ravenous—but had to wrestle the utensils away from him with every serving he brought her.
Her right arm was splinted, and she was hooked up to an IV drip. She felt weak from blood loss and really damned sore from having a bullet shred her guts, but she knew she was perfectly capable of feeding herself with her left hand.
Hunter: A Werebear + BBW Paranormal Romance (Beast Warriors Book 2) Page 15