“The blood’s stopped gushing,” he replied, grabbing more gauze and spraying it with saline solution to swab at the wound once more. This time, as he did so, he was just cleaning up. Mars looked at the gash and saw his brother spoke truthfully.
If he looked long enough, he knew he’d see the wound start to knit together, but his head was already starting to feel too heavy and dizziness was starting to ride him hard. The blood sacrifice was a nifty bit of magic, one that was rarely used because its costs were high—costs Mars was already experiencing.
Kiko sat on the side of the breath, his shoulders hunched, elbows on his knees. “Fuck, man, she must be something if you’re willing to do this after only knowing her an hour.”
“You’ll understand when you find your one,” was all Mars said, but his tone had grown weaker as his blood merged with Annette’s, healing her at the expense of his own health.
“I saw the mating bands,” he murmured, turning to look down at Mars.
“I know.” Satisfaction laced those two words. “They’re fucking dark, aren’t they?”
Kiko nodded. “A strong bond. I’m pleased for you, buddy.”
Mars sucked in a shaky breath. “Thanks, Kiko. I appreciate it.” He blinked, seeing stars dancing around his vision, but he still had to ask; “What the fuck happened out there?”
“Jackson’s pissed off the traffickers. Not sure how or what the fuck he’s done, but it was definitely them. I recognized the cartel insignia.”
He frowned. “The traffickers came at us guns blazing?”
Kiko’s scowl was furious. “Yeah. The bastard sons of bitches.”
“What the fuck did he do?” he asked, more to himself than to the others.
Major clicked his tongue. “You’re in no fit state to be talking club business, Mars. You’re going to be passing out soon.”
“I still want to know what the fuck just happened. My mate was shot, and I’m having to nourish her with my fucking blood… I think I deserve to know what’s going on.”
“I’m not saying you don’t deserve to know, and you deserve answers and retribution. However, now is not the time.” He lifted his wrist and checked the time on his watch. “By my reckoning, you’ll already be starting to see spots. That means you’re close to collapsing.” He turned to Kiko. “Grab a bottle of water from the fridge.” When Kiko did as bid, Major opened the bottle and passed it to Mars. “Drink a little. Not a lot. It should stop the hangover headache from hell in the morning.”
Mars pressed the bottle to his lips, uncaring that half of it spilled down his throat, drenching the pillow at the back of his head. There was no way he could lift his skull. Weakness was already drowning him more than the water could.
“How does it feel?” Kiko asked quietly, his curiosity evident.
“It’s okay,” Mars confessed. “I just feel weak. And I can feel her pulling on my bear. On the shift magic.” That was the oddest sensation. The power he called on to change forms was where the power of the sacrifice stemmed from. He called on that power to shift, but she was pulling at that power to heal.
Sharing that energy felt peculiar, but not enough to raise his bear’s ire. Not that his bear would be angered, not when Annette was the one seeking aid.
Blood sacrifices were rare because they only worked if the bear had an affinity with the person they were trying to save. Plus, after the person was saved, there were always repercussions, and they were always unknown. Each case was unique, but some of the consequences were a bitch to handle.
Not that Mars cared. He didn’t give a shit if Annette would be able to read his mind or could use some of his senses as though they were her own… he just wanted her alive and well.
Major nodded, apparently satisfied the blood sacrifice was underway and that as their healer, he’d done all he could to facilitate the rite. “I’ll get someone to stand outside the door.”
“I’ll do it.”
Mars licked his lips. “Thanks, Kiko. I appreciate that, brother.”
“You’d do the same for me.”
“I would.”
“I hope the Goddesses treat you kindly.”
The formal remark had Mars smiling softly. “Me, too, buddy.” But he didn’t care how they treated him, so long as Annette was safe and well. A shudder wracked him; a combination of fear and longing that would have shamed him yesterday, but made perfect sense today.
“We’ll leave you to rest,” Major said, carefully climbing off the mattress and getting to his feet. When he almost stumbled, Mars knew he’d trod on one of the broken bits of wood. “Next time, don’t fucking shift. It will make everything a hell of a lot easier.”
He snorted. “I’ll do my best.”
Kiko squeezed Mars’s arm, then got to his feet too. When he and Annette were alone in the bedroom, he let out a shaky breath.
Jackson had dragged the MC into deep shit. And while he’d known that getting involved with traffickers was only going to take them into Shitsville, Jackson’s poor judgment meant his newly discovered mate had been shot and the Vice President of the fucking club was out for the count in a bid to save his one.
Jackson had gone too far. And once word spread of what happened in here today, he’d be facing the consequences of his actions.
No way would The Nomads allow the club’s first bound mate to be injured without there being a reckoning. And though no one questioned the Prez—their Clan Leader—this was different.
Nothing and no one was more revered than a mate.
And yet, Annette was here, her blood drying stickily on the sheets beneath her.
His pal, Mundo, had told him about Annette. Had given him her details. They’d figured one way to stop the traffickers was by getting a reporter involved. Dealing with the cops was never going to happen, but exposing the ring was another way of ‘uninvolving’ the MC without questioning Jackson’s leadership.
Mundo had told him to challenge Jackson, and Mars had shrugged off the notion. But now this had happened, Mars knew he’d be ramming horns with his Prez soon.
Very, very soon. Because even if the politics of it made him want to back off, there was no way in fuck his bear was letting this go. And once the bear got involved, that was it.
Jackson, did he but know it, had sealed his fate.
Chapter Six
Annette’s head was pounding.
Either that, or someone was at the door and they were refusing to stop banging it.
“I’m coming already,” she hollered, her voice croaky. But when the pounding didn’t stop and as she tried to sit up, a bolt of agony winged its way down her spinal cord. She let out a shaky cry and tumbled back down to the mattress. As her body collided with its softness, her nerves reacted as though she’d landed on concrete. “What the hell?” she groaned, wriggling a little. But as she wriggled, she realized she couldn’t move her left arm.
Trying to open her eyes was the next task. Christ, she knew how Hercules felt now. Capturing Artemis’s Golden Hind couldn’t be any more difficult than trying to peel her eyes apart.
When she finally could squint through the tiny slits she’d made, she turned to the left and the instant she saw the man laying at her side, she tensed, flushed, then relaxed.
The three happened in quick succession, so much so her heart felt like it was going to pound through her ribcage. She gulped down the nausea that came with her body’s quick reactions, and found it wasn’t too difficult because though he was technically a stranger, the man beside her, Mars, felt anything but strange.
She studied him a second, realizing that her eyes had opened a little wider, and noticing he’d slept through her hollering, she tried to sit up again. Turning to him, she saw the pasty shade of his skin, which had been golden brown yesterday, and saw his eyelids were fluttering rapidly. Sweat dotted his brow, making him look clammy. Almost ill. She frowned, then saw their arms were bandaged together which was why it had been hard to get up. The binding was tight. It was also red.
The unmistakable color of blood drowned the bandages, making her gulp again, this time with anxiety. And when she looked down at herself, her shirt was split open, and more blood, though swabbed, decorated her chest like a spilled can of paint.
Before she could start to panic, wondering if she’d been drawn into some freaky-ass MC initiation rite, the door creaked open. A man, unknown to her, peeped through and she gasped, quickly grabbing the sheets and holding them to her.
He held up his hands, the universal show of surrender, and said, “It’s okay. I’m here to help. I thought I heard you call out but it was faint.”
Christ, it had sounded like a foghorn to her. She swallowed back her nerves and asked, “What’s going on?” Her voice was whisper soft, not like her usual strident tones. She sounded as weak as she felt—like a freakin’ newborn kitten.
“My name’s Kiko.” He tilted his head in Mars’s direction. “I’m one of his brothers and a good friend too.”
While that eased her some, it didn’t take away all her fears. “Why isn’t he awake? And where’s the blood from? And what the fuck is this bandage thing all about?”
“You were injured last night. It was…” He grimaced. “Bad. Bad enough for Mars to do something a little unusual to save you.”
Her eyes widened. Unusual? For a shifter? What the fuck had he done?
Kiko seemed to sense her questions because he held up his hands again. “It’s a sacrifice we shifters can do. We gift our blood to the Goddesses, then they heal the person who has been injured. In this case, you.”
To her, it was highly unusual. But why was it for them? The unusualness of the situation had leapfrogged her ahead of her fears. Now she was just downright curious. “People get injured all the time. Don’t you do these kinds of rites to help them?”
Kiko shook his head. He walked deeper into the room and perched on the edge of an armchair that sat in the corner. It rocked a little under his weight, but it steadied out when he settled his elbows on his knees. “Shifters rarely get so badly injured. We heal quickly, and when we can’t heal naturally, we use the shift instead. That speeds it up. These kinds of sacrifices are for non-shifters or shifters who are too weak to call on their magic, and shifting could trigger death rather than healing whatever wounds they have.”
She blinked at him, reading between the lines he’d set. “I was badly injured?”
He nodded, but his lips turned down in a grimace. “Terribly so. You almost died.”
A shudder wracked her, but she focused on something else that concerned her. After all, she wasn’t dead now. She was alive. Thanks to the man at her side. “Why isn’t Mars awake?”
“He’s paying the price of a sacrifice. We don’t do them often. Not only because we don’t need them a lot, but because the price is steep.”
“And he was willing to pay it for me?”
“You know what you are to him? Right?”
She nodded. “He called me mate. I’ve read enough shifter romances to know what that means.”
He grunted. “Disregard half the crap in those books. You’ll see the true side of the shifter life when you’re integrated into the clan.”
Oh, goody. That sounded like something she had to look forward to. Rather than be so rude, she whispered, “When will he wake up?”
“I don’t know. It depends on what the Goddesses require of him.”
All this talk of Goddesses was starting to freak her the fuck out. Enough so… “I really need the bathroom.” She bit her lip in embarrassment. Having to talk about morning ablutions with a fucking stranger wasn’t how she liked to start her day.
Kiko pulled a face. “We can’t separate the bindings until Mars wakes up. I-I could get you a bottle or something?”
Though he made the suggestion, he looked as disturbed as she felt by such an idea. “No. I’ll wait.”
His relief was palpable. “Do you want something to… eat or drink, maybe?”
She shook her head. Hunger and thirst were the last things on her mind. She decided to ask more questions to keep her focus away from the bathroom. “I’m fine, thank you. What happened? How was I injured?”
“You might want to wait for Mars to explain it to you.”
Annette shook her head. “I’ve dealt with far worse blows than being told I almost died.” Shit, she’d almost died twice in Iraq. Doctors had managed to save her those two times… apparently yesterday, she’d needed freaky fucking shifter magic to do the trick.
Saying that, they were in the middle of nowhere. If something had happened to her here, getting a doctor out wouldn’t be easy.
“We had an incident yesterday. There was a shooting.”
“And I was one of the victims?”
His nod was grim. “A stray bullet pierced the window.” He pointed to a part of the wall where cardboard covered the space where glass should have been. “It was a crazy coincidence that you were injured at all.”
“I was in the right place at the wrong time it would seem,” she told him, voice bland.
Fuck.
If mates had to exist, it made complete and utter sense that Annette’s had to be a brother in an MC. And that that MC had to be one of the clubs who lead danger-filled lives. They couldn’t possibly be the ones who went around beating up rapists and abusers.
Oh no, she had to go and be mated to one who liked to deal with human trafficking on the side.
Christ, the fates were some twisted bitches.
“I’ll leave you to rest,” Kiko told her, getting to his feet. “It truly is a pleasure to have you here. I’m just sorry this has happened.” He wafted his hands at her supine form. His tone brightened as he continued, “What Mars did, it’s not something any shifter will do. You really mean something to him. Already.”
She scowled at him. He’d meant to appease her but instead, he’d raised more questions she needed answering. “Why? Why isn’t it something any shifter will automatically do?”
“There’s a price to pay.”
“You keep saying that. What kind of price?”
He shrugged. “It’s different every time and we’ll only know what Mars will have sacrificed when he wakes up.” Kiko tilted his head in Mars’s direction. “Look at him. He looks ill? Right?” When she nodded, he carried on, “That’s because they’ve been taking something from him.”
They again. Those pesky Goddesses. “Give me an example. They won’t hurt him, will they?”
“No. But the sacrifice pulls on…” He sighed and sat down again. “Look, when we shift, we draw on a special kind of magic. It’s integral to us. It’s a bond between man and beast. The sacrifice comes from that magic. Usually, it means something’s transferred over.”
She frowned at him, then tried to straighten her brows. All she’d done was snarl and glower at him, and the man was only trying to help. “Something? What like? And over to me?”
“Yeah. It can be anything. You might be able to talk to him.” He tapped his forehead. “Telepathically. Or you might have an internal compass wherever he’s concerned. It varies for everyone. But…”
When he broke off, she asked, “But?”
“Your bond is strong.” He pointed to his wrist. “Those are some of the most vibrant bands I’ve ever seen. Bands at all are rare. But I came from a pretty lucky clan. There were lots of mated pairs around me when I was growing up… I don’t remember seeing any as dark as those.”
MARS (BBW Bear Shifter MC Romance) (MC Bear Mates Book 1) Page 5