Wilder (Birds of a Feather Book 1)

by Lena North

  Then I started rubbing myself against him and felt how he put his good hand in the other pocket of my jeans. Then he used his hands to grind my crotch against his own

  “Mac?” I said breathlessly.

  “Baby,” he grunted, “You’re killing me with the sexy.”

  My eyes went wide. You’re killing me with the sexy? What in the hell kind of line was that, and had it actually ever worked for him? I giggled quite loudly, and my laughter was in no way fake.

  “Come, bed,” he murmured hoarsely, and with our arms around each other we stumbled into our room and closed the door.

  Mac immediately sank down on his knees, and I scrambled to catch him.

  “Bed,” he said.

  “Clothes off first, Mac,” I whispered. “Come now, I’ll help you. Jacket and tee off, then you can lie down, and I’ll do the rest.

  “Okay,” he agreed and using what seemed to be his final strength we got him into bed.

  He fell into a deep sleep immediately. I knew I had to keep watch and there were also things to prepare, so I spent most of what was left of the night washing the blood from our clothes and the blankets, packing our clothes, and planning how to get us away from Marshes without raising suspicions.

  Sometime during the night, Mac started getting a fever, and it seemed to go up and down all through the night. I almost called Hawker, but Mac wheezed out an order for me to wait a while longer. I suspected that my father would come charging in if I called, bringing some of the others and causing more trouble for us, so I reluctantly decided to wait. Finally, the darkness shifted into a dull gray, and as soon as I could see the contours of the houses clearly outside the windows, I shook Mac’s shoulder gently to wake him up. He looked at me with eyes that were unfocused and full of pain.

  “I need a hospital, baby. We need to leave,” he murmured.

  “Will you manage?” I asked.

  I tried frantically to come up with some kind of lie I could tell Paolo, and I was furious with myself for holding back and not calling my father.

  “Yeah,” he grunted. “I’ll manage to get up, but I won’t be able to use my voice. Not enough strength for it.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to sound calm and in control. “If you can walk out of here then I’ll do the rest.”

  With some effort, we managed to get him into his clothes but when we were done, he was breathing heavily, and there was a frightening rattle in his chest.

  I had to get us out of Marshes, and him to a hospital in Prosper.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Gigantic Lobsters

  “Paolo!” I shouted as I ran from our room and into the kitchen, waving my phone. Not giving him any time to reply, I continued, “I started up my phone this morning. There has been an accident at Double H, we have to leave. Uncle Andy is hurt, and we have to leave,” I yelled, hoping that I sounded desperate.

  “How awful, Wilder,” Paolo murmured as he got to his feet. “Is he all right?”

  “I don’t know, Paolo,” I moaned. “He’s in a hospital in Prosper. We have to go. Mac is packing up our things, and we’ll leave immediately.”

  “Don’t you want to –”

  I gave him no chance to offer anything. With Mac in such a horrible shape, I needed to get us out of there quickly, so I kept moving through the kitchen.

  “I feel awful, having such a fantastic time here with you and Mac and all this time Uncle Andy could have died!” I wailed.

  “You shouldn’t –”

  “I have to get Mac’s bike, I’ll be back immediately,” I shouted over my shoulder as I ran through the front door.

  I got the bike to Paolo’s house and rushed back in again. Mac was already waiting in the kitchen, and I stopped, surprised to see him there. He was a bit pale, although we didn’t have much color normally, so I didn’t think that Paolo noticed anything out of the ordinary. His jaws seemed clenched together, but his eyes were calm, and he moved his left arm a little turning his hand, making a gesture for me to come to him.

  “We are so grateful, Paolo, so very grateful for your hospitality. I hope you will invite us again,” I said as I walked over to Mac’s side.

  “Of course,” he murmured and then his eyes slid over Mac, assessing him. “You are both welcome, any time you wish to come.”

  “Thank you, we appreciate it,” Mac said and stretched his right hand out to shake Paolo’s.

  I felt how he inhaled slowly, held his breath, and then slowly raised his injured arm to put it around my shoulders.

  “Let’s go, Mac,” I said. “I am so worried about Uncle Andy.”

  Paolo bent down to kiss my cheek, still watching Mac carefully. Then we walked through the front door. Outside, Dante and Snow were inspecting Mac’s bike.

  “Sweet ride,” Dante grinned.

  “Very cool,” Snow chimed in, turning to me, “Do you get to drive it?”

  “Sure,” I said casually as if I’d been out on his bike tons of times.

  She giggled, and it sounded very unlike the girl we’d met before. Dante turned away, and I saw how he pressed his lips together, but before anyone said anything, Snow continued.

  “Are you man enough to go behind your girl, Mac?”

  He snorted but didn’t say anything. I felt him shiver slightly and knew that we had to leave within minutes or else he would drop.

  “I thought you wouldn’t go behind me, but maybe I was wrong?” I taunted him, and the tightness in his face eased off a little when I continued, “Will you let me drive now, Mac?”

  “Babe,” he muttered.

  “Fantastic! I’ve always admired a man strong enough to let a good woman lead the way,” Snow chirped, again in that bubbly, giggly voice that didn’t seem like hers.

  “This I have to see,” Dante chuckled.

  I didn’t know why, but they were helping us, so I smiled at them as I snapped the lock on one of the saddle bags just as Mac closed the other.

  “Let’s go,” I said, swung my leg over the bike and started it up.

  Mac got up behind me without a word, and I let the engine roar a few times, making a show out of wiggling my eyebrows at Snow and Dante. Then I smiled at Paolo and rolled off, rounded the square in front of the house and made my way out of Marshes, waving happily at the guard at the entrance as we passed.

  I was about to turn onto the highway when Mac leaned into me.

  “Not the highway. Bird says no. Left and then small roads by the sea,” he whispered hoarsely.

  I nodded and turned away from the highway, following the small road along the beach. Mac was trembling behind me, and I felt how his injured arm fell off my leg where he’d been resting it, so I slowed down.

  “Can you manage?” I shouted over my shoulder and felt him nod, but he didn’t reply.

  It would take us longer to drive this route, but if the bird had told him there was danger on the highway, then this was the road we would take. When the paved road turned into gravel, I started to re-think my decision, and I slowed down until we stopped. Then I turned off the engine.

  I could hear Mac’s ragged breaths clearly in the silence and twisted to look at him. He was completely gray in his face and seemed to have a hard time keeping his eyes open.

  “Falk,” I whispered, and his lips twitched little as if he was trying to smile.

  “I’ll manage, Wilder. Keep going on this road for a little while longer, then you can get back on the paved road and hit the highway south of Prosper.”

  I held his gaze and turned to get us moving again when a bird shrieked. I turned, expecting to see Mac’s Falcon, but it was another bird circling us. One that I recognized well. It was the bird that had been in the forest, showing me to my cattle when they’d been poisoned.

  Suddenly the bird turned and flew out over the water, and then it dove, straight into the ocean. It came up again after what felt like forever, holding something in its feet. Then the falcon was th
ere, and both birds made a huge turn in the air above us, came down low and the strange bird dropped what it had picked out of the ocean next to the bike.

  I sat there staring at the old and mostly rusty remainders of an old sword. Most of the blade was gone, and part of the handle. The rounded part supposed to protect the hand was intact, though, and through the rim there was a line of bright blue stones.

  What was left of one of the three swords of the fire dragons lay there, resting on the gravel right at my feet.

  I looked around, but the birds were high in the air, and I turned to Mac.

  “What the hell?” I whispered.

  “I’ll be damned,” he replied, swallowed and went on, “so she did it after all.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Snow,” he said but it came out slurry, and I could see that he was running out of strength, and fast, so I bent down and grabbed the sword.

  As I twisted backward to tuck it into one of the saddlebags he murmured, “Osprey, Wilder. That was Oz’ bird. Her father’s bird. She said she didn’t want –”

  Then he slumped forward, and I had to grab hold of his jacket to keep him on the bike.

  “Shit,” I hissed, started up the bike.

  He wasn’t unconscious, but I could tell that he had to fight to stay awake so, holding his arm around me with one hand and driving with the other, I continued along the small road by the beach. It felt like it went on forever and as I drove, I remembered Sannah, and how she had ridden along this beach with her man Kee behind her, injured and weak. Jesus, how strong she must have been, I thought. I had our birds, a fast bike, and a hospital at the end of where I was going. She’d been all alone on a horse, chased by her enemies and not knowing where to go, and still, she’d kept pushing forward. She hadn’t given up, never even considered defeat, so I decided that I wouldn’t either. I would get Mac to the hospital, and he would make it.

  When the gravel turned to paved road, I increased the speed as much as I dared and kept going without stopping until I swung up in front of the emergency entrance. I’d driven around Prosper and aimed for the hospital at the northern part of the city. This was the only one I knew the way to and it was also where they would have taken Uncle Andy so I hoped to find some of my family there.

  When I got off the bike, Mac fell forward but he was still conscious, so I pulled at him, begging him to make one last effort, shouting for help at the same time.

  Then staff surrounded us, a gurney was brought out, and Mac was hoisted up on it. They fired questions at him, and at me, as we moved into the hospital.

  I kept it simple and just told them he had puncture wounds on his side but that we didn’t know why he was so sick.

  “Is he allergic to anything?” a man in a white coat asked calmly, and I blinked.

  Before I could tell them that I didn’t know, Mac answered, but it was just a low raspy whisper, and they were busy moving us forward, so they didn’t hear.

  “Shellfish,” he rasped out. “Shellfish,” he repeated but then his rattling breath seemed to still. He jerked, and I grabbed his hand, and then everything around us suddenly went into overdrive.

  “No pulse!” I heard someone shout.

  The gurney was yanked forward, and everyone started running, and I lost the hold I had on his hand. Without slowing down, they pushed him through two swinging doors, and a nurse held me back, shouting at me that I couldn’t follow them. I fought her at first, screaming his name over and over, trying frantically to go with him. Then I felt two powerful arms grabbing me from behind, holding me tight to a strong warm chest, and a familiar voice murmured my name.

  Hawker.

  My knees went out underneath me then, and I started crying.

  “Dad, he’s dying,” I sobbed.

  “They’ll take care of him, come, let’s back off a bit…” he murmured soothingly.

  “No. I have to tell them. He’s allergic to shellfish, and I think he got it into his wounds somehow. It’s like Vildman, Dad, don’t you see, it’s just like him,” I whispered desperately.

  “What?” he breathed, staring at me in shock.

  “He’s dying, and they need to know,” I shouted.

  That’s when Hawker lost it. I’d seen him angry before, more than once, but I had never seen him this furious. At first, everything around us just stilled, and I held my breath. A muscle was working in his jaw as he visibly tried to hold his temper back. I made a choked sound, not knowing what to do, and a little afraid of the look on his face.

  As he leaned his head a little to the side and glanced at me from under his brow, he murmured a hoarse, “Fuck. This.”

  Then he turned and without breaking his stride, he kicked one of the swinging doors we weren’t supposed to walk through and walked straight through them. I heard shouts behind the doors and my father’s annoyed, growly voice shouting right back at them for quite some time. Then there was a long silence, and finally, I heard his heavy boots coming back toward me.

  I walked straight into his arms.

  “Falk?” I asked.

  “They know, and they’re giving him medicine. That’s all I know,” he murmured into my hair.

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  “Come,” he said and led me toward a waiting room.

  Eventually, I calmed down, and we sat in that waiting room for what felt like forever.

  Hawker’s eagle had told him when we drove up to the entrance, and he’d left the others a couple of floors up where Uncle Andy was laid up, recovering from extensive surgery. Andy had broken his collar bone, shoulder blade, upper arm and three ribs and they’d had to use steel plates on most of it to piece him back together. I sobbed once when I heard it, but Hawker just squeezed my hand, assuring me that Rider was fine and told me not to worry.

  Then I explained what had happened in Marshes, and what we’d learned and seen. His face became a hard mask then, and I thought he would explode again.

  “Dad, please. Not now,” I pleaded. “We can deal once we know about Falk?”

  “Yeah,” he growled, but he reigned in his temper and leaned back in the plastic chair that probably had been white once but now was an ugly beige.

  Loud footsteps echoed through the corridor and then the others joined us, with Mickey rushing into the room. He went straight to me, crouched and took hold of my hands. His face was set, and I think that mine looked the same because that’s how I felt. I felt my chest moving, but I could have sworn that I held my breath. That I had sucked in air when they rolled Mac away, and just never let it out again.

  “Shit,” he whispered when he saw the look on my face.

  “He had no pulse when they took him away, Mickey,” I whispered.

  I didn’t cry, and my voice was anguished and hoarse, but it was steady.

  “Shit,” Mickey said again, and I heard other voices repeating the word.

  Kit, Miller, Olly, and Byrd stood in the room, looking grim. Except for Snow and Hawker’s father, everyone having a bird was in that room, waiting for news about their friend. Their brother, I realized.

  “He’s strong. He will fight,” I said, and my insides settled.

  I knew he would fight with everything he had and Hawker had told the hospital staff what to do. He would come back to us. I had to believe that.

  “They know what to do for him. He will be fine,” Hawker said, making it sound like a decree, and the others relaxed visibly.

  “Do you want coffee?” Mickey asked.

  “Do bears shit in the woods?” I asked weakly, and he chuckled.

  The black brew he brought back was disgusting, but I drank it anyway, gulping it down, hoping that it would warm me up my, at least. Then I moved away and sat by myself staring at the floor, counting my breaths so that I wouldn’t forget to breathe. I’d never been a religious person, but I wished I had been as I sat there staring at the puke green, plastic floor. Wished that I’d had some prayers to offer that
could help Falk.

  “Bird?” I called out after a while.

  “Wilder,” she replied.

  “Do you know Snow?”

  “Good snow,” she replied, which I interpreted as affirmation.

  “Can you tell her that we made it to the hospital? Tell her, thank you?”

  “Word will go to bird by the water. Snow will know.”

  “Okay,” I murmured. “Thanks.”

  “Pretty man?” she asked.

  “Don’t know,” I replied.

  “Bird is worried. Says he disappeared and came back. Says she called to him, but he’s mumbling like when he drinks whiskey.”

  Shit. My mind was whirling with all the references to birds here and birds there, and I wished they had names, but I figured the last one was from Mac’s falcon. That could mean anything, but I hoped that it at least meant that he was still alive.

  “Tell his bird that he’s fighting. Tell her that he will be fine,” I murmured and continued to count my breaths, hoping that I wasn’t giving the falcon false hope.

  “She says thank you,” my bird murmured after a while.

  We didn’t speak more after that but remained connected. It comforted me to feel the warmth from her presence, and maybe she felt the same. Then, finally, a bunch of people were approaching the waiting room, so I let go of the bird and focused on the tall, dark-skinned and doctor-looking man in a white coat.

  “Relatives to Falk Mackenzie?” he asked the room in general, but he watched Hawker warily.

  “Yes,” I said as I walked up to the man. He looked like he wanted to question my relation to Mac so I added confidently, “Fiancée.”

  “Right,” the man murmured and looked over my shoulder at my dad who was right behind me. “And you are?” he asked.

  “Ff…father-in-law, to be,” Hawker replied and to give him credit, he only stuttered on the first syllable.

  “Right,” the man repeated. “We have given him as much medicine we dare to give. He is stable and resting for the moment.”

  I exhaled, and grabbed my father’s hand, holding on tightly.

  “I’ll allow a short visit, Miss…” the doctor started.

  “Johns,” Hawker replied, and added, “Let’s go.”