by Maia Dylan
“A whole lot of weird fucking shit has gone down these past few weeks.”
“Tell him about the Jax,” Jase heard Diego’s brother, Tomas, say in the background. He had heard a little about the drug that had been created that acted like an inhibitor within shifters. From what he had heard it not only created a temporary paralysis within a person, it also inhibited their shifter ability to communicate telepathically. If Jax had been involved, then that would be a very good reason why no one had heard from Kyle or Grant either.
“We are dealing with a larger and much more organized group than what we have in the past, Hunter.” The seriousness in Diego’s tone was clear even over the phone. “Aristos and his fucking assholes not only have Jax. They also have shifters who can track among their ranks. We weren’t expecting to have to fucking deal with traitor shifter assholes on this one. Not to mention that that crazy Greek bastard is all fucked up on his own creations and has crazy abilities like the girls. They knew we were there and started torturing this redheaded woman in order to bring us out. They got us and the two Grey River wolves sent after Christakos’s daughter.”
“How did you get out?”
“Well, I tell ya, boss, that Christakos woman is one tough badass chica.” This time, there was admiration in his tone and Jase couldn’t help smiling. She got us out, went after the other woman they were holding. By the time we finished sweeping the compound, the friendlies had all gone. We picked up the trail of one of the rogue wolf shifters, he’s a mean bastard. He’s the one that had been dealing out the pain on the little red headed chick. We figured we’d follow his trail until we caught up to him. If we’re lucky he’ll be wherever Aristos is and can call back.”
“Okay,” Hunter snarled, his frustration clear in his voice and on his face. “So where are you now?”
“Well, that’s the funny thing. It looks like this prick is heading to Grey River.” The sound of a car slamming on its breaks came over the phone combined with a muttered Spanish curse. “Jesus Christ, Tomas! Are you fucking driving with your eyes open, or are you using the force because I have to tell you, you ain’t no fucking Jedi.”
Despite the seriousness of the situation and what they were hearing, Jase, Rhys, Dane and Hunter all smirked at the Star Wars reference.
Tomas’s voice came over the line, and Jase could make out the sound of a door opening.
“A car’s gone off the road here. Hermano, deja el teléfono.”
There was a click as the phone call was disconnected. Jase looked up at Hunter. “Could be a coincidence?”
Hunter was shaking his head even before Jase had finished. “Now, I have never been one to believe in coincidences.”
Jase sighed and looked over at his mate. Parris, looking much too pale for his liking, was wrapped in Rhys’s arms. “No. Me neither.”
“God, I really hate waiting,” Dane muttered from his seat across from them. “Seriously, I am more of a rip-the-Band-Aid-off-now-and see-what-damage-the-fucker-left-behind guy rather than a sit-and-wait-until-it’s-healed guy.”
A few minutes later the mariachi band started playing again but was silenced almost immediately as Hunter answered the call, this time putting it on speakerphone so they could all hear.
“Go,” Hunter growled, not wasting time on preliminaries.
“The car is definitely one of the ones we have spotted during our surveillance of the Christakos compound.”
Diego’s voice was deeper and rougher than usual, and Jase figured that either he was distressed or his wolf was near the surface.
“We’ve searched the car and there are signs that there was a woman in the trunk and she’d been hurt quite badly, either in the crash or before she was placed in the trunk. We are pretty damn sure that this is the same redheaded woman who was being held at the compound. The fucker who had been driving, the wolf shifter we were after is dead, which is just too fucking bad!”
“Why’s that?” Hunter queried with a frown.
“Because we would have liked the privilege of shredding the bastardo!”
Diego was practically snarling down the phone and Jase could hear Tomas cursing in the background. There was also the distinct sound of metal being ripped open. Was Tomas ripping the damn car apart?
“She’s our mate, Hunter. The redheaded woman we had to watch being tortured and who was kidnapped and held tied up in a fucking trunk is our mate, and she’s fucking disappeared.”
Jase looked over at Parris. She was nibbling on her bottom lip. She leaned forward so that she was closer to the phone. “Diego, this is Parris Church, and I think that the woman you are talking about is, for all intents and purposes, my little sister. Her name is Pepper Gallagher, and she’s here at the Grey River Hospital.”
“Fuck!” There was the sound of rapid fire Spanish and feet running. A split second later, there was the slam of a car door and the sound of a car taking off at high speed. “Did someone pick her up? We’re at least eight miles out from Grey River.”
Jase looked around their group. All were huddled around the phone, and all were shocked by the distance that poor woman had to have covered in order to get to Parris.
“Diego, this is Jase Wilson. No one picked her up. She turned up at our place earlier this afternoon, and she was hurt. Her injuries were consistent with a crash, but Ty and Trent couldn’t find the car because they were looking closer to home.”
“Cristo, she was in the fucking trunk when that car crashed. It rolled a couple of times. Damn, okay, we’ll come straight there.”
The phone call disconnected.
“My God, she could have been killed,” Parris whispered.
She sounded so lost and so heartbroken that Jase couldn’t stand it. He stood walked around Rhys, plucked her from the chair, and sat with her in his lap. Not knowing how to make her feel better, he simply sat quietly and held her. Rhys lifted her legs gently up onto his own lap.
Again the room fell into silence. A quick look out the window told him that the sun was sitting very low in the sky. That meant Pepper had been in surgery for more than two hours now, and Jase didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad one.
The door swooshed open, and Chris stepped into the room, which brought all six of them to their feet. He was still dressed in his scrubs, so Jase knew he had come straight from the surgery.
Never one to keep people waiting on near loved ones, Chris answered the most important question first. “Pepper is going to be fine. We had to close off a few bleeders in her abdomen, and we had to take her spleen.”
Parris gasped, and Chris sent her a reassuring smile. “It’s all right, Parris. You can live a long and healthy life without a spleen. Her injuries also included a punctured lung, which we reinflated, and I have strapped the ribs that had caused it. I’ve set her wrist and closed a couple of contusions.”
Xanthe stepped forward nervously. “Is she awake, Chris? Wait. Sorry, that’s not important, I know that.” Dane stepped up to her and placed his arms around her waist, pulling her back until she was nestled against his chest.
Chris grimaced slightly. “No, Xanthe, sorry she’s still out. And don’t feel bad for asking, I understand why you’re anxious to speak with her.” Chris went on to talk a little more about Pepper’s condition and what to expect over the coming days.
“Can I stay with her?” Parris asked quietly.
Jase heard the slight tremble in her voice. Thankfully Chris nodded then sent a quick acknowledgement to him and Rhys. They weren’t going anywhere.
There may be questions surrounding Melaina and what had happened to bring Pepper here, but Jase had some concerns himself—mainly the fact that Pepper seemed to know exactly where to find Parris, and if she knew where their mate was, then it was entirely possible that others knew.
* * * *
Parris awoke with a start. Something had woken her. Sitting up on the lounge chair she had been slumped asleep in, she looked around the room. Jase was asleep in the matching chair to
hers, and Rhys slept on a plastic chair that was wedged in front of the hospital room door. She shot a quick glance to the woman on the bed and did a double take when she saw that Pepper was awake and staring at her.
Parris stood up from the chair and moved up to the side of the bed. She gently swept a lock of curly red hair from Pepper’s forehead. “Pepper, how are you feeling?”
Pepper stared up at her with a strange look that Parris couldn’t quite name on her face. “Parris?” Her voice was quiet and raspy.
“Yeah, little sister, it’s me.”
Pepper frowned, staring at her as if she couldn’t quite understand what Parris was doing there. “Am I dead?”
Parris’s heart clenched at the words and the matter of fact tone she used to ask the question. “No, baby, why would you think that?” Parris lifted Pepper’s hand and clasped it between hers.
“They told me that you were dead. They said that they were increasing my treatments and pushing forward my training to take your place. If you are dead, and I am here with you, then that would mean that I am dead, too. It would mean that I am away from Aristos and that I was safe.”
Parris’s heart bled for her. “Pepper, have I ever lied to you?” Parris waited for Pepper to shake her head. The three of them had made a pact when they first met that they would always be honest with each other. “You are very much alive, Pep, as am I. We are both free of that man and that place, and I will do everything in my power to keep you safe.”
“Us, too, Pepper,” Rhys said gently from the other side of the bed, causing Pepper to jolt on the bed and spin in his direction. He had moved silently to stand but had stayed back from the bed, with both hands raised to his shoulder level, trying his best to look nonthreatening. “Hey now, it’s okay. My name is Rhys Wilson, and I’m not going to come any closer to you. Neither is my brother, Jase, who is sitting on the chair against the wall behind Parris. We’re here to help keep you safe.”
Parris could hear Pepper’s heavy breathing and the pulse at the base of her throat was fluttering rapidly. “Shhhh, it’s going to be okay, Pepper. Jase and Rhys are with me. They’re good guys, Pepper, and they will help me to keep you safe. Laina trusted them to look after me.”
Pepper’s eyes cleared of the mistrust that had appeared in them as soon as Rhys had spoken. A second later she inhaled sharply and turned to face Parris, her face a mask of horror. “Laina, is she here? Did she make it out?”
Parris didn’t really know what to say, but judging by the moan of anguish Pepper gave, her face must have given her away.
“Oh God.” Pepper’s eyes closed, and tears slipped free. “She told me to go. She said she would be right behind me. When she didn’t come out right away, I went back in to look for her. That’s when Rafael grabbed me.”
Rafael had always been a little too interested in Pepper.
“He shoved me into the trunk of his car and left the compound. When I came, too, we were at Drake’s old place. I knew he was planning to keep me there. Before he could knock me out, I laid a compulsion that he needed to drive here. I stayed in the trunk for fear of being discovered.”
From the corner of her eye, Parris saw Jase moving to the foot of the bed. He didn’t approach closer but simply moved into Pepper’s line of sight.
“So, you used your ability to get this man to bring you here? He didn’t know where he was going on his own?’”
Pepper, wariness in her clear in her expression, looked directly at Jase, in a move that surprised Parris. Pepper had always been shy. She hardly ever looked any of the guards in the eye, but here she was looking directly at Jase, a man she knew wielded a mighty dominant punch.
“What you really want to know is if Aristos knows that Parris is alive. I can tell you with all confidence that he has no clue.”
Jase frowned, and his eyes narrowed slightly in disbelief. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because, before his psychic shields became impenetrable, I reinforced his belief that she was dead and even created a memory where he saw her lying on a slab in a morgue. He most definitely believes that Parris is dead.”
“You have the same ability as Parris?” Rhys asked gently.
“Yes, it is one of my stronger abilities.”
Pepper looked down at the bedsheet in a shy move that Parris recognized. Parris looked over at Rhys and almost smiled at the shocked look on Rhys’s face. He mouthed “one of,” and Parris nodded. Pepper was more susceptible to the chemical cocktails Aristos and his chemists would inflict on the three of them, and that meant she had developed more than one ability.
Parris placed a hand over Pepper’s where she was twisting the sheets between her fingers. “How did you get away from Rafael?”
All the color drained from Pepper’s face. To be fair, there wasn’t a lot to begin with, but now she looked almost translucent. “When I saw that he was close to Grey River, I had him speed up, waited for a turn, and made him overcorrect. The car—”
Pepper’s voice cracked slightly, and she paused to take a couple of shaky breaths. Parris wanted to tell her to stop but knew she needed to tell them if for no other reason than to share the burden of whatever affected her so adversely.
“The car rolled a couple of times. I tried bracing myself with my right hand, but it didn’t work so well.”
That explained the broken wrist.
Pepper’s breathing had turned choppy. “When the car came to a stop, I was able to climb out of the trunk. Rafael stumbled from the front of the car, he—he was hurt but not as bad as I had hoped. He came at me. We fought.”
Pepper’s eyes filled with horror. She lifted her gaze to Parris’s, and Parris wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
“He wouldn’t stop coming. I stopped him from shifting, but he just kept coming at me. I only wanted to push him away from me, Parris. Honest, I didn’t mean for it to happen!”
Parris wiped the tears that were falling down Pepper’s cheeks, murmuring sounds of reassurance while trying desperately to get her to calm down. “Pepper, whatever you did, little sister, it was in self-defense. It wasn’t your fault.”
Pepper gripped tightly onto Parris’s shirt, desperation in every move. “But it was my fault! I threw him from me psychically. I threw him hard, Parris. Oh God, forgive me, please!”
Her tears now falling freely, Parris lay down on the bed, pulling the young woman into her arms. “Pepper, please, you need to calm down.”
“I killed him, Parris,” Pepper sobbed against her shoulder. “Sweet Jesus, I killed him, and I was glad that he was dead. What sort of person does that make me? I killed him!” Pepper’s voice increased in volume until she was screaming at the end of that statement.
The door to the hospital room flew open so quickly that the door handle embedded itself into the wall. Three figures ran into the room at such a speed that they were almost a blur. Pepper leaped from the bed in a move so quick that Parris had no hope of trying to stop her. As soon as Pepper’s feet met the floor, her arm flew out from her, and there were three distinct grunts from the men who had just entered the room as they flew back against the far wall.
Before Parris could even blink, she was lifted off the bed and found herself on the opposite side of the bed from Pepper, wrapped in Jase’s arms, with Rhys standing just in front of her. Both of them were growling at Pepper, and Parris had a feeling that the room could erupt into violence at any second.
Parris looked at the where three grown men were now being held against the back wall of the room against their will. Chris was the one on the left, and he was simply standing against the wall. He wasn’t fighting against it at all. If it weren’t for the blue flickering in his eyes, she wouldn’t have even thought he was overly concerned by the fact that Pepper held them with nothing more than her mind.
The other two men she had never seen before. Both were growling and straining to get free. They were huge men, with dark brown hair and dark brown eyes, and were of Hispanic descent. She figured they
were the Reyes brothers. She had not met them when they arrived at the hospital. She had been allowed in to see Pepper for the first couple of hours by herself.
“Don’t you fucking growl at her,” the Hispanic man on the right snarled.
Parris frowned slightly when she saw that they were staring at Jase and Rhys, and neither of them looked very happy, not because they were being held against the wall but because her mates were growling at Pepper.
“If you move in her direction,” the other one snapped, his voice was slightly garbled, which Parris knew meant that his wolf was close to the surface, “I will fucking end you both. Do you hear me? And stop fucking growling at her! She’s been through enough. And”—he inhaled deeply—“hijo de puta! She’s fucking bleeding. She must have pulled her stitches.”
Parris spun back to look at Pepper and saw her sway on her feet. “Pepper, listen to me. One of those men is Doctor Carter. He’s the one who has been taking care of you. You need to let him go so that he can take care of you. The other two are friendly—”
“Ha!” Rhys harrumphed in front of her, and she reached out and slapped him upside the head.
“Stop it! Let them go, Pepper. I can see the blood soaking through your night clothes.”
Parris prayed that Pepper would listen to her. She was about to try a different approach to get Pepper to break focus on the three men, and it involved her faking a heart attack when Pepper dropped her hand. The three men stumbled as they were released from her hold.
Pepper began to sway quite badly, and Parris pushed out from Jase’s hold with the intent to ran around the bed to catch her, but only made it two steps before Pepper was lifted off her feet and placed gently on the bed by one of the Reyes brothers.
“There you go, cariño. You just lie right there and let the doc, here look you over.”
His voice was deep and moderately accented. Not so much so that it was difficult to understand what he was saying, but enough that Parris could tell that English was not his first language.
As soon as she was settled, he stepped back to join his brother at the foot of the bed. Chris stepped up to the bed as if nothing untoward had happened and introduced himself to Pepper. Despite her lack of response, he continued to talk to her and telling her what he was doing, making sure that nothing he did came as a surprise.