Quinn Security

by Dee Bridgnorth

  With sunlight streaming into the little room, he found his jeans and managed to pull one leg on then the next, though it felt like a struggling effort. As he reached for his shirt, however, he startled when the door behind him opened.

  “How are you feeling?” Nikita asked from the doorway before edging into the room.

  “Like I’ve been run over by a truck,” he told her honestly.

  “I don’t think you should leave,” she warned. “The arrow we pulled out of your shoulder had a silver-plated tip. You still have its poison coursing through your veins and it’s going to take time for your body to clean your blood.” She edged deeper into the room and Rick felt suddenly aware of his bare chest, his state of partial undress, which Nikita’s dark gaze swept over. “What happened out there?”

  “I’d rather not say,” he told her. “I’ve already said too much.”

  “That Dante will strike days before anyone thought?” she questioned, and when he didn’t confirm or deny the information, she insisted, “That’s information that Troy needs and I’m sure he’ll greatly appreciate it.”

  Rick stared at her for a long moment and what came out of him next had nothing to do with the conversation at hand, and yet it had everything to do with it.

  “I’m so goddamn tired,” he said as he sat on the bed, giving up the effort to pull his shirt on. “I feel like I’ve been in a blind panic for weeks and it’s not just because Dante turned me. Maybe I’ve been in a blind panic for years. Ever since Sally-Mae passed on from this world, nothing has felt right.”

  Nikita neared him and cautiously sat beside him on the bed as she identified with the surfacing anguish that was rising up in his heart. “I feel the same. It’s only been a couple of years since Xavier died. In some ways, it feels like he was just here. In others, it feels like he’s been gone for lifetimes. I often wake up confused not to find him in bed beside me and as I remember that he’s passed away, it hits me all over again.”

  Rick felt his eyes widen, he related so strongly. “That’s exactly how I feel most mornings.”

  “I’m not sure it will ever go away,” she said then confided, “I’m not sure I want it to. Moving on, fully and completely, feels like a betrayal, and yet holding myself back from doing so has only hurt me. Then I’ll look at Sasha. She found love in the most unlikely of places. It gives me hope but also scares me.”

  “It scares me too,” he agreed. “And also annoys me.”

  She smiles at his little stab at humor. “I’ve been living in a world where soulmates exist, but now I regard the concept as just that. A belief. If I continue to believe in soulmates and I’ve lost mine, where does that leave me?”

  Feeling a connection bridge between them, Rick took hold of Nikita’s slender hand.

  “Recently, I’ve learned a lot from Sasha, and also from my son, Conor. It never occurred to me that a Quinn—an heir of the werewolf Royals—wouldn’t have a marked soulmate in store for him. But Conor didn’t. He wasn’t destined to unite with his one true mate because one didn’t exist. And yet, he didn’t let that stop him from finding and feeling true love. Who’s to say that we all can’t find that, even after our soulmates have passed away?”

  “Is that what you want?” he asked, feeling deeply vulnerable.

  “I’m finally open to it,” she confessed as she searched his eyes. Rick felt her grip on his hand tightly ever so slightly as she said, “I want to be happy. I’ve gone unhappy for far too long. Why can’t I find love again?”

  “You can,” he breathed. “I can, too, as scared as that might make me.”

  “Are you scared, though?” she questioned. “You strike me as one of the strongest men I’ve ever met.”

  He let out a soft, sad laugh and said, “I used to think I was. But I’ve been living at the mercy of others long enough to understand I’m not strong and maybe I never was.”

  “Troy will free you,” she promised. “But he has to know everything that you’ve learned,” she insisted. “Dante will attack tomorrow night? Do you know where and how? Do you know the plan?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  DEAN

  Dean woke with the bounce of the pull-out bed as Elizabeth sat beside him. Groggily, he willed the sleepy haze out of his head and looked up at her, gradually realizing she was already dressed. Her skin smelled of sun and wind. As he reached up and cupped her cheek, he asked, “Did you go out?”

  “Briefly,” she told him with a serene smile.

  She looked beautiful and relaxed, which didn’t seem entirely fitting considering the conversation last night that had crossed the line into an argument. As he stared into her eyes, he noticed that her pupils were dilated and the green color of her irises were so thin he could barely see them.

  “You okay?” he asked, figuring that her eyes may have adjusted to an extreme extent when she’d entered the darkened living room.

  “I’m more than okay,” she assured him, leaning in to give him a kiss.

  Wow, this was far from a good-morning peck. Elizabeth was crushing a passionate kiss over his mouth and he liked it.

  She took gentle hold of his face and climbed over him on the bed, straddling his hips. Her blonde hair spilled over the pillow, curtaining their kiss. As she grazed her cool hands down his bare chest, lowering the bedsheet covering him, he noted the scent of the forest on her cheeks. It was distinct.

  “Where did you go?” he asked.

  “I got some coffee at Angel’s Food,” she told him, but that didn’t seem quite right. “I want to go for a hike,” she said abruptly as she lifted up and began pulling him from the bed.

  He sat up but was still bogged with lingering sleep. “I might need a cup of coffee.”

  “Coffee is nothing compared to fresh air,” she argued. “Come on.”

  “Elizabeth,” he laughed when she tugged on his arm so hard he nearly fell off the side of the bed.

  “You know my mother is going to be up soon and as when she is, she’s going to call and start making all the usual demands. Let’s go.”

  “Alright, alright,” he obliged as he pulled his jeans on and found his tee shirt.

  Once he was dressed in his boots and had thrown on a flannel shirt to ward off whatever chill in the air the mountains might bring, they left Conor’s cabin and climbed into his pickup truck.

  As he turned the engine and threw his truck in Reverse, he glanced at her.

  Though it was sunny out, her big eyes were still fully dilated.

  It gave him pause.

  Her smile seemed odd, as well. He loved her smile and if he had anything to do with it, he’d like to keep her smiling indefinitely for the rest of their lives, but there was something about her expression that seemed fixed—plastered. Or maybe empty?

  “Let’s try the south side of Yellowstone,” she suggested as they drove off along Berry Road.

  “Ah, okay,” he agreed, though the main entrance to the National Park was located at the western end of the Highland Highway. There were a few lesser known entrances on the south side, but they didn’t directly feed into well-traveled hiking trails. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “I’m just in a good mood,” she offered. “Is that okay?”

  “Of course,” he said, but he still felt bizarre.

  As they drove further, Elizabeth rolled down her window and curt gusts of wind slammed through the truck at times, making conversation impossible.

  “Here, pull off here,” she told him, pointing to a dirt road that was poorly marked. “I’ve always wanted to try this area,” she told him, but it sounded like a strange excuse. There were no mountains on this end, and though there were streams and fields that could at times be full of wildlife, it made him wonder what had given her the idea to want to hike here. “I think we can park right over there.”

  “Okay,” he allowed but as soon as he had come to a stop and killed the engine, he said, “you’re acting odd.”

  “Am I?” she asked, looking at him with
those big, black eyes of hers.

  No, he realized. She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking through him, almost unseeingly as if her vision couldn’t quite focus.

  Before he could question it, however, she jumped out of the truck and started high stepping in a bizarre march towards what appeared to be an overgrown dirt trail.

  He hurried after her and when he caught up, she took his hand, bumped her bouncy hip against his, and smiled up at him.

  “We’re going to have to steal moments like this to ourselves if we’re going to survive having my mother in our lives.”

  That made him laugh and he was able to suspend his suspicion of her perky attitude. Maybe he shouldn’t question her. Having Elizabeth in a good mood, kissing him and hiking with him was far better than the alternative he’d been trying and failing to navigate for days. At least she wasn’t giving him a cold shoulder or demanding space and time to think.

  He hadn’t bought a diamond ring and he hadn’t had a chance to ask Gretchen for her motherly permission for Dean to ask for Elizabeth’s hand in marriage, but maybe he didn’t need either. What if today was the day? What if he got down on one knee anyway once they arrived at wherever Elizabeth was excited to hike to and proposed?

  As they hiked through the trail that soon cut through the breezy forest, coming to an incline that wove through the hilly terrain, Dean felt more and more certain that the mood and moment would soon be right.

  He couldn’t wait.

  He knew without a shadow of a doubt that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Elizabeth. She could be impulsive and headstrong. She could be his biggest challenge. But every second with her was precious.

  When they reached the top of the hill, however, where the trees thinned out and the grand, Wyoming sky seemed to kiss the landscape, the purple amethyst crystal he had been carrying around in his pocket for months grew instantly hot from within his jeans.

  It was then that he knew what was in store for him, but he didn’t for one moment suspect Elizabeth of having betrayed him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ELIZABETH

  It felt like she was trapped very, very deep down inside of herself. She could see. She could hear. But she couldn’t feel Dean’s hand in hers, and she couldn’t control what she was saying or doing. It was as though someone else was behind the wheel of her body. She knew she wasn’t in control and she only feared who was.

  Dante Alighieri.

  When she smiled, it wasn’t of her own accord. When she breathed in deeply, she knew her chest was rising and falling, but she couldn’t feel the crisp air hit her lungs.

  When she had met Dante out on the old Halsey land, her intentions had been pure and there was even a moment when she’d felt he might be receptive to her proposal. But all that had changed when she felt a warm wash of energy burst through her. She hadn’t realized it then, not really and not fully, that that had been the exact moment he’d taken control of her.

  Driving back to Conor Quinn’s cabin where Dean had been sleeping was an autopilot act, one she assumed was the result of having gotten to know her way around the Fist. Kissing Dean as he laid on the pull-out bed had seemed in character enough, but gradually during the drive and now their hike, it became all too clear to Elizabeth that Dante Alighieri was pulling the strings.

  She tried to scream, but felt a million miles away from her own voice. She tried to squeeze Dean’s hand, communicate to him that way that she was not at all herself, but she couldn’t even feel her own fingers.

  And as they reached the sunny clearing at the top of the slop they’d hiked, she discovered, to her horror, that not only had Dante taken full control of all of her faculties, he had done so with a dark goal in mind.

  “Elizabeth,” he whispered as he pulled a glowing crystal from his pocket. “Shh.”

  She watched as he looked cautiously around the terrain. He was looking for danger, an ambush on the horizon, and he didn’t have a clue that the only danger he faced was Elizabeth Halsey herself.

  “What is it?” she heard herself ask innocently.

  “Dante might be near,” he told her quietly as he eyed the glowing-white crystal and scanned the area, slowly pivoting to check every direction.

  “This is supposed to be a romantic hike,” she told him as she caressed his cheek, drawing his attention back onto her.

  She was clawing for control. She couldn’t stand that the dark energy coursing through her would soon attack the man she loved most in this world. She knew Dante would. It was a dark omen, a horrible premonition that was as real to her as the hill they were standing on.

  But though she tried fiercely with all of her might to break free of the dark lord’s control, she couldn’t stop this body that used to belong to her from rising up on tiptoes and lifting to kiss Dean’s slack mouth.

  “Really, Elizabeth, I think we should get out of here.”

  “Dean,” she playfully warned before she kissed him again. “I want you.”

  He furrowed his brow at her and then grinned. “You’re right. I’m being paranoid.”

  “Thanks for not making me say it,” she teased.

  When he kissed her next, she knew that his strong arms had wrapped around her, but she cursed the fact that she couldn’t feel him.

  She tried screaming through her mind, not to burst forth and connect with Dean—she knew she wouldn’t have a prayer of succeeding—but rather to threaten Dante from wherever he was lurking in the forefront of her paralyzed mind.

  I was trying to help you! And this is what you do to me!

  Dante’s reply came cold and fast, but only in her mind. There can be no peace so long as the Quinns go on living.

  Oh, God!

  She couldn’t believe her eyes.

  No, not now!

  Dean was lowering down onto one knee, holding her hand in both of his and grinning as though what he was about to do would be the most important moment of both of their lives.

  Please, don’t, she prayed, but she wouldn’t be able to stop him or warn him.

  “Elizabeth Halsey,” he began, as his eyes misted over with tears. He cleared his throat and continued, “I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you. My heart has told me that I’ve loved you even before that night at Libations. My whole life, I’ve carried a burning hope that I would one day meet you, and deep down there has always been a voice in the back of my head promising that one day you would arrive. Now that you have, I’ve gotten a taste for how amazing my life could be.”

  He was perfect. Every word he spoke cut straight to her heart. But this was all wrong! And she couldn’t stop it.

  “It’s clear to me now that you don’t have to become a werewolf. You don’t have to unite with me, and I should’ve never pressured you to. All I want is to be with you and I can do that on your terms… if you’ll do me the honor of becoming my wife.”

  She wanted to cry out yes! but knew she wouldn’t be able to.

  And the worst part was that Dean had no clue that she was under Dante Alighieri’s control.

  “Elizabeth,” he breathed, “will you marry me?”

  When she heard herself respond, she wanted to throw herself off of a cliff.

  “No.”

  The smile on Dean’s face drooped and his voice clamped in his tightening throat. “What?”

  Cruelly, she heard herself laugh and tell him, “I don’t want to marry you. I want you dead.”

  Suddenly and without warning, she yanked the handgun that was tucked down the back of her jeans and covered by her sweater—oh God, she hadn’t even realized she’d put a weapon there! How did that get there?—aimed it at his heart, and pulled the trigger.

  Dean was fast and as she squeezed the trigger he slammed her gun hand away. The bullet clipped his shoulder and as he tried to recover, Elizabeth—puppeteered by Dante and fighting every second of it—cracked the butt of the gun over his head, knocking him clean out.

  She gasped and the sound gave her hope t
hat she might have a shot at stealing control back if she really, really tried.

  No sooner than the startled, strangled cry escaped her throat, however, the breakthrough was gone, and so was Elizabeth.

  As Dante took full control of her body, her world went as dark as Dean’s.

  Chapter Nineteen

  DEAN

  His head was killing him as he came to. A splitting migraine spread across his skull and through his brain. He was blind, or so he thought. He forced himself to blink and realized that his vision would be working just fine if there was a shred of light in…

  Where was he?

  The ground beneath him was cold. It smelled of damp earth and wet stones.

  A cave?

  He twisted his shoulders, realizing his arms felt numb, and discovered that his hands were cuffed and shackled behind his back, so he gave up, resting and sitting back against the cave’s stone wall.

  What the hell had happened?

  He groaned and cringed as it all came back to him. The hike. Elizabeth’s dilated eyes. The hot amethyst crystal. His impulsive proposal.

  She had slaughtered his dream with a single word—no.

  “It wasn’t Elizabeth,” he told himself with such force that he actually said it out loud.

  Then, from the darkness, he heard her respond. “You’re right.”

  “Elizabeth?”

  He heard a match strike, sulfur sizzling, and saw the woman he loved standing over him, her beautiful face illuminated by the amber glow between her fingers.

  As she brought the lit match to a kerosene lamp and the room brightened, she spoke, but Dean knew it was Dante who was doing the talking.

  “Why would I marry you when I know another werewolf will soon own all of Devil’s Fist?”

  “Release her!” he demanded. “And fight me like a man!”