by Laken Cane
‘Yeah,” Raze said. “What woman can resist a grizzled alcoholic with one eye and a body like a busted windshield?”
Rune eyed him as they strode across the well-lit, quiet parking lot. “Is that really how you see him?”
He didn’t answer until they reached his truck. He leaned against the door, watching her. “How do you see him?”
“Shit, Raze.” She blew out a hard breath, Jack’s image in her mind. “I see him exactly as he is. Tough, mysterious, hard as nails. Heart like putty. So fucking protective but vicious when he needs to be. A gorgeous face with an eyepatch that only adds to his appeal. A smile that can make a woman shiver and a body so covered with scars she’d want to get him naked and spend hours tracing them as he told the story of how they came to be. A voice so rough it can cut you but so soft it can lull you to sleep. A haunted stare beautiful enough to melt a woman’s heart. A walk like a dangerous animal, ready to stalk, run, or stand and fight. Just enough darkness inside him to make someone want to spend the rest of her life figuring out how to “fix” him.” She smiled. “Brimming with badassery and sex. That’s Jack. He’s irresistible, and Roma didn’t have a fucking chance.”
Raze was gaping at her. “He’s a grizzled alcoholic with one eye and a body like a busted windshield,” he said, finally, then shook his head, disgusted.
She laughed. “You’re pretty hot yourself. Want to know how I see you?”
“Hell, no,” he growled. “Not if you’re going to spend the next half hour talking about how my eyes look like diamonds and I smell like flowers. That shit is embarrassing.” Then he squinted at her and smoothed his hand over his hair. “But if you’re dead set on telling me, I guess I can’t stop you.”
She put her hands on her hips and eyed him up and down. “You—” Her cell rang, and Raze’s look of disappointment made her laugh again. “Ellie? You okay?”
“Owen isn’t doing well,” he said, his voice low. “His anxiety is high and I can’t calm him. Can you come?”
“Be there in ten minutes,” she told him, and jumped into Raze’s truck. “Let’s go home. Owen is having trouble.”
Ellie called back in two minutes. “That awful woman is at the door,” he said. “She just stands there knocking and won’t go away no matter how many times I tell her you’re not home.”
She sighed. “Kick it, Raze. Your sister is irritating Ellie.”
“She’s looking for Jack since he stood her up,” he said. “She has issues—doesn’t matter what she looks like to the world. Inside, she’s still an ugly reject being mocked by the cool kids.”
Rune sighed. “You better drop me off before you get too close. Her seeing you right now is not going to do good things for her state of mind.”
His radio crackled as he pulled to the curb, and she heard the Annex dispatch reporting a caged wolf in some human’s back yard. “Take that call,” she told him. “I’ll tend to Owen. And,” she added, “I’ll handle your sister if she’s still there.”
She was glad to go home. She wanted to spend as much time with Ellie and Kader as she could, but she also wanted to be closer to Owen. He wasn’t on his own there, but still, he needed his crew. Even if he was asleep for most of it.
When she slowed down so she could jog up her driveway and have a look around, she heard Belladonna before she actually saw her. “I’d like to speak with Jack, please,” she was saying.
“I’ve explained that he’s not here,” Ellie told her. “Call his cell.”
“He’s not answering.”
“Leave a message.” Ellis was irritated, and Rune couldn’t blame him. Not only was he trying to deal with whatever shit Owen was going through, but Belladonna Braden made no secret of her anti-Other stance.
That pissed him off more for Rune and Kader than because he was now an Other.
Two guards stood on the porch, but they had no idea what to do. Belladonna wasn’t threatening anyone—she was simply being annoying.
And they knew Bill was coddling her.
They caught sight of Rune before Belladonna did, and the relief on their faces was almost funny.
Rune walked soundlessly up the steps, then crossed her arms and leaned against the railing. “You’re going to need to get a grip,” she said. “And stop coming to my house.”
Belladonna turned quickly, her gun in her hand. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people, Rune. That’ll get you shot.”
Rune studied her, noting her red eyes, her pale skin, and the tiny tremor in her hand. She smelled alcohol, faint but obvious.
Ellie peered through the screen door. “Rune, thank God.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” she told him, then she looked at the two guards. “Go inside. No one is to come through that door but me. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” they told her. Ellis held the door open for them and they hurried inside, then shut the door behind them.
“Jack got called away on an emergency,” she told Belladonna. She felt sorry for the woman. She didn’t want to, but she did. “As soon as he can, I’m sure he’ll call you.”
And it wasn’t like Jack to be rude.
“Yeah,” Belladonna said. “He claims he got called away as well, but I know he’s lying. If he doesn’t want to see me, he can tell me that to my face.”
Rune lifted an eyebrow. “So he told you why he couldn’t meet you, and yet here you are, refusing to leave my porch. You do realize this puts you into the psycho stalker category, don’t you?”
“You don’t—”
“Put the gun away,” Rune interrupted.
Belladonna hesitated.
Rune softened her voice. “Put the fucking gun away before I have to make you put it away.”
Belladonna gave a sharp bark of laughter. “I think you might find that a little easier said than done—but I have no interest in shooting you.” And after a few seconds of posing, she slid the gun away. “So where is he?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Come on, Alexander.” Belladonna laughed again. It was no more real that time than it had been the first time she’d tried it. “This is between me and Jack. I just need to talk to him.”
“It is between you and Jack,” Rune agreed. “So I’m going to need you to leave my house.”
“He lives here, doesn’t he?”
Kader banged on the window, making Rune jump. “Mama! Come in,” she called, before Ellis snatched her away.
Belladonna ran her fingers over her forehead. “That’s…fucked up,” she muttered, almost too softly for Rune to hear.
“I’m going to go inside to my daughter,” Rune said. “And you’re going to get off my porch. Go back to your hotel. Sleep it off.”
Belladonna curled her lip. “Nothing to sleep off. You tell Jack…” But she strode off the porch without finishing her sentence.
“Fuck,” Rune muttered. Then, “I’ll help you find your target tomorrow. Once you have him, you won’t have any reason at all to stay in River County.”
“I don’t need your fucking help.” Then she climbed into her rental and drove away.
It didn’t matter to Rune that Belladonna didn’t want help capturing Silas Jones. Rune was going to collar him and hand him over—the poor bastard—and then she was going to escort Belladonna out of River County.
But part of her knew it wouldn’t be that easy.
It was never easy dealing with a broken mind—and Belladonna’s was about as broken as any Rune had ever seen.
Rune was glad Raze hadn’t come with her. He wasn’t wrong. If Belladonna saw him, she was going to try to kill him.
Raze was right about something else, as well. He didn’t really know his sister.
Blood didn’t make a family. And Belladonna wasn’t his. If she had been, he wouldn’t have to worry that she would put a bullet in his brain the second she saw him.
He hadn’t told Rune and Roma everything. His glossed-over story about why he’d left had been more fabrication than truth. And that was okay. She
didn’t have to know his business to know she’d put a bitch down for fucking with him.
Simple as that.
Because she was his family.
Belladonna’s taillights disappeared and finally, Rune turned to go inside. She had an impatient baby to kiss, a hurting cowboy to soothe, and a new vampire to love.
Chapter Twenty
“Where did Strad go?” she asked Ellie, as she sat on the sofa beside the reclining cowboy. She lifted Kader to her lap, then took Owen’s hand.
“I don’t know,” Ellis said. “He brought us inside, said hello to Owen, then left.”
Rune nodded and squeezed Owen’s hand. He didn’t look well. His eyes were dull, his skin pale, and he shivered continuously. Annex doctors had patched him up as well as they could. He might have done better in the clinic, but he refused to leave Rune’s house. “Are you cold?” she asked.
“Always,” he said. “I can’t get warm.”
Kader slid off Rune’s lap, muttering something about pickles and tea, and Rune let her go.
“I’ll bring a heated blanket,” Ellie said, turning to hurry from the room. “That will help.”
“He tries to be the same,” Rune murmured to Owen, staring after Ellis, “but he’s different.”
“He’ll find himself,” Owen told her, his teeth clattering.
She nodded. “He wants to accept what he’s become, but his brain is having trouble with it.”
Owen said nothing, just continued to shiver.
“How long have you been like this?” she asked him.
“Feels like forever.”
“You need to eat.”
“Can’t.”
She didn’t know what to do for him. He clung to her hand and didn’t take his feverish stare off her face, and she realized that though his body was slowly healing, his mind was not.
“You’ve gone through a lot,” she told him. “You’ll get better, Cowboy. It’ll just take some time.”
He shivered harder. “I can’t find a purpose in this, Rune. I can’t see a reason. Nothing feels right and I don’t remember why I fought so hard to come back. The path fucked with my brain.”
He was deeply depressed. His trauma had been huge, and he couldn’t just get over it. But there was something he needed—and not even he knew what that was.
“I don’t know what to do.” She squeezed his hand. “Except to be here.”
There was nothing but stark hopelessness in his eyes. “Stay here,” he said. “For a while.”
She stood, peeled off her jacket, her boots, and her gun belt, then climbed onto the sofa behind him. She pulled the blanket back over them both, then wrapped her arm around him.
His body seemed to relax almost immediately. “Rune,” he whispered.
“I’ve got you,” she told him. “You need to remember that you fought so hard to come back because this is where you belong. As soon as you recover, you can go out with us and kick monster ass. I’ve missed watching you fight.”
Ellis returned with the blanket. He plugged it into the wall, then draped it over them. “Will you eat something now?” he asked Owen. “You can’t get well if you don’t eat.” Ellie fed people. It was what he did. Owen knew that.
“Yeah,” he answered. “I could eat a little.”
Ellis beamed. “I’ll make you a tray.” He leaned over to kiss Rune’s forehead, then Owen’s. “Cling to the realization that this dark moment will pass.” He brushed the cowboy’s hair back. “You won’t always feel this awful hopelessness. I promise you.”
Owen’s shaking had calmed to soft, sporadic tremors. Rune wasn’t sure he even noticed. He lay on his side with her behind him, her hand tucked under his ribs and he seemed, for that moment, almost peaceful.
“How do you know?” he asked Ellie, and though his voice was soft, he absolutely wanted the answer to that question.
“Because I’ve been there,” Ellis answered. He didn’t look at Rune, as though the black hole of his horror, his sorrow, and maybe even his regret was something she didn’t already know about and might discover by looking into his eyes.
They needed to talk about it, despite Ellie’s words to the contrary.
“Ellie,” she said.
He looked at her. “Soon, honey.”
She nodded. “Soon.”
He left the room and Rune relaxed against Owen, letting the sounds of the TV, the noisy child, and Ellis banging pans in the kitchen seep into her soul. It was good to be home.
She snuggled up against Owen’s back as his slender body began to warm. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked him. “It might help.”
“I don’t want you seeing me like a weak victim,” he said. “And when you first walked into the room I didn’t care how you saw me. Ellis is right. This blackness won’t last.”
She smiled. “Ellis is always right.” And she finally realized that more than anything, Owen needed his people. All of them. He needed them to help drive out the darkness, to rip him from the path’s stubborn grip, to make him remember his life with them and forget about the horror of Skyll and the terror of the path.
“When you’re a little stronger,” she said, “we’ll start taking you out with us. You can’t fight right now, but you can watch us fight. You need some sunshine.”
He patted her arm. “Yes to all those things.”
“Getting stronger begins with good food,” Ellis said, placing the tray on the coffee table.
“I like good food,” Kader said, hurrying to the table. “Let’s have a bite, shall we?”
Owen laughed. “I’ve never seen a child like her.”
“There isn’t another child like her,” Ellis said. “Why, when she was six months old…”
And he launched into story after story of Kader’s unmatched magnificence, his sweet, bubbly voice adding to the perfect cozy cacophony of the house as he spoon-fed both Owen and Kader.
Though Owen could have fed himself, he half reclined against Rune and let Ellie feed him because that was what Ellis wanted, and Owen wasn’t going to be the one to dim the shine in Ellie’s eyes.
The twins came in together. “No sign of the bones,” Levi said, grinning when Ellis flew into his arms.
“I’m hungry,” Denim said, and those were probably the only words that could have dragged Ellis away from Levi.
“I’ll make sandwiches,” he said. “Lots of sandwiches!” And he hurried into the kitchen to put together enough food for a hungry army.
An Annex nurse came in to check Owen, happy that he’d eaten and his color—and mood—were improved, and two guards drifted into the living room to watch TV. Raze walked in, slamming the door behind him, and told them about the wolf he’d freed from a human’s yard.
Kader’s nanny tried to chase Kader into the bathtub, but the child wasn’t having it. She hid behind Grim, and there wasn’t a nanny on earth brave enough to risk Grim’s wrath.
Will slipped into the living room and Owen stiffened immediately. The cowboy and the assassin watched each other for a long, tense moment.
“Someday,” Owen said, finally, “you’ll have to face me for what you did.”
Will gave him a nod, but said nothing. When everyone went back to what they’d been doing before he’d walked in, he took a sandwich from the tray and sat down in a corner to munch in silence.
He rolled up the edge of his mask to eat, and Rune noticed him hesitating, darting his somewhat fearful stare around the room to see if anyone was going to look at him, and when no one paid him the slightest attention, he ate his food in relative peace.
Strad strode in, scooped up his daughter, and then leaned over to kiss Rune. He didn’t bat an eye at the fact that Owen was in her arms.
Roma and Jack were the last two to trickle in, and Jack told them about baby Reign while Roma ate a gigantic bowl of ice cream, and Ellis flitted about like a happy butterfly, making sure they all ate too much.
Owen laced his fingers with hers and gazed out at them all wi
th something close to awe, having forgotten, perhaps, how it felt to be part of such a group.
And a little more of his grimness melted away.
Rune didn’t think she’d ever been more content.
Life, at that moment, was pretty fucking perfect.
Chapter Twenty-One
He might not have been quite ready physically, but Owen was eager to get out into the world. The next day, after they’d gotten a few hours’ sleep, Rune took him to the Annex to see little Reign.
She’d once hated him for his part in the baby’s nightmare, but she no longer did. The past was over, and Owen hadn’t sent the child into Skyll.
He couldn’t walk more than a few steps, so she gestured for a wheelchair, and pushed him into the elevator. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“I want to show you someone.”
He nodded, but she could feel his worry. She didn’t know who he was afraid she might show him, and she didn’t ask.
Jack was already in the room, sitting beside the bed reading a newspaper, and Roma stood staring up the TV, flipping through channels.
Jack jumped to his feet when he saw Owen. “Rune—”
“It’s okay,” she said.
Because they either had to trust him, or let him go. And she wasn’t letting him go.
Owen stood, shakily, then walked to the bed. He put his hands on the rails and stared down at the small child, and Rune could feel his shock.
Reign awakened at just that moment and looked up at him, and it seemed to Rune like they both gasped.
“Impossible,” he whispered.
“This is Reign,” Rune told him.
“She’s my daughter.” Jack’s voice was a low rumble, and held a threat that no one could mistake. Least of all Owen. “I’m adopting her. I’m happy you’re back, Owen, but if you ever hurt her—”
“No,” Owen interrupted. “No, I won’t ever hurt her.” He swallowed hard. “God, no.”
But maybe none of them were really sure until he slipped his fingers from the railing and took Reign’s hand. She wrapped her fingers around his, and she smiled. For the first time, she smiled.