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He lightly smiled at me. “Sammy is fine, all thanks to you and the two elder men who snuck out of the bunker to grab him from you. Lia and Markus are helping with the cleanup. I promised to call them if you woke, but given I was silenced when that happened…”
I lifted his hand and kissed the back. “I’d have died trying, but I would have done my best to hurt them if they didn’t give your voice back.”
Grayson lifted me up until I was sitting in his lap and cradled in his arms. “Let’s not talk any more about you dying.”
It hadn’t gone unnoticed that he didn’t answer my question about how he was doing, but I didn’t need his words to know.
I could imagine the torment I’d have felt if it were him in this bed instead of me. Then, I’d multiply that rage by a hundred to get to Grayson’s level.
He at least seemed okay physically, and that was enough. For now.
“How is everyone else?” I asked, knowing there would have been casualties but hoping not many.
Grayson stared ahead at the wall, and I instantly knew something worse had happened.
“Is Ryder…?” I let my voice trail off.
“He’s fine,” Grayson answered. “It was Tuck, along with more than a dozen others we didn’t really get to know.”
Damn it. I’d hardly known Tuck, but he’d helped us and he’d been a close friend of Ryder’s, along with being Sammy’s “Uncle Tuck.” My heart ached for their losses and for the grief felt by the rest of the families.
I started to pull Grayson’s arms away from me so I could get out of bed, but his hold tightened. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m going to take a shower and then we’re going to go help,” I said sternly. “This was our fight, and we need to face the consequences.”
His lips thinned. “This fight was coming, with or without us.”
“Maybe, but it happenedwithus and it needs to be finished with us as well.” Sure, I was still sore as fuck, but I could walk—at least I was pretty sure I could—and that meant I needed to be out there, showing the House members I hadn’t abandoned them.
Even if I’d gotten my ass kicked and they possibly didn’t want me as their Alpha Supreme, I still felt a sense of duty to them, and I was going to follow through on that.
I forced my way out of Grayson’s hold, and he glowered at me. “You’re a stubborn woman.”
“Tell me something we don’t already know,” I teased as I carefully headed for the bathroom to shower off the days I’d spent in bed.
* * *
Within the hour, we made it to the area with the worst of the destruction, which was where the initial blast had been and where four of the men had died.
Markers and flowers had already been set out to remember each of the men and another four were out in the park, where I assumed some of the others had died, but the numbers didn’t quite add up to what Grayson had mentioned earlier.
“Was there fighting in other places?” I asked softly while we walked toward where someone had said Ryder was.
Grayson nodded toward the right. “That’s where Lia and Markus had gone before I went to find you. They were working with another group of Ryder’s faction to keep the fight split up. It worked well, but there were still losses there, too. Like Tuck.”
His response answered my unspoken question, which again tore at my chest. It didn’t matter that we’d known people would die. Knowing and accepting our consequences were two completely different things.
When we approached Ryder, he was lifting fallen debris that was too large for him to be handling on his own.
Before I could step in, Grayson did for me.
The two men moved the massive piece of steel that I assumed had come from one of the warehouses that had been blasted into.
Once it was placed onto the street, Ryder quickly began searching beneath the rubble, and I realized they were still looking for bodies.
Fuck.
“How many more?” I asked as I bent down to help.
