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He hadn’t, of course, but he’d at least given me the idea that I wasn’t dying or wounded inside somehow. But now I had a new fear.
“Does this mean that…that I’m going to have a baby?” I asked, looking down at the pink water.
“Have you fucked anyone?” Gabriel asked, glaring at me.
“What?” I shook my head. I’d heard plenty of people use the word “fuck” but it was just another swear word to me.
My older stepbrother got even more irritated.
“Have you let a man put his cock in you?” he asked bluntly.
“His what?” I shook my head.
“Dios, were you raised in a fucking church or something?” Gabriel ran a hand through his long black hair. “We don’t have time for this right now! If you haven’t been with a man, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Also, you’re just now having your First Blood, so you can’t be pregnant. Now shut up and let me think!”
I decided to stop asking what was happening to my body—neither of my stepbrothers was being at all helpful about explaining. I would have to figure it out on my own. If my mom came back, I would demand some answers. Or maybe I could find a book about it in the library. Without my mom here to make sure I didn’t check out anything “inappropriate” I should be able to do some research and find out.
Christopher drained the water in the tub and then filled it up again…and then again, trying to rinse away the blood which kept seeping out of me. Meanwhile, more of the Alphas in the Compound had come to bang on the door.
“Stay in here,” Gabriel told us. “If you hear me shout for you, lock her in and come out to me,” he added, speaking to Christopher.
“Got it.” Christopher nodded and Gabriel went out. There was murder in his pale eyes and I wondered what he was prepared to do to keep me away from the other men. He’d never been particularly nice to me, so I was surprised at how protective he was being. But he seemed determined not to give me up.
Christopher was determined too—I could see it in the set of his jaw. He might be a Beta, but he was no push over. He didn’t take orders from anyone but his brother…and of course, they both took orders from their father.
I curled in on myself, shivering in my damp nightgown, as I heard loud male voices raised in the other room. There was shouting and then a thud, like a heavy body being thrown against the wall. Christopher jumped up from his place beside the tub.
“Wait here, Little Sis,” was all he said.
When he opened the door, I saw Gabriel with blood on his face and more blood smeared on his fist. A big body was sprawled on the floor of my bedroom.
I started crying—I couldn’t help it. The sight made me remember my Dad and how he’d been lying helpless on the ground before my stepfather shot him.
Gabriel looked up as his younger brother joined him, an irritated expression on his darkly handsome face.
“Why the fuck did you come out here? I’ve got this handled,” he growled at Christopher.
“Just in case you needed backup.” Christopher stood beside him—shoulder-to-shoulder, the two of them blocked the entrance to my room.
“Manuel already got what was coming to him!” Gabriel shouted to the men standing just outside my bedroom. “Do the rest of you want some? Come on, you fucking cabrons!”
He and Christopher might have been younger than the other Alphas, but they were an imposing sight. The two of them were like a wall made of muscle and Gabriel had taken off his shirt, showing swirling black tattoos that covered his muscular arms and a back that was striped with faded white scars.
Even as upset as I was, I stared at the scars—I had never seen them before. But then, I had never seen either of my stepbrothers without their shirts. My stepfather, Esteban, was big on everyone being “civilized” and properly dressed at all times. As though the thin veneer of polite society could hide what a thug he was.
Two more of the men charged in and Gabriel and Christopher fought them off. I winced as I watched through the crack in the bathroom door—punches were thrown and blood flew. It occurred to me that I should lock the door, which Christopher had forgotten to do, but I felt frozen to the spot—watching as my stepbrothers fought off the other Alphas in the Compound to keep me safe.
The fight didn’t take long. I don’t know if there was something special in my stepfather’s bloodline, but his strength seemed to have passed to both his sons. They bested the other men and sent them off down the hallway with instructions not to come back into the mansion until my First Blood was over.
