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“Did you just command her to kiss you?” Dusk snarled, shoving past me.
Ransom broke from the kiss, looking defensive as he eyed Dusk’s approach. “She was nervous.”
“Five seconds with a dark bond and you’re already?—”
“It’s fine.” Shatter looked flustered, cheeks pink, and her lip definitely wasn’t trembling anymore. Her eyes were wide as she glanced up at Ransom, and I felt the little spark of—huh. Okay. This whole… possessive alpha-omega situation hadn’t changed one bit with Ransom waking.
“Uh, guys, is everything—? Oh.” Decebal cut off as a snarl ripped from Ransom’s chest. He dropped Shatter instantly, spinning on the door. Her T-shirt tumbled down to cover her to mid-thigh, which settled my little spike of defensiveness. He was an out-of-pack alpha, after all, and she was ours.
Decebal took a step back, lifting his hands. “Shit. I’ll be outside.”
TWENTY-THREE
DUSK
“A dark bond?” Decebal asked as he seated me in the kitchen chair to inspect my wounds. His tattooed arms were folded, a pierced eyebrow raised as he peered down at me with dark eyes. “And what in the fresh fucking hell did you do to your body?” He prodded one of my burns like the prick he was. I let out a growl, wrestling with my aura, though many of the coverings I’d applied last night had fallen off. “Don’t you start.”
I wasn’t ready to hear it. My ears were still ringing with shock, and I’d left her in the bedroom with Umbra and Ransom.
I’d fucked up.
It had been a moment of weakness.
“Let me clean them,” Decebal was saying. “You and Umbra are as bad as each other.”
“She’s the one who has wounds that need?—”
“Let them fuck, or celebrate or whatever else they’re doing, I’ll check those after.”
I gritted my teeth but allowed him to unzip his med kit and get to work, containing flinches and growls.
His scent of cranberries and roses was obscenely settling to my frayed nerves.
How many times had he come out to this cabin for a desperate call because Ransom had taken a turn, or Umbra’s void had dragged him down for too long, and I was scared he would go too far, and I couldn’t stop him. Not on my own.
Or the times we’d never talk about because some of those calls, they’d just been me. At the start, when Umbra was still in and out, and Ransom was deteriorating, and Decebal would get a call with an emergency that turned out not to be an emergency at all.
He’d never said a word about it.
He’d crack a bottle of whiskey, sit out on the porch with me with a cigarette, even if it was the dead of winter, and we’d drink in silence until my aura went away, and everything seemed manageable again.
Once he’d even brought his packmate, the seer, who’d sat on the couch, trashing all the top scores on one of Umbra’s favourite fighting games until he’d surfaced.
Umbra was still pissed he couldn’t even rank, and ‘RedEyedBandit’ still dominated the entire scoreboard.
Finally, Decebal spoke into the silence. “The two alphas in the hospital, they’re no longer in critical condition. Paid off the pack. They won’t say a thing.”
“What?” I blinked, trying to figure out what he was saying.
“I went to the campus first to clean up after you. Thought you might need it—and I was right. Umbra nearly killed those two alphas. I assumed it was to do with the… incident.”
“Oh.”
That tide of burning fury rose again, and I fought to keep my aura down as the memory flashed in my vision. Panic had me ina vice, blurring the world.It was dark and rainy, and she was beside the archway in the grounds. Two alphas had her.
They had their hands on my omega.
She was terrified, crying, and in that moment, Umbra and I were one. Only he got there first.
