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She swallowed, ignoring the sharp pain. “So do you.”
“Everyone okay?” Grayson asked. He was naked, as was Boone when he joined them. Eleanor looked away - holy fuck, this was a weird time to be blushing over naked dudes - as Wes nodded.
“Who the fuck was that?” Boone examined the relatively shallow claw marks on Grayson’s back.
“I don’t know,” Wes said as he glanced at Grayson. “I’ve never seen a shifter like that, have you?”
“No,” Grayson said.
“The guy was on fucking ‘roids or something,” Boone said. “Did you see how strong he was? I can’t believe I even broke his leg. It was like biting through steel.”
Eleanor took a shuddering breath, and Wes stroked her back as a fire truck, and an ambulance turned onto the street, followed by a cop car.
“Shit,” Boone said. “Looks like the neighbours called in the entire fucking calvary.” He waved at a woman standing on the lawn of the house to their right and staring unabashedly at his crotch. “Hello, ma’am. Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”
“Get Cooper on the phone,” Grayson said to Boone. “Tell him we need him here now. And maybe a Council rep. The cops will probably be human.”
“Fucking Council is gonna lose their shit over this mess,” Boone said.
“No one says a word about what’s going on with Eleanor,” Grayson said. “As far as we know, the shifter is a complete stranger who just randomly attacked Eleanor. Got it?”
Wes and Boone nodded. Feeling like she might barf, Eleanor buried her face in Wes’s thick neck and closed her eyes.
* * *
“I wish you would change your mind, Butterfly.” Wes took Eleanor’s hand, squeezing it lightly as she sat at the kitchen table nursing a cup of hot tea that Boone had made for her. He desperately wanted to pick up his mate and carry her kicking and screaming to the hospital if he had to, but he was afraid to do anything more than touch her hand. She’d almost died today because of him. He was shocked that she would even let him hold her hand.
“I’m not going to the hospital,” she said, her voice hoarse. “The paramedics said I was fine.”
“No, they said it didn’t look like there was permanent damage, but you should probably have it checked out by a doctor,” Boone said.
She made a face at Boone, who grinned. “Hey, it’s what they said.”
“My knee hurts worse than my throat,” she said with another scowl at Boone. “Why did you trip me, anyway?”
“Well,” Boone drawled as he leaned against the counter, “while I appreciate your bravery in trying to go after the biggest fucking lion shifter I’ve ever seen in my life with nothing but a can of Mace, it wouldn’t have ended well for you.”
She flushed, staring at hers and Wes’s linked fingers. “Wes needed my help.”
Wes wanted to argue, but it was true. He had needed help. He’d been about ten seconds from getting his throat ripped out. If Grayson and Boone hadn’t shown up when they did, he’d be dead, and so would his mate.
His lion growled unhappily, but underneath that growl, he could feel the beast’s unease at what happened. He’d never been bested in a fight, and it wasn’t the near-death experience that his lion wasn’t taking well, but rather the defeat in battle.
“Why did you show up at my place this morning?” he said.
“Grayson and I met for a sparring match,” Boone said. “I asked him to swing by here afterward so I could drop off Nan’s video camera for you.”
“Thank God,” Eleanor said, her voice breaking a little. “If you hadn’t…”
She swallowed hard, wincing and then sipping some more tea as the tears leaked down her face. Wes wanted to wipe them away, he wanted to pull her into his lap and tell her everything would be okay, but he was still frozen by the idea that Eleanor would never speak to him again after this.
“Why didn’t you just shoot him?” Eleanor asked abruptly. Her gaze levelled out on Wes. “I know you carry a gun. You all do.” She stared at Boone and then at Grayson. “Why didn’t any of you just shoot him in the head?”
“It’s against the code,” Cooper said as he walked into the kitchen. “The Council rep just left. She has your number and mine, Wes, and she said she’d call if the officers on scene needed to question the three of you again. Or if they catch the shifter who attacked you and Eleanor.”
“They’re not gonna catch him,” Boone said. “You see how fast he fucking moved even with a broken leg? He was almost as fast as Chase. Do you think he’s some sort of lion cheetah hybrid?”
“Hybrids don’t exist,” Cooper said with a frown. “You know that, Boone.”
