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“Put her down. Let me take a look.” Fletch hovered over her and bit back growls as Jensen Holloway ran his hands over her body. “I don’t feel any breaks. She’s dehydrated. Underfed. Pulse is weak. Thready. We’ll get her on the first flight back to the house.”
“Turn her over.” Fletch had to force the words up from his gut. He didn’t want to see, but he couldn’t ignore what his hands had felt when he’d lifted her.
Jensen rolled her toward him then swore a blue streak.
“How bad is it?” Fletch demanded.
“She’s scarred. Badly. From the looks of it, they’ve been reopened recently. I’d say within the last few days,” Jensen murmured, and there was an ache to his voice. “Looks like a whip. One with a barbed tip.”
“Why isn’t she healed?” Milo asked while Fletch fought to harness the rage boiling through him.
“Drugs would be my guess.” There was a snap to Jensen’s voice, his own anger rising. “Walker used drugs to repress Xandra’s bear when he held her. My sister-in-law’s still not able to shift.”
“Fuck!” Fletch snarled.
Xandra Blackstone was the mate of Declan Holloway. She was one of the surviving females who’d been hidden away by the elders. The traitor himself had held Xandra. He’d put the woman through hell. Now, she and Declan were on the hunt for Walker. Two of Laramie’s enforcers had gone with them, Chance and Woody. Fletch wasn’t sure Walker would make it back to Wyoming to face the Holloway den’s justice. Either Xandra or her mate would kill him first.
Fletch stood and paced away before turning back, his gaze drawn to the woman he’d accepted was his mate. “Will she pull through?”
“She’s obviously a survivor,” Milo stated.
“She will,” Jensen agreed. “I’ve got more help incoming. She’ll have an IV hooked up within minutes of them arriving.” He turned and glanced around. “We’ll follow her scent. Infiltrate quick. Take as many down as we can on the way in. Find any survivors and get them out. My team will be here triaging until we can get them home. I’ve got helicopters ready to take the more serious by air. She’ll be on the first one, Fletch. I promise you. I’ll watch over her personally as soon as we’re out of the field and back home. Okay?”
Fletch nodded. God, he didn’t want to lose her when he’d just discovered her.
“Everyone understand the plan?” Jensen demanded, coming to his feet.
Lots of nods and yeahs hit the air.
“If you come across a man with a barbed whip, he’s mine,” Fletch growled as his gaze swept over everyone in the clearing. “Understood?”
“He’s yours,” Jensen agreed as the others nodded.
Jensen barked more orders while Brock split people into teams. Brock, Fletch, and Milo would shift and follow the main team in. Jensen would be leading that group. Fletch wasn’t sure it was the best idea to have their primary medical doctor charging into battle, but no one listened to him. Least of all Jensen. He was like a man possessed. As if he held himself personally responsible for the attacks and the female shifters who’d been taken or killed or hidden. It was the same for all the Holloways. They all blamed themselves for the attacks, for the years the den females had spent hidden or even worse, as captives of a group of soulless hunters.
Fletch turned, gazing at his mate, filling his mind with the vision of her before shifting and joining his brother and Brock. The best thing he could do for her right now was to let them get her hooked up to an IV and flown out. Plus, she’d told him to save the others. They needed to get to the females quickly. Before anyone else realized she’d managed to escape.
He was a bundle of compressed energy, making it hard to hold in the roar of rage his bear wanted to release as they followed his mate’s scent to a patch of rocks at the base of a range of steep hills where large boulders loomed as if waiting for the opportunity to break free and crush whatever lay beneath them. Jensen was the first to spot the opening, almost hidden within the crags and vegetation around the rocks.
They’d barely stepped inside when the first scream reached them. They filled the tunnel quickly, no longer worried about using stealth and quiet. Instead, it was about reaching any survivors as quickly as possible. They hit a large cavern that split off in multiple directions and separated.
Fletch let his bear take the lead. Something pulled at him. A scent, maybe? Perhaps, instinct. Either way, he followed where the beast within led him and was anything but disappointed.
A yawning pit appeared before them. Two women fought inside it, both bloodied and bruised, barely standing on their feet. Along the edges of the pit stood a mix of naked women and men in fatigues. It was easy to see who was a hunter and who was a prisoner. Fletch gave a roar as he glanced across the wide opening and saw a man with a whip rolled and hanging from his hip. Black leather. Fletch could easily see the metal barb. One glance and he knew he wanted this man alive. He deserved to suffer at the end of that whip as Fletch’s mate obviously had.
He took off, circling the pit as he rushed toward the man he’d locked his gaze on. Around him the sound of grunts, growls, screams, and gunshots filled the air. Some of the women collapsed, arms wrapped around themselves as if they couldn’t believe what they saw. Others jumped in, attacking those who’d held them captive, as if they’d merely been waiting for the tables to turn. People were tossed into the pit. Hunters and shifters both. Fletch’s brother jumped in after them with a roar on his lips, and Fletch fought the urge to follow and make sure his brother was okay. Milo was a grown male, a fierce polar shifter who could hold his own in any fight. Plus, there were others among them heading into the pit. Milo wouldn’t be alone.
Fletch growled again as Jensen reached his target first. They were on him before he could draw that whip.
“Carter!” someone screamed, and the man glanced over, his attention diverted long enough for Jensen to land a blow that had the man reeling back. His feet got caught up in some of the downed hunters around him and down he went, head hitting the stone floor with a loud smack.
Fletch shifted as he reached them.
“I want him alive!” he bellowed.
Jensen nodded. “We’ll see what information we can get out of him.”
“Take the whip, too,” Fletch ordered as two shifters moved forward to retrieve Carter, who’d managed to knock himself out when he’d fallen. “I have plans for that.”
