“Spehrs,” I said. “The Spehrs are in an uproar. Nance, if I had to guess.”
“The Spehrs all seem equally pissed,” Lorcan said. “They called the fucking police.”
I tried to listen to what they were saying, but the backdoor to the house opened and out they spilled. Zack, Micah, Declan, all the good humour I’d come to associate with any of them completely scrubbed clear. More worry, more anger, just more. I read their expressions as they jogged over to the car.
“We let the police in, but not them,” Mason said. “An investigation is underway.”
“But we’re not leaving it to them,” I said in a low growl.
“No, we’re not.”
The backdoor opened, and Zack surged in.
“Babe…” He leaned over the back seat, peering at me, cataloguing all my aches and pains in one look I bet. “Let’s get you inside.” His arms reached out to pull me toward him. “I’ll carry you up and—”
“No.”
Lorcan’s hand tightened around mine as I denied my other mate what he wanted. I could see it—the carrying me up the stairs, the pampering me with scented baths, washing away the remains of what had been done to me, the soft snuggle down into the bed with the lot of them. I could fall into all five of them, I knew that. Wrap myself tight in them, hide away from the world. They’d follow me to every trip to the toilet or the kitchen, shadowing me with their strength.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want that, but that I also wanted to be strong too.
Zack frowned and then pulled back, leaving the door open for me to slip from. They still clustered in close when I got out slowly, gingerly, but that was right. We were pack. We would always reach for the other, move closer, touch where circumstances allowed, but as I walked into the house, slower than I would normally, I needed to do this under my own steam.
I’d been beaten down, but I wasn’t about to stay down. Each step, each crunch of gravel under my feet, was a declaration of sorts, I thought. You will not keep me down. You will not walk free from what you did to my family and me. I let my hands fan out, brushing Declan’s side, his eyes jerking around in response, trailing down Zack’s spine as he walked in front of me, and then finally, sliding into Micah’s waiting one. He nodded to me, my most mysterious of potential mates, those pale grey eyes almost phosphorescent. He stared like he could see my thoughts and he approved of them, and we walked up the steps to my home together.
Chapter 3
I paused at the spot on the floor where I could still smell my blood. It was muted, by their scents, by the cleaning products they’d used to try and eradicate the evidence after the police had been there, but I could detect it if I searched for it.
“I’ve never been so fucking scared,” Mason said, looking down. “When I saw you lying on that floor…” For a moment, I thought his knees had faltered, but no, he was dropping down onto them.
“Mase…” I said, not wanting that. Anything but that.
“I’ve got to, love.” When he looked up at me, I wondered if I’d ever seen the real Mason before this. His eyes burned, so dark a brown as to be almost black, every thought and feeling writ clear on his face for me to see. “Jeez, I fucked up. I fucked up so completely and thoroughly, I don’t know how you even look at me. What I said, what I did… I had so many chances…”
Watching those big strong hands flex on empty air, aimless, made me ache in ways I didn’t expect, my eyes beginning to burn.
“I should have thrown myself at your feet and begged for your forgiveness the minute you came home.” He shook his head, short and sharp. “The fact I just compounded that pain, turned my back on you when you fucking needed me, let you think…”
I knew what he was doing. I needed to hear him say these words over and over until it finally sunk in, eradicating all the hard ones he’d said before, but not right now. I hurt, he hurt, and as I looked around the ring of us, we were all hurting. I frowned for a second before that made my head ache too much. That’s what they’d done, this interloper, sneaking into my house, killing my father, belting me. They were lashing out at my pack, and I was finished with that, even from within. I bent down gingerly and drew him up, placing a hand to his mouth when the words kept coming. I stared into his eyes as he stood, trying to make it clear what I felt, what I needed.
“I need a shower,” I said, not able to articulate the big thoughts right now, the feeling of being dirty and encrusted with blood making my skin itch.
“Upstairs?” Declan asked, frowning slightly.
They didn’t like that idea, would cluster around my shower cubicle, watching like the hungry wolves they were. Hungry for me.
“Is there a shower big enough to fit everyone in the enforcer’s quarters?” There was some shifting at that. “So you can watch over me as I wash this fucking blood off me.”
“I’ll clear the guys out, make sure it’s clean,” Declan said, moving towards the door.
Back when I was a horny teenager, getting into the men’s shower block would have been like manna from heaven. Bridget and some of my other cousins engaged in some fairly saucy speculation about what it would be like, being a fly on the wall in here, so just seeing a whole lot of white subway tile and a series of showerheads was
