“I didn’t do this. I couldn’t have.”
“You’re violent. You attacked people at the hospital.”
She had. She couldn’t deny that, but never anything close to this. It looked like the work of a wolf, but she hadn’t been one until days earlier. She hadn’t done this. But who had? “Where did they find me?” she demanded.
“In the corner, crying. You were covered in blood but there were no marks on you. The doctor said you had some kind of psychotic break.”
That’s what had happened. It wasn’t the car accident. . . .
What she’d witnessed must’ve been so terrible that she blocked it from her memory to this day. Although she felt horror at the pictures, she honestly couldn’t remember those people, that night, at all. “Everyone really thinks I did this? You both think I was capable of this?” she whispered.
“We didn’t want to. But you did it, Gillian. We have to take responsibility because we adopted you without knowing your background. You have to take responsibility by living under the conditions we all agreed to, for the safety of others. You’re a danger. You need to be locked up,” her father said, and Gillian’s shoulders sagged.
Someone had set her up. How and why were the biggest questions and would remain unanswered for as long as she remained on lockdown here.
If she broke out, the bounty on her head would intensify. They would hunt her down. This story of what really happened that night might leak out, no matter how carefully her parents had buried it. “It wasn’t me.”
“Gillian, you don’t know how badly I want to believe that,” her father said sadly.
“I’m going to prove it to you, Father, if it’s the last thing I do,” she whispered as she felt the air move behind her. There were men approaching her. She smelled the drugs they carried, couldn’t let that happen again.
It was either go through her parents or fight and get drugged.
“Please move. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Her mother gave a soft gasp. Her father said, “You couldn’t possibly hurt us any more than you already have.”
She jumped onto the railing, balancing herself and her parents jumped away in surprise, leaving her just enough clearance to move by them. Sister Wolf was struggling to get out, but she couldn’t let her. Not here.
“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” she kept repeating as soon as she ran through the hall. There was security at the door. With guns.
She veered left and leaped out the plate glass window closest to the woods that backed up the estate. She did it how she’d seen Jinx jump, limbs and head tucked to hopefully prevent glass from cutting anything major. She hit the ground still tucked in a ball with a hard thud and then, ignoring the pain, she went on, speeding through the night.
She was leaving a blood trail. She shifted, knowing Sister Wolf would heal faster. The blood would also get caught on the fur and leave behind less of a trail. Her wolf led her deep into the woods, circling as she went in an attempt to lose the men.
She threw her head back and howled.
Jinx recognized the howl instantly. It was as distinctive as Gillian herself.
“She’s trapped,” he told Jez, who he’d met in the woods behind the Blackwells’ house. Jez had called him, frantic that Gillian had escaped. He’d trailed her here and Jinx couldn’t be angry at the vampire because he’d never seen Jez this distraught.
“I was distracted,” he muttered. “I know better.”
“She’s out, Jez. We’ll get to her,” Jinx said and then a howl came up and they both froze.
“We’d best do it before the hellhounds decide to help her,” Jez said in a slightly strangled tone of voice just as Gillian broke through the small clearing, shifting from Sister Wolf as she did so. She was obviously much faster than the men shooting at her through the trees, but they were still coming. He moved to grab for her as Jez said, “They’re surrounding us from all sides.”
“Gilly.”
“I’m okay,” she told him. But she was bleeding and covered in glass and obviously distraught. And she smelled as though they’d drugged her, which explained a lot. “I can’t see anything, but I feel it. The same thing I felt the other night.” She moved closer to Jinx and he stared at the circle of hellhounds that sat around them, at the ready.
“I think trappers are coming to the aid of the Blackwell security team,” Jez said. “Rogue’s getting the truck as close as he can.”
For the first time in his life, Jinx hoped to hell the trappers backed off.
“Jinx, what are you going to do?” Jez asked.
“Whatever we need to,” Jinx said. Fighting would give them away. So would shifting. They were trapped and the hellhounds knew it. He whispered, “You leave them alone,” but this time, they weren’t listening.
One minute they were there and the next, gone. He couldn’t see them anymore, only the men coming at them with UZIs and the trappers coming along the other side. But then came the bloodcurdling screams and the men all stopped in their tracks.
Rather, they were stopped.
To the average eye, it looked incredibly violent but oddly so. Humans were getting slashed, ripped apart by something invisible. Gillian moved away from the bloodbath, hid against a large tree, pressing her face into her palms as though that could make all of this go away.
Jinx wished it could be that easy. Calling off the hounds now wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference. He’d been in danger and so had Gillian. They were pledging their loyalty.
Trappers weren’t exactly innocents, but surely, no one deserved to die like this.
“We need to run, Gilly,” he managed and together, they ran through the blood and gore, Jez flying along with them into the night.
Chapter 35
This time, Gillian made sure to keep pace with Jinx, refusing to leave him behind. Jez was somewhere above them and finally, in the distance, she saw Rogue’s truck waiting for them. The back doors popped open and she went in first, followed by Jinx. His door wasn’t fully closed before Cain took off. Rogue rode shotgun and he turned to check on them.
“We’re okay,” Jinx managed and he was lying, but she understood why. They were all three shaken to the core by what they’d seen. The hellhounds were no longer taking any kind of direction from Jinx. She supposed she should be grateful that they hadn’t turned on them.
She shuddered at that thought and Jinx put a firm hand on her thigh. “It’s going to be all right.”
“You’re angry I turned myself over to them. But I had to give them one last chance.” And they’d let her down again. “What they believed me capable of . . .”
“They aren’t . . . they don’t know wolf. They saw the signs, misinterpreted them.” Jinx flailed for an explanation. “Fuck, family can let you down sometimes.”
She reached out, traced the scratch marks on his neck, half-hidden by the collar on his jacket. “Is this from family?”
“Yeah. I asked for it. I deserved it,” he muttered. “Where are we going?”
“To the mansion,” Rogue answered.
“No argument,” Jinx said.
“I think the vampire’s on the roof,” Cain told them, but he drove fast anyway. “I’m assuming he’s good at hanging on.”
Jez was, jumped off unscathed in the Dire’s garage and helped Rogue get the couple out of the truck. Gwen
