“It’s all right,” she soothed. “I’m fine. No injuries whatsoever, and I handed that bitch’s ass back to her.”
“I didn’t doubt you for a second,” he said with a weak smile.
“I got lost in the crowd, and I went looking for you. Then I got a message from Lizzie. Sent it to the entire team, telling us what was happening. We tracked you down here.”
“Lizzie!” He glanced back toward the parking lot. “I took her away, but she’s hurt.”
Mika’s eyes widened. “Let’s go get her.”
They were crossing the street when Wyatt came up to them. “Where is she?” His fists gripped Delacroix’s shirt. “Did they hurt her?”
“She’s injured.” He carefully pulled Wyatt’s hands away, trying to stay patient as he could understand what the other man was going through. “We should go see to her.”
He led them to the parking lot to where he had left Lizzie. She made a frightful sight, her eyes closed, sweater bloody and ripped to shreds. Her breath ran ragged as she struggled to keep from sliding to the ground.
“Motherfucker!” Wyatt snarled as he pushed Delacroix and Mika aside to get to Lizzie. His face was red as he knelt down, but he didn’t touch her, his arms remaining stiff at his sides. “I’m going to kill them!” he growled. “I swear to God, I’ll rip every—”
“Wyatt, calm down,” Mika said.
The normally unemotional Wyatt looked like he wanted to tear apart anything that moved. “Calm down? Look what they’ve done to her.”
“We need to help her.” Mika’s voice was soothing. “Let’s … you lift her up as gently as you can.”
“Watch her back,” Delacroix said as Wyatt gingerly slipped his arms under her. “She got clawed there.”
Wyatt tucked Lizzie against his chest, her face buried in his shoulder as he lifted her up. She flinched, but then relaxed against him.
“I think she’s already healing,” Mika said. “But we should take her to HQ. Medical will patch her up.”
As they all walked back to where the rest of the agents were, Delacroix leaned down to whisper in her ear, “I told you so.”
His mate rolled her eyes.
With so many mage attacks happening in the last couple of months, the Guardian Initiative team had become efficient at concealing their activities. In less than thirty minutes, they cleaned up traces of the fight, gathered up and destroyed all CCTV footage in the area, and dosed witnesses with forgetting potion.
They gathered in the GI conference room for a debrief since they had a full house, with Daric joining them as he had just returned from another covert mission.
“Our ‘guests’ are now locked away safely in the basement level of the Fenrir Corp. headquarters,” Arch began. “We’ll contact the Lycan High Council in the morning and have them deal with those bastards. The Alpha will toss every charge he can at them, from breaking the Constanta Agreement, to hurting Lizzie.”
“How is she?” Mika asked Wyatt.
“Resting,” he answered stiffly. “Dr. Blake says she’ll be fine by morning.”
“Good.” Mika turned to Delacroix. “Do you want to tell us why your former clan mates are after you?”
He stiffened in his chair, but Mika’s comforting hand on his was like a soothing balm. This wasn’t how he wanted her to find out about his past, but Lizzie had nearly died, and God knows what else could have happened to her, so he didn’t have a choice. He only hoped Mika would be able to look him in the eye after he told his story.
“The Pont Saint-Louis clan took me in after I’d been abandoned by my parents,” he began. “For the first few years, I was fostered with one of the older couples in the clan who didn’t have their own children. But the wife died of a heart attack, and the husband didn’t last for too long after that. I was just six years old.” His memories of Marie and Albert Delacroix were fuzzy, though he knew he was never hungry or abused. “I bounced around from family to family, but when I turned ten and my powers showed up, Remy Boudreaux, the Alpha, took an interest in me.”
Mika’s face went pale. “What did he do?”
He swallowed the lump growing in his throat. “The Pont Saint-Louis was more gang than clan, and Remy was the big boss. Ruled his Lycans with an iron fist, and God save anyone who didn’t follow his orders.” Robbery, carjacking, loan-sharking, drugs, human trafficking, running guns—there was nothing he wouldn’t do for money, and with a small army of Lycans at his side, he could do whatever he wanted. “When he found out what I could do, he put me to work right away.”
“But you were a child,” Arch said. “How could he?”
“He’s pure evil,” Cliff added.
“I had no choice.” At least, he thought he didn’t. “Remy used my powers for his own gain. At first, he would tell me to get into places and unlock the door so his guys could get in and rob the place. Then he asked me to start stealing things or leave messages for his enemies. If I didn’t, I’d get beaten black and blue. Eventually, I got tired of being bloody and bruised all the time, so I just obeyed him. Started telling myself I wasn’t hurtin’ no one. At least not until …”
His chest tightened; the air stuck in his lungs. But he had to say it. He looked at Mika, into the green depths of her eyes and prayed to God she could forgive him. “One night, he had me break into this house out in Lafayette. He normally didn’t come out during these ‘excursions,’ but he wanted to be there for this one. That night it was just me an’ him. We pull up to this big ol’
