Prompt: "What are you, a fragile flower?"
Chapter Thirty-one
Ritch kept me together because the pain,
blood loss, and shock knocked the legs right out from under me—literally. I
couldn’t put weight on my broken leg, even with a brace on it, and hopping to
the car made me puke because trying to put as little weight on Ritch as
possible led to jarring my toes on the ground when I tried to maneuver around
the door as I opened it.
“What are you, a fragile flower?” Some
asshole jaguar sneered at me when I stood shakily holding on to the door and
trying not to smell my own vomit. “Maybe your brother wasn’t the one with the
lack of a tiger soul.”
I thought my brother was going to tear his
face off. He stalked forward and hissed, his eyes flashing red. “Want to see
which one of us is a bigger pussy?” He flexed his hands and his claws caught
the light from the mid-morning sun filtering through the trees. He flashed some
fang to go along with the guttural snarl.
The jaguar backed off. Fast.
Deke stood next to the car with the
driver’s door open. I glanced at him. “I’m surprised you didn’t step in there.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t have to. He’s been
getting really good at suppressing his feral urges. And he’s strong enough that
he rivals an alpha. He just has to trust himself like I trust him.”
“All right. Asshole’s handled, let’s get
Park home.” Ritch stood close until I carefully got into the car, then he shut
the door behind me. He went around the back of the car and got in on the other
side.
“Thank you,” I said.
He nodded, his cheeks pink. “Do you need to
put your leg up? You can turn sideways and rest it here. I grabbed a pillow
from inside.” He plopped a pillow covered in a green pillowcase between us. I
grunted and clenched my teeth but managed to keep what little remained in my
stomach down as I got as comfortable as possible for the ride home.
“I’ll take it as easy as I can.” Deke
reversed the car on the lawn and started down the mountain.
“Home sweet home,” I croaked. Deke dropped
us off, helping me up on the porch. He’d hurried back to the car where Kraig
was sleeping, and I totally understood. I wanted nothing more to go inside,
lock the doors, and curl up in my bed with Ritch until my wounds healed and I
knew he felt safe. He’d been taken from our territory, and the thought of what
he’d gone through made me both incandescent with rage and deathly afraid.
Trein was gone, we’d captured the other conspirators
who’d given up, and no more ferals had been found. What we knew pointed to
human werekin as the ones who originally contacted doctors who were willing to
experiment with werekin souls, but somehow Trein had learned about it and
subverted the plans to create something different, something worse. The
evidence pointed toward him, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be others
involved that we didn’t know about or that there weren’t more doctors and more
labs out there performing the same experiments.
But we’d done enough.
Deke would be involved in the decisions the
alphas made, but others were more suited to dealing with the interrogations.
Deke agreed to continue to go over the files that were found with Uncle Radford
to learn as much as possible. A massive convocation of every alpha in North
America was going to be called, with digital participation being organized for
those who wouldn’t be able to make it.
If the human government was involved or
other clans out there were considering the same plan, or coming up with a new
one now that Trein’s lab was blown to bits and buried in a huge cave in, we’d
find out and stop it. Or they would.
I’d lost my brother for years, he’d been
tortured and changed, our parents were dead, and our streak was reeling from
the news of my father’s traitorous actions and the attacks against us. As our beta,
I felt the need to protect and soothe them. We needed to focus inward for a
time.
But first, Ritch.
“We need to shower,” he said.
I agreed, and we hobbled to the bathroom
one painful step at a time.
“Let me get a plastic bag out of the
kitchen. I forgot.” Ritch closed the lid on the toilet and helped me sit down.
“Just stay right there.”
Exhaustion dogged me—I snorted. Dogged. I
pulled off my shirt and tossed it in the corner near the hamper. The pants were
harder until I flexed my claws and tore the seams. It wasn’t like they could be
saved anyway.
“Wow. I see you were busy.” The plastic bag
rustled in Ritch’s hands as he opened it.
“You just said to stay here. I stayed
here.”
“Good job,” Ritch said dryly. “Let’s get
this covered.”
He dropped to his knees in front of me to
slide the bag over my foot, and I stiffened. The last time he’d been on his
knees before me, a sadistic fuck had his claws at Ritch’s throat. The small
punctures were still visible. “I’m sorry.”
Ritch looked up. “What?”
I leaned forward and gently brushed a
finger over one of the marks. He flinched, and I had to suppress my urge to
snarl. “I didn’t protect you. I promised that you’d be safe here.”
“And I am. It’s not your fault. They took
your mom and Kraig too. They were sneaky fuckers who had no honor.” Ritch put
his hand over mine. “I know you did your best, so you shouldn’t feel guilty.”
“Now, let’s get this on.” He pulled the bag up
and then wrapped some tape around the top above the brace. He leered. “It’s
naked and wet time.”
TBC
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