He nodded. “You and I can agree on that. Her safety is my number-one priority. She goes nowhere without me. So you can count on me, too.”
Cyrus nodded. Should he respond to the crack about his mate dying? Probably, except he wouldn’t. Lake’s brother was entirely correct. He had been negligent. Sara had died. He had to live with her tragic end forever, and, since the Moon was giving him another chance to do things better, he would not let anyone down.
“Gentleman.” An older woman approached the table. She had to be Matilda May, the werewolf they had been waiting for. Unless an abundance of older female werewolves ran around the diner. The older female had gray hair and shook a little as she pulled up a chair to sit down. Werewolves didn’t age like humans. Matilda had to be ancient to be showing signs of sickness.
The thought struck him as Lake rose to her feet again. She rushed forward and embraced the woman tightly.
“How long have you been feeling like this?”
Matilda gasped and didn’t let go of his mate. He sat back in his chair and gritted his teeth. Lake, pale and tired, had no business healing anyone. What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t ask her not to help any more than she could request he quit breathing.
What the hell was he going to have to do to keep her protected? Scurry her away somewhere where she never encountered anyone except by appointment?
“Lake? Is this you? I haven’t seen you since you were little….” Matilda laughed aloud. “Oh, you are powerful, aren’t you?”
“Are you going to allow this?” Cyrus drummed his fingers on the table. “She’s clearly not up for a healing.”
“You’re welcome to try to stop her. Ask yourself first, do you really want to die taking that hill? I know better than to put myself between a Healer and her charge.”
“Lake.” Cyrus shouted.
Beaux shook his head. “You never could listen.”
Travis laughed, the loud sound finally catching the group’s attention.
“Lake, when you’re finished could you sit down? Matilda will need a nap when you’re done with her, and I’m hoping she’ll give us some information before she takes off.”
Matilda squeezed Lake’s arms.
“Enough sweetheart. I appreciate the help. My back feels better, and there’s nothing you can do to fix the fact I’m two hundred years old.”
“Two hundred?” Beaux grinned. “Impressive. Not too many of us will make it so far.” The Moon had truly blessed her with longevity.
Lake let go, and he jumped to grab her arm before she stumbled. Her eyes met his, and a jolt made his spine stiffen. She could feel everyone else’s pain, and, damn, if he couldn’t feel hers as well. His mate was spent. They weren’t going anywhere after this except for a nap.
“I understand you have some questions for me.” Matilda sat down next to Travis and patted his arm gently. “I guess we should get to it before I ask about your mate, Travis, and how she’s doing.”
“She says hello, of course. She’s mad I didn’t tell her we were coming here earlier so she could have popped in the car and come to see you. Of course, the idea of her doing that nine-months pregnant would have given me fits.”
Lilliana was nine months pregnant? Beaux hadn’t known. Cyrus’ mate’s pregnancy was public knowledge, but Travis must have guarded Lilliana’s status tightly. Of course, Travis lived his life less out in the open than Cyrus.
Two so-called modern werewolves, and neither of them could count on keeping their mates safe.
“None of us will really be able to relax about anything until the True Believers are dealt with. We’ve been having a lot of problems.”
Matilda turned her gaze on Lake. “I heard about some of it.”
“I take it you two know each other.” He rubbed Lake’s back gently because he could.
“My father used to bring us here when we were young. He was determined to show Cyrus the neighboring communities. Maybe he had a sense of who my brother here would grow up to be.”
Cyrus shook his head. “I think he liked road trips.”
“That being said.” Travis rolled his eyes. “They kidnapped Lake. Beaux got her back, and now we need to find the missing children she encountered during her nonconsensual stay with the psychopaths.”
Matilda lifted her gaze to Lake’s. “I’m sorry it happened to you, honey.”
“Thank you.”
Her voice wavered and he wished he could kill Arlow all over again.
“We’ve had some intel come in suggesting the True Believers are stationed here in New Jersey under the direction of someone called Aaron.”
Travis ran a hand over the wolf tattoo on his wrist. “And the idea that someone could simply take and vanish with my child is enough to keep me up at night. We can’t go to the human authorities, and, frankly, since Lucian’s murder, we’re all shit out of luck in any capacity to work together.”
Matilda drummed her fingers on the table. “You know I don’t like to get involved. Of course, I’ve certainly broken my own rule enough in the past. Set you up with Lilliana, Travis. Let Cyrus and you drop off notes to each other in your endless treaty negotiations.” She sighed loudly. “There used to a group of True Believers in Sussex County. Maybe twenty years ago.”
“So long ago.” Beaux shifted in his seat. He wanted Lake closer.
“Unfortunately, less. Back then, a small group of Lone wolves banded together up there for a few years. They ran the True Believers out of there. But it’s been a long time since any of those fellows resided in those parts. Maybe the True Believers returned.”
Cyrus narrowed his gaze. “Do you remember where?”
“No, I’m sorry. I never visited.”
“Do you remember their names at least?” Beaux could hear the frustration in Cyrus’ voice. The fact he would ask this question showed how little time his future brother-in-law had spent with Loners. Even ones who wanted to be helpful like Matilda May.
“Nope.” She shook her head.
He took a deep breath. Lies had a stench, and he couldn’t scent one. It didn’t mean Matilda hadn’t figured out how to disguise her falsehoods like the rest of them. She was two hundred frickin’ years old.
Lone wolves didn’t rat each other out to Pack.
“What about the Lone Wolf Council? Would they have records?”
Matilda’s eyebrows shot up. “You know about the Council?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He smiled. “A lot of my pack is made up of former lone wolves. We do things a little different where I live. It appeals to some werewolves who believed they had to do it alone to make it.”
“They have a council?” Cyrus shook his head. “Why the hell would you all decide to form one, Matilda? If you want to band together, why not be Pack?”
“They help each other out.” Beaux shrugged. “It’s a lot different than putting up with you. The Council will help us if Matilda asks them to. Won’t they?”
Matilda nodded. “They will. And I suppose I’m going to because I don’t want nice girls getting kidnapped or any more children to go missing.”
“Good.” Travis laughed. “Because otherwise we were going to have to go door-to-door in Sussex County. That doesn’t sound productive.”
The door slammed open, and a waft a gasoline hit his nose before Beaux jumped up, keeping Lake in his arms. He swung around to face the twenty men and women swarming through the door wearing green shirts. It took him a moment to actually believe what his eyes showed him. They had logos. He growled out his disbelief. The True Believers had made up T-shirts.
“Come on.”
As fast as his two legs would take him he ran for the kitchen carrying Lake. Beaux had never fled a fight before, but his main priority had to be to get his mate away from them. There were two incredibly strong Alphas in the diner. They would have to handle things.
He knew Cyrus could fight. He’d seen it in Montana when they’d first encountered the True Believers. Hopefully Travis could, too.
r /> The two restaurants he’d worked at when he’d had to put himself through college had separate exits out of the kitchen. Hopefully this one did, too. Otherwise they were going out the window.
Dead bodies, presumably the kitchen staff, were strew all over and two True Believers wielding guns waited by the door. These assholes had moved fast and planned well.
“Lake.” He hissed in her ear. “I’m going to throw you. You’re a wolf. You’ll be fine.”
He didn’t know if he was reminding her about her werewolf-ness for his sake or for hers. Either way, when he suddenly tossed her toward the other sinks, she didn’t scream. He dove forward in time to grasp the man’s hand before he could shoot. The gun went off, bullets decorating the ceiling.
With a tug, he broke the man’s arm, dislocating it from its shoulder at the same time. The gun fell from his limp fingers, and Beaux caught it with his left hand. He swung around and fired taking out the other human before he had a chance to react. There were benefits to being faster than a regular human.
He swung on the one with the broken arm. Beaux hated guns. He always had. Human nonsense. He let the firearm fall from his fingers before he grabbed the son-of-a-bitch by the neck. Twisting it until it broke barely took any effort.
One more dead body on the floor….
He’d never been a monster until the humans had made him one.
The building stank more and more of gasoline. The stench could only mean one thing. Flames would follow. He whirled around. Lake perched on the counter. She looked unharmed, and he held out his hand.
“Come on.” She jumped down, unsteady on her feet, but she made it to him. “Good girl.”
“They’re wearing shirts with logos. Like they’re some kind of trade organization.”
Great minds thought alike.
“There are no words.” He rushed out the backdoor to the sounds of growls and snarls from the eating section of the diner. “I have to get you safe.”
The fighting sounded from the other direction. Clearly the True Believers had thought two idiots with a gun would be enough to handle the kitchen. He lifted Lake back up into his arms. They’d have to get away and meet up with the others later.
Lake tensed in his arms. “Oh. No. No. No.”
Violence. Healers didn’t manage it well.
“I’m getting you away. It’ll be okay.”
“No.” Her body froze up. “It’s Cyrus. He’s hurt or…something. Beaux, I can’t breathe.”
Damn it.
He ran a distance until he reached the other side of the parking lot and set her down behind a black truck.
“Stay here. I mean it, sweetheart. Don’t move. When I come back out, if you’ve run out to go shopping for shoes, I’m going to be pissed.”
She groaned and put her head against the side of the car. “Not funny.”
“I know. Bad joke. I’m going to go get your brother. Don’t move from this spot, Lake.”
“I won’t.” She nodded. “Thank you. I still can’t believe they had shirts made.”
Surprisingly enough, he actually could.
Chapter Twelve
Her whole body broke out with sweat. She gripped her gut, actually confused when she looked down and saw she wasn’t bleeding. Cyrus’ image passed in front of her eyes. Did his floating picture mean he had been the one hurt? It had to. And all of this pain could be placed on the True Believers’ shoulders. She’d been a problematic Healer before they’d taken her, and now she was downright awful.
Healers couldn’t function if their patient’s pain overwhelmed them. Not one who was supposed to be the Healer Prime, for sure.
She cried out again as another pain nearly overtook her. Beaux rushed back toward the building. Her mouth watered. He would kill the assholes in there who hurt her brother like he had overtaken Arlow….
What was the smell she couldn’t escape?
Lake sniffed at the air. She’d noticed it inside the building, but watching her mate disarm two gunman had taken up most of her attention. Now the smell was stronger. She stood up, gripping the side of the car. The human monsters had drenched the building in gasoline.
She was a little slow, but gasoline could only mean one thing. They were going to burn the place down. Beaux had rushed back in to help her brother. Travis. Matilda. All the humans who weren’t doing anything except eating.
Her heart clenched, and fear clouded her vision. The world tilted sideways. No. She wrenched her mind back from the pit of worry which would immobilize her. That wasn’t who was born to be. Not even a little bit.
Beaux had to remind herself inside that she was a werewolf. Fear didn’t factor into her world. She’d been made to conquer, designed to protect when she could and destroy when necessary. She stood between the sick and injured and told death to go away, not today. She’d brought Betsy back from the fucking dead.
Lake Fennell did not cower behind cars.
She stood up. Her legs were shaky, and her condition had deteriorated faster than she imagined it would. It was okay. While she lived, she would not hide. She’d promised Beaux, she would stay put. Damn it.
What if she could help? What was worse? Breaking a promise or not assisting when she could?
Her musings didn’t matter. It took her brain a moment to register what happened.
The scent of the smolder hit her nose before the black smoke burst through the back windows into the parking lot.
Oh, no. Not thinking about any promise anymore, she rushed forward until the sheer explosion of heat shot her backwards. She choked, grabbing her throat. Things did not catch fire so fast. It was like the whole thing came out of a movie. Matilda May’s diner on the side of a highway didn’t go from being intact one moment to seconds later being engulfed in flames.
She stared at the red-orange death now pouring out the windows.
“Beaux.” She cried out, her voice sounding hoarse. “Beaux.”
He didn’t answer her, and she would be crazy to think he would have. No way could Beaux call back. She’d sent him back inside the building right before it erupted.
Tears didn’t simply fall down her face. They exploded from her eye sockets like a dam breaking. He had to have been able to scent that building had been doused in gasoline, and he had gone in without so much as looking back.
Beaux had rushed inside because she had needed him to.
She sniffed the air looking for a trace scent, a dab of anything telling her Beaux was around and he lived. She detected nothing except the smoke and the gasoline. No Beaux. No Cyrus. No Travis…nothing except burned building.
Her nose itched, and she whirled around. There was another scent. Sirens whirled in the distance, which wasn’t surprising. Someone had seen the flames. There would be help coming. Not that it would do any good.
Lake didn’t care about any of it. Not when the recognizable scent of a human she knew wafted by her nose. Who was it? She sniffed again.
She never got the chance to give her nose the opportunity to catch up. The man who stepped out in front of her was like something out of a nightmare she couldn’t quite remember. The fear remained, but the details, the whys which would allow her to rationalize what happened, had fled leaving only an unexplainable urge to scream behind.
He was tall although not overly so. If he was a werewolf, and her nose told her he was not, he would be short. At six feet, he had height for a human. Dark curly hair on the top of his head gave the impression of softness, only she knew from the sneer on his mouth and the crazy in his blue eyes that this man could never be called gentle.
When he bent down to reach a hand to her, she flinched. He took his hand back.
“Do you remember me, Lake? You shouldn’t.”
“I shouldn’t?” She rose to her feet. “What do you mean?”
“It means we took precautions, you and I, to see you’d have no true memories of me when you went back home. Did it not work? Have I haunted your dreams?”
“I don’
t know who you are.” She wanted to gag from his stench. “Whatever drugs you’re taking you should stop. You reek like vinegar. It’s coming out of every one of your pores.”
He laughed. “And vinegar is your least favorite scent. You might be slightly allergic to it.”
“How did you know?”
Her heart rate kicked off. The man who should have been her mate and her brother were dead. Burned to death. She might not be functioning at full capacity, but this was ridiculous. How did this man—a human—know anything about her?
“You told me. When I cut the deal with you. Aaron, you said, if you eat a lot of vinegar, it’ll make me sick. Coupled with the slightest dose of poison I’ve been giving myself, it must be making you ill. Which was the idea, after all.”
“Your words don’t make any sense.” And what little deduction she could make from them made her want to throw up. He had to be lying. She would never have cut any kind of arrangement with this man. Not ever. Not in a million years.
“They will.”
He placed his hand in front of her face and snapped his fingers. The whole world went black.
****
The day she was taken
Lake hadn’t remembered the specifics of what had happened the day the True Believers had taken her. Now that she’d passed out—or whatever was happening to her, she wasn’t exactly clear—she couldn’t help remembering all the small details of her kidnapping. As if her mind insisted she relive every sordid detail.
The wind blew in her hair, and the early spring of New York City made her pick up her pace. She wasn’t cold, but she wanted to get where she was going before the sun set in the sky. Cyrus really didn’t like it when they were late for Full Moons.
Although Lake knew she remembered what happened, her experiences weren’t new. Nothing she witnessed was actually happening right then; she felt powerless to make any of it stop. Whatever the male who had called himself Aaron wanted from her, she was going to have to live through all of this again.