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Wherever she’d been brought, whoever these men were whom Kade associated with, Je
“She’s been awake only for a few minutes?” asked the blond, his voice carrying just the barest hint of an English accent. At Brock and Alex’s joint nods, he walked up to the bed. “Hello, Je
She frowned back at him. “Like a bus ran me over. A bus that apparently dragged me from Alaska all the way to Boston.”
“It was the only way,” Lucan interjected, command palpable in his level, ask-no-permission tone. He was the leader here, no question about that. “You hold too much information, and you needed specialized care and observation.”
She didn’t like the sound of that at all. “What I need is to be back at home. Whatever that monster did to me, I survived it. I won’t be needing any kind of care or observation because I’m fine.”
“No,” Lucan countered grimly. “You are not fine. Far from it, in fact.”
Although it was said without cruelty or threat, an icy cold dread seeped through her. She looked to Alex and Brock—the two people who’d assured her just a few minutes ago that she was all right, that she was safe. The two people who’d actually managed to make her feel safe, after waking up from the nightmare that she could still taste on her tongue. Neither of them said a thing now.
She glanced away, stung and not a little afraid of what that silence might truly mean. “I have to get out of here. I want to go home.”
When she started to swing her legs over the edge of the bed to get up, it wasn’t Lucan or Brock or any of the other huge men who stopped her, but Alex. Je
“Jen, you have to listen to me now. To all of us. There are things you need to understand … about what happened back in Alaska, and about the things we still need to figure out. Things only you may be able to answer.”
Je
“That won’t happen,” Alex said. “The creature who attacked you—the Ancient—is dead. No one in Harmony is in danger from him now. Kade and the others made sure of that.”
Je
Alex glanced toward Kade and Brock, both of whom had moved closer to the side of the bed. Alex gave the faintest shake of her head, her brown eyes sad beneath the layered waves of her dark blond hair. “Oh, Je
She absorbed her friend’s words, reluctant to let the understanding sink in. Her brother—the last remaining family she had—was dead?
“No.” She gulped the denial, sorrow rising up the back of her throat as Alex wrapped a comforting arm around her.
On the wave of her grief, memories roared to the surface, too: Alex’s voice, calling to her from outside the cabin where the creature lurked over Je
There had been a gun blast outside the cabin, not even an instant before the creature leapt up and hurled itself through the weather-beaten wood panels of the front door and out to the snowy, forested yard. She remembered the sharp howl of her brother’s screams. The pure terror that preceded a horrific silence.
Then … nothing.
Nothing but a deep, u
She pulled out of Alex’s embrace, sucking back her grief. She would not lose it like this, not in front of these grim-faced men who were all looking at her with a mix of pity and cautious, questioning interest.
“I’ll be leaving now,” she said, digging deep to find the don’t-fuck-with-me cop tone that used to serve her so well as a trooper. She stood up, feeling only the slightest shakiness in her legs. When she listed faintly to the side, Brock reached out as if to steady her, but she righted her balance before he could offer the uninvited assist. She didn’t need anyone coddling her, making her feel weak. “Alex can show me the way out.”
Lucan pointedly cleared his throat.
“Ah, I’m afraid not,” Gideon put in, politely British, yet unwavering. “Now that you’re finally awake and lucid, we’re going to need your help.”
“My help?” She frowned. “My help with what?”
“We need to understand precisely what went on between you and the Ancient in the time he was with you. Specifically, if there were things he told you or information he somehow entrusted to you.”
She scoffed. “Sorry. I already lived through the ordeal once. I have no interest in reliving it in all its horrible detail for all of you. Thanks, but no thanks. I’d just as soon put it out of my mind completely.”
“There is something you need to see, Je
She paused, uncertain, and Gideon filled the silence of her indecision.
“We’ve been observing you since you arrived at the compound,” he told her as he walked over to a control panel mounted on the wall. He typed something on the keyboard and a flat-screen monitor dropped down from the ceiling. The video image that blinked to life on the screen was an apparent recording of her, lying asleep in this very room. Nothing earth-shattering, just her, motionless on the bed. “Things start to get interesting around the forty-three-hour mark.”
He typed a command that made the clip advance to the spot he mentioned. Je
“I don’t get it. What’s going on?”
“We’re hoping that you can tell us,” Lucan said. “Do you recognize the language you’re speaking there?”
“Language? It sounds like a bunch of jibberish to me.”
“You’re sure about that?” He didn’t seem convinced. “Gideon, play the next video.”
Another clip filled the monitor, images fast-forwarding to a further episode, this one even more u
It took a lot to scare her, but this psych ward video footage was just about the last thing she needed to see on top of everything else she was dealing with.
“Turn it off,” she murmured. “Please. I don’t want to see any more right now.”
“We have hours of footage like this,” Lucan said as Gideon powered down the video. “We’ve had you on twenty-four-hour observation the whole time.”
“The whole time,” Je
“Five days,” Gideon answered. “At first we thought it was a coma brought on by trauma, but your vitals have been normal all this time. Your blood work is normal, too. From a medical diagnostic standpoint, you’ve merely been …” He seemed to search for the right word. “Asleep.”