Chapter Thirteen
"Ash was the reason I even knew about the garage being on the market." Hannah felt compelled to come clean. She was still coming to terms with the whole mating thing and needed the clan to know that she might well be a part of whatever plan Ash had. "I hadn't even heard of Blackwater Falls until he sent me information about the garage and the sale. I had been looking to purchase a business like this one for years, but they were all out of my reach, financially. When this one came in just under what I could afford at the time, I jumped at it."
She should have been a little wary. Her dad had always said that if it looked and sounded toogoodto be true then it probably—
“He is coming for you.”Hannah jolted at the sound of the female voice in her head. It was the same voice that had tried to warn her the night of the break-in at the garage. She noticed Ryker looking at her in concern, and she smiled up at him to try to ease his anxiety. His frown remained so she knew she wasn’t successful.“You need to listen to me this time, child. He is almost here.”
Goddamn it, was she going crazy? Too many concussions maybe?
"Did any of you know that Kyle was unhappy at the garage and looking to sell before he actually made the announcement that he'd found a buyer?" Hannah half listened as Ryker asked a question she had been thinking herself.
Then the voice spoke again.“Please, child. His father was responsible for my death, and it almost cost my kin their birthright. Don’t let his son be responsible for yours.”
Holy. Shit.Was this Emily?
"He'd often talked about wanting to get out of Blackwater Falls," a tall man said from the back of the room, and indicated the woman sitting beside him with a nod of his head. "I and my mate always thought he never seemed happy here. The older he got the more aloof he became."
“He seemed only too happy to accept my offer,” Hannah said in an effort to hide her shock.
“Yes, my name is Emily, and when I say ‘now’, you need to drop to the ground. Just fall down as fast as you can.”
"He sure as fuck was no good at his job," another of the clan added. "My truck never ran right until the Alpha female got a hold of it." She barely registered the conversation around her now. Her heart began to pound as she realized that she was in danger. Imminent danger, that was apparently heading in her direction, and he had her directly in his sights.
“Be ready,”Emily warned.
"What the hell does that mean? You think Karl has something to do with all of this?" Hannah heard Bastian ask the question, but her attention was held by a blur of movement she spotted at the back of the room.
“Now!”Emily cried out, and this time Hannah followed her instructions, letting her knees give out and dropping straight to the floor. She heard the rapport of a gun and at the same time felt a flash of pain across her left clavicle as she headed for the ground. The pain was so intense, it robbed her of breath and speech when she would have called out a warning to her mates to drop with her. Bastian and Ryker reached out to her simultaneously anyway, and both dropped to their knees beside her.
Her mates were growling, and she could feel the anger and grief rolling from them. As she lay there fighting shock and nausea, she closed her eyes. She knew she was bleeding. She could feel the warm slide of her blood flowing from the wound on her shoulder.
“Your whore is dead!” Ash yelled from the other end of the room. “It is only a matter of time, and the great Blackwater Falls Alphas will follow her into death.”
So, that was his plan. The bastard only ever befriended her because he knew she was destined for her mates and arranged for her to move here to put her in their path so that he could kill them.What an asshole!
She forced her eyes open, and her gaze locked with Bastian’s. Her heart stuttered at the pain and grief that shimmered beneath the rage she saw there.
“I’m not dead,” she whispered as quietly as she could, and she felt the jolt of surprise shudder through both men. “Don’t let him know. Let him think he’s won.”
She felt Ryker’s hand squeeze once around hers and saw Bastian’s almost imperceptible nod. She watched as Bastian dropped to press a kiss to her temple, pretending to be the grief-stricken lover. “Thank God you’re okay, baby.”
“I am,” she whispered back. “I’ll have another scar, and Lucas will need to have another look at me, but I’ll live. Go. Kick that fucker’s ass for me.”
Bastian winked at her as he pulled back. She lay there as still as possible, waiting for her mates to reap the revenge she knew they so richly deserved.
****
“I’m going to fucking end you, wolf,” Ryker snarled as he jumped from the stage and began to walk down the aisle, signaling to his clan to stay back. Ash wouldn’t use the gun. If he took him and Bastian out with a bullet, he would forfeit his life to the council.
He heard Bastian drop down to the floor and follow behind him. He knew Bastian would have had to fight every instinct within him to walk away from their mate, but they had to make Ash believe that she was dead. That both were prepared to meet him and his pack in battle with nothing left to lose.
Ash crossed his arms over his chest, and Ryker looked forward to wiping that shit-eating grin from his face. “I’m not sure how you’re going to be able to accomplish that, Ryker. With your mate dead, you can’t shift, and you’re getting weaker by the second.”
Ryker smiled, enjoying the confused look his reaction got from the prick. “Man, you wolves just never fucking learn, do you? You go to a witch, you dabble in black magic, and you expectnotto have your ass handed to you. If history has taught us anything, Ash, you fucking idiot, it's that the course of action you took, never gets you what you want.”
Ash snarled, his wolf gleaming in his eyes. “I’m about to change history, in this case, asshole!” Ash made a move with his arm, and the large wolves in the room began to growl. All carried battle scars, and Ryker knew he was looking at the pack’s enforcers. The wolves they had faced before had simply been pawns. Ash would have brought them to lay waste to any challenges from Ryker’s clan after he and Bastian died. He would want to keep this as righteous as possible to avoid the Shifters’ Council getting involved.
“So, what’s next in this grand plan of yours, Ash?” Ryker asked as he continued to step forward, his gaze never wavering. “You challenge me, we fight, you win, your pack here deals with those who would fight in my clan, and then what? You think that will give you the right to Blackwater Falls?”
