"What? No! I mean, yes. I really like Bridget. No, it wasn't that they were mated," Apollo stammered out. "It was other stuff. I don't want to talk about it."
"Okay," Lachlan replied and turned the car on. He wanted to push, but there was no point. Apollo would talk when he was ready, and it wouldn't be with him. Lachlan's hands tightened on the wheel because he really wanted Apollo to speak to him about everything—or anything really. They drove out of the estate and onto the highway in silence.
"Lachie?" Apollo asked a few moments later.
"Yeah?"
"Thank you for saving me."
Lachlan turned to smile at him. "Any time, Apollo. You're actually surprisingly cute when you're wasted."
"I am not," Apollo huffed.
"You were quotingShrek 2non-stop. And doing all the voices." Lachlan's smile widened when Apollo started to laugh.
"If you tell anyone about that, I will?—"
Something slammed into Lachlan's side of the car, and the world tipped upside down. He must have blacked out for a second because he came to with Apollo's panicked cries.
"Not again. Not again. Lachie! Oh, fuck. Open your eyes, Lachlan!" Apollo shouted. "If you die on me, I'll be so angry, you fucker!"
"I'm…'kay," Lachlan tried to say. He opened his eyes and found they were both hanging upside down. "'pollo."
"I'm okay too," Apollo said, despite the blood dripping down his face. His eyes were glowing gold and angry. "They fucking hit us."
Lachlan tried to reach for the seatbelt clip, but his arm was pinned awkwardly.
"Don't let them take you," he said urgently, panic waking him up.
People were talking outside the car before Apollo's door was ripped off its hinges.
"Let me go! Don't you stick that in me, you fucking…"
Apollo's cries were cut off, and Lachlan roared in anger. He pulled against his seatbelt straps, trying to reach for Apollo. Their attackers ignored him as they cut the seatbelt, holding an unconscious Apollo. They caught him before he could fall and dragged him out of the wreck.
No, no, no.Lachlan couldn't let this happen. He found the knife in his boot and cut his seatbelt. He slammed into the broken dash and tried to free his pinned legs. He tore his shins up but finally got them loose.
Cursing, he pulled his way out of Apollo's door and crawled free. Cars were piled up around them, and one van was zooming off into the distance. Lachlan managed to quote the number plate back to himself three times.
He found his phone with a cracked screen and pressed his contacts in frustration. The phone began to ring, but before anyone answered, darkness crept in around him, and he slumped to the wet asphalt.
6
Lachlan woke with Valentine standing over him. The eldest Greatdrakes raised a dark brow.
"Oh, good. You're awake at last. Where the fuck is my brother?' he asked.
"Let him wake up before you start interrogating him, bro," Reeve chided.
Lachlan's brain was scrambled as he tried to remember how he got into the infirmary. The car, the crash...Apollo.
"Apollo!" he groaned and sat up. "They took him."
"Easy, Lachie. You are pretty bashed up," Charlotte said from where she stood at the end of the bed. Lachlan had been stripped down to his boxer briefs and had Charlotte's healing bandages over his shins and another on his side.
"They hit us hard but with precision. They didn't want to kill Apollo. They injected him with something. Left me to die," Lachlan rambled and rubbed at his face. He rattled off the registration number of the van. "It was a white van. Same make and model as the one last night. Fuck. I need my phone."
"You need to drink this," Charlotte said primly, handing him a vial. His heart clenched when he saw it was one of Apollo's'Ouch No More' specials. He downed it and gagged before chasing it with a glass of water.
