“Busy,”she replied. Fane’s eyes narrowed at the terseness of her voice.
“Make yourself unbusy. I need you.”Fane knew it wasn’t fair of him to use those three words. Of everything he could say to her, those words almost always made her come to him.
“Too bad, wolf-man.”
Fane’s feet stopped, and he frowned. The others walked past him before stopping to turn and give him a pointed look.
“Let me guess,” Wadim said. “She’s busy?”
Fane nodded.
“That’s funny,” said Costin. “Sally said the same thing.”
“So did Jennifer.” Decebel frowned.
“Bethany’s seething,” Drake said. “She doesn’t want me to come to her, but I’ll be damned if I am not going to check on her.”
“Just make sure you go in low,” Decebel offered. “If she’s been hanging out with Jen, then she’s definitely going to throw something at you.”
“Noted.” Drake continued forward.
Fane and the others looked at Lucian, waiting for his reaction.
Lucian chuckled. “What can I say? I’ve learned not to leave my mate wondering what I’m up to. You guys will learn. But by the looks of how it’s been going for you all, it will be a painful lesson.”
Fane looked at the others still standing with him. “Bring your mates to my office,” he said, speaking of the room they currently used as a meeting place. “If they argue, tell them it’s a command from their alpha, not a request from their friend.”
ChapterTwo
“Someone once said that all life is precious. That loud blaring sound you just heard was my BS meter going off. If all life is precious, then why do such horrible things happen to supposedly ‘precious’ people? And why do so many ‘precious’ lives end before they even have a chance to begin?” ~Kara
“Are we going to die?” Lizzy sat with her head down, running her fingertips over the rough shingles of the rooftop.
Kara was staring out at the lights scattered throughout the city, trying to keep from glancing over at Lizzy. Kara knew if she turned and saw the fear in the girl’s eyes, she might lose it for good. One of them had to be strong. Someone had to keep it together. Kara’s heart beat heavily in her chest as she fisted her hands to help control the shaking. Drying sweat chilled her body despite the warm evening. Slowly, her breathing began to return to normal. “I will not let anything happen to you, Liz.” Kara tried to put every ounce of bravery she could muster into the words, but they still sounded empty to her ears. Though Lizzy was only six months younger than Kara, her innocent nature often made the girl seem childlike, and Kara had become a protective older sister of sorts.
Lizzy wiped leftover tears from her face and sniffled, as strands of her waist length, blonde hair stuck to her wet cheeks. “Sometimes I want to die.”
Kara sucked in a breath and turned to take the girl’s face in her hands. “Don’t say that.” She shook her head and bit back the tears that wanted to flow from her eyes. “You have a long life to live, so much to do and see.”
“I don’t want to live in a world where there are bad people like him.” Lizzy swallowed hard as she wrapped her arms around her knees she’d pulled up to her chest. “I’m just a kid. I’m just—” She choked on her words. Lizzy’s head tilted from side to side as her chin rested on her arms. “He shouldn’t have done that, Kara.” She cried, her smaller body trembling again. “He shouldn’t have done that.”
Kara wrapped her arms around the girl. “You’re right, Lizzy-girl. He shouldn’t have done that. Never. Go ahead and cry now. Cry it all out.” Kara patted her friend’s back and then ran a hand down her blonde hair. “Cry all you need to. I won’t let you go.”
And she did. Lizzy cried for so long Kara feared the girl would become dehydrated. Kara tucked Lizzy tightly against her side, feeling the moisture of the girl’s tears soak her shirt. She rocked Lizzy and sang her songs, hoping to somehow calm the girl. In the end, she gave up and just cried with her. They sat like that for hours, crying and clutching one another. Kara cried for the loss of innocence that Lizzy suffered. She cried because she hadn’t been there to stop the atrocious act. She cried because there was a part of Lizzy that would forever be wounded because of one man’s evil.
“Make it go away, Kara,” Lizzy said softly through her hiccupping tears. “Make it so that I never met Mr. Jerry.”
Bile rose in Kara’s throat at the mention of Lizzy’s foster keeper. She wasn’t about to call the man a foster father. Nothing about him was fatherly. Not that Kara actually had any experience with what a father should be. But she was certain he wasn’t supposed to touch a child inappropriately. Kara knew a father should be a protector, not a predator. Men like Jerry Hammons needed to be strung up by their man parts and beat with a baseball bat. That was Kara’s opinion, anyway. “If I could, I would make it go away in a second,” she said. “I would fix it all, Lizzy.”
Suddenly Kara looked down. Lizzy was no longer in her arms, and she was no longer sitting on a roof. Now she stood in a living room that smelled of stale cigarette smoke and sweat. A torn and faded sofa rested along a wall, its floral decoration stained. An upturned coffee table sat in the middle of the room, one of its legs broken. Kara’s hands felt sticky and warm. She lifted them and saw they were covered in blood. Kara heard screaming and turned to see a woman stumbling through the door. She was wild-eyed, and it looked as if her stringy hair hadn’t seen a comb in months.
“What have you done?” the woman yelled at Kara. She was staring at the ground at Kara’s feet.
Kara looked down and saw the bloody body of a large man lying on his back. His chest did not rise and fall with his breath, and his eyelids didn’t so much as twitch under the lids. His skin was gray, and blood trickled from his mouth, nose, and ears. Kara blinked and looked at her hands again. Now she was holding a baseball bat covered in blood.
“You killed him,” the woman screeched.
She had killed him. Why had she done it? She glanced around the filthy room again until her eyes landed on something else. A smaller body lay on the floor, its skinny legs poking out from behind the couch. Kara dropped the bat and ran to the body. She kneeled next to it. “Lizzy,” Kara tried to say. But her stomach rolled violently, and only a strangled groan escaped. The girl lay face down, blood pooling around her head. Her eyes stared vacantly at the dirty carpet. Kara reached out a trembling hand and placed her fingers on her young friend’s neck. There was no pulse. She’d known there wouldn’t be. And that was why she’d killed the dead man. Jerry Hammons had beaten Lizzy to death, and Kara had returned the favor. She hoped he was burning in hell for what he’d done.
