My face pales and my hands shake at the sight as my own whimper fills the room.
twenty-eight
Xenia
Luther and Pierce are bloodied and bruised but they’re alive.
“Leave them be. They aren’t a part of this. I came here of my own volition.” I don’t look any of my alphas in the eyes as I speak. I would break in this moment if I did.
“She's ours,” Luther growls, spitting blood onto the ground. “I told you she came here by choice. Itoldyou that she’s alive but you wouldn't listen, you wouldn't hear us.”
Vinny doesn't react, his entire focus is still on my face. On my breath, my cheeks, my lips, my eyes. On me. As if he is examining every part of me to make sure that I am in fact right in front of him, that I am alive.
The sensation causes my skin to crawl. He is a scientist, and I am a creature underneath a microscope.
I can tell the moment he believes that I am in fact alive in his arms. His eyes narrow, his nostrils flare. His tight hold turns crushing,painful. “What would make you come here?”
My attention skirts over my three men. Luther and Pierce are tied to chairs but Wren is quickly undoing the knots and no one is stopping him, but some of Vinny’s men hold guns pointed firmly at my alphas.
“I’ll tell you the truth, but you have to promise not to hurt them. Everything that happened here is my choice.” I use my hands to push off of Vinny’s chest, forcing him to let me go. I stumble a bit as gravity tugs me to the floor.
Carefully, so as not to startle Vinny, I move, placing myself between the alphas and him. Creating a physical barrier.
He raises his hand, and his men holster their weapons. Even so, none of us dare to move.
“Their son witnessed something he shouldn’t have. Explain to me how you ended up here if not for them using you as protection,” Vinny growls, his hands clenching and unclenching into fists. “It's clear to me that they found a Rossi by design.”
“They didn't even know I was going to be here. I got the address from the clinic. They turned me away when they realized I was a Rossi. Thought I was sent here because ofyou.” I turn to face Luther. To tell him what I should have before now.
His lips are busted, his left eye already swelling, but still he offers me the softest of smiles.
“Just over a month ago, I went to First Chapter Clinic to ride out my heat.”
“You didn’t.” Vinny’s voice is bitter frost behind me.
I don’t turn to face him. “I did.”
“You all get out!” Vinny shouts into the room.
I am confused by who he is talking to, but then I watch his goons retreat, hear everyone leave.
“Boss?” Marcus is seemingly the last straggler. “Are you sure? Serena—”
“Serena isn’t here.Go. I will be fine,” Vinny barks.
When Marcus leaves too, Vinny walks up until he is pressed against my back. His arms wrap me to him from behind. “You’re pregnant.” The words ghost my ear.
Shock, confusion.
How can he possibly know that?
“Stay still,” Vinny warns the alphas.
Luther breaks free from his restraints, but then there is hard and cool metal pressed to my temple.
The sensation is…familiar? But it doesn’t scare me in the slightest.
As if I had guns pressed to my head so often I had become numb to it.
