Not my knife. A different one. Larger, meaner, stabbed into the wood of my front door with enough force to embed it deep. And pinned beneath it, a piece of paper with words scrawled in angry red letters.
You’ll go to hell for what you took from me, bitch. And your babies will follow.
I gasped, the sound catching in my throat. The smell of burning fabric, the chemical residue from the fire extinguisher, the stress and the pain and the terror all crashed together. Tears started streaming down my face without my permission, blurring my vision and making the threatening words swim in front of me.
Someone wanted to hurt my babies. Someone blamed me for something and they wanted my children to suffer for it.
My stomach cramped again, the worst one yet, and my knees buckled.
I heard my name being called from somewhere, the voice familiar and frantic, and then strong arms caught me before I could hit the ground.
“Where the fuck were you?!” Knox’s voice was a snarl, but he wasn’t talking to me. He was yelling at someone behind us, someone approaching fast.
“Alpha, I was just peeing for a moment, I swear, I only stepped away for a minute...” The voice belonged to a man, probably one of the guards Knox had posted around the house. He sounded terrified, his words stumbling over each other.
“Call an ambulance NOW!” Knox ordered, and the command in his voice left no room for argument.
Then he was focused entirely on me, his hands cradling my face, his gray eyes searching mine with desperate intensity. I could see him clearly now despite my tears. The fear in his expression. The guilt. The barely contained rage at whoever had done this.
“Baby, can you hear me? I’m here. You’re fine. I’m so fucking sorry I wasn’t here when this happened. You’re okay. I could feel you hurting through the bond. What happened? Can you tell me what exactly hurts?” He was rambling, the words tumbling out faster than he could control them.
I wanted to answer. Wanted to tell him about the fire and the blanket and the note, about the cramps that had been torturing me for the past hour, about how scared I was for our babies. But another cramp seized my stomach with brutal force and I curled into myself, all the air leaving my lungs in a silent scream.
Fuck. Fuck that hurt. That really fucking hurt.
“Quick!” Knox yelled at the guard, his voice cracking with desperation.
Through the haze of pain, I registered footsteps. Running footsteps approaching from the direction Knox had come from. Noah and Hunt appeared in my limited field of vision, both of them breathless and disheveled.
They must have been together. All three of them must have been somewhere together when Knox felt the commotion through the bond, which is why they’d all arrived within seconds of each other. Later I would ask Knox where he’d been, why he’d leftwithout a note, what had pulled him away from our bed in the middle of the night.
Later. If there was a later.
Noah took one look at the scene and grunted, “Kids.” He pushed past us and ran into the house, his footsteps thundering up the stairs toward the twins’ room.
Hunt was right behind him, pausing only long enough to say, “Will check for intruders,” before disappearing inside as well.
Good. Someone was checking on my babies. Someone was making sure the house was safe. I could let go a little, could focus on surviving this pain instead of worrying about everything else.
“Breathe with me, baby,” Knox said, his voice softer now. His hand pressed against my back, his touch warm and grounding. Through the bond I could feel him trying to push calm toward me, trying to take some of my pain into himself. It worked, a little. Not much.
“Stomach,” I managed to say between clenched teeth. “Hurts. Then there was a knocking...” I had to pause, had to breathe through another wave of cramps. “And fire. Someone burned... the baby’s blanket. There’s a note...”
“Okay, okay, baby. Hang on. Help is coming.”
I could hear sirens in the distance, getting closer. The ambulance. The sound should have been reassuring but I was having trouble focusing on anything beyond the pain and the fear and Knox’s face hovering above me.
Hunt emerged from the house just as the ambulance appeared at the end of the driveway, lights flashing white and red against the dark trees.
“House is clean,” Hunt reported, his voice tight. “No intruder scent. Whoever did this didn’t go inside. They must have taken the blanket earlier and waited.”
Knox didn’t look relieved. His jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping beneath his skin. The rage in his eyes promised violence to whoever had done this.
“Follow us to the hospital,” Knox ordered Hunt. “Noah takes the twins to our parents and stays there with them until I say otherwise.”
He didn’t wait for a response. He just scooped me up in his arms and started walking toward the ambulance that was pulling up to our house. The paramedics barely had time to open the back doors before Knox was climbing in, settling me onto the stretcher with a gentleness that contrasted sharply with the fury radiating off him in waves.
I was barely conscious by now. The pain and the stress and the fear had drained everything out of me. My eyes kept trying to close, kept trying to pull me down into darkness where I wouldn’t have to feel anything anymore.
