She holds Diego’s hand to her chest, her dark eyes transfixed on what Olly’s doing. She watches the whole gruesome procedure without moving, without flinching. The entire time, she purrs and rubs Diego’s hand. I get the feeling if I tried to kick her out, she’d sooner fucking murder me than leave his side.
I shake off the oddity and hand the other end of the tubing to Olly, who hooks it up to Diego’s IV. Auryn casts a quizzical glance at the setup, and as Olly snaps off his gloves after bandaging Diego’s midsection, she speaks for the first time since the procedure started.
“What’s that for?”
I’m exhausted. Scared. But she’s holding her shit together better than expected, so I figure she’s earned some explanation. Who knows? Maybe it will help calm her down a bit.
“He needs blood. He lost too much from the gunshot wound. My blood’s the strongest, so I’m giving him some to replace what he lost.”
“Won’t that weaken you?”
“A bit, but it’s worth it if he recovers.”
Her eyes glisten with unshed tears. “If?”
The word is soft, quiet, barely audible, and the terror behind it is not lost on me. I hate that she’s scared, hate that she’s worried, hate that I can’t fix it right now.
“He’ll recover. He has to.” I force a smile. “He’s got a pretty girl waiting for him to get better.”
Olly clears his throat. “Um, Gage, can I ask questions now?”
Shit. He took my order to heart, all right. “Yes, Olly. Ask away.”
“Where’s Emmett?”
I look at Auryn. “They have him. He risked his life to give Diego a chance to get out, and the Orions took him.”
The tears she was holding back fall free, and she sobs. “They’ll … The things they will do to him … Oh, Gage, we have to get him back. We have to go now, we have to–”
I hold up a hand, stopping her panicked rambling. “Auryn, baby, I understand how you feel, but if they got the jump on Diego and Em, they’ll tear me apart if I go back in alone. I’ll need Diego, probably Olly too, and I’ll need a plan. I can’t just run back there while you two watch over him.”
“You’re missing someone,” she says, scowling at me through the tears.
I point at myself, then Olly, then Diego. “I’ve got all three of us. Who do you think I’m missing, hm?” I already know the answer, but she has no idea what she thinks she’s doing.
Auryn squares up her shoulders and looks me dead in the eye.
“There’s no way in hell you’re going back there to get Emmett without me.”
Chapter 24
Olly
I’ve never been so caught between a rock and a hard place before. My skin itches and my insides twist as I look between Gage and Auryn. Despite her size, Auryn stands tall, staring at Gage with a fire that reminds me of that first day. The first day I saw her, standing just beside that cliff. Before she jumped.
The air is thick with the scent of cinnamon and bourbon. It’s sweet, spicy. Heavy, like slow-pooling molasses.
Gage narrows his gaze at her, growling in tandem, and I note the faintest hunch of her shoulders. I’ve seen Gage do the same thing, when he’s ready to attack, and something about that pops the bubble of terror, and I step in. I don’t think for once, I just act, because I know if I don’t, we’ll have more than one bleeding pack member on our hands, and I’m not equipped to run this compound myself.
Sure, I can hold the fort down while the others are out, and I have—many times—but in those instances, usually it’s just me. Not me, a feisty omega, a bloody packmate, and a short-circuiting alpha.
“Auryn,” I say her name first, my voice low and careful. It takes everything I have in me right now to keep it from shaking because as a beta, every part of my body wants to whine, to whimper.
My alpha is in distress. My omega is in distress.
I am in distress.
But my needs do not compare to the needs of my pack. And my pack’s needs do not compare to Auryn’s needs.
