We watched for a few seconds as the woman wiped up blood and secured Lucas’s nose as best she could. It was obviously broken and no longer sat straight on his face.
“I bet dis bakes you habby,” Lucas told Linus, his entire body slumped in defeat and exhaustion. “Be’re not idendical anybore.”
Linus breathed in quickly, then blurted out, “We were never identical, Lucas. Only on the surface.”
I was so proud of my omega that I could have roared. Instead, I held him tighter as the paramedic gave the okay forthe officer watching over Lucas to lift him to his feet and march him off to one of the cop cars that now packed the long drive.
“You next, sir,” the paramedic said.
I had to let go of Linus so that the paramedic could check my ribs. That involved removing my shirt and the vest so she could poke around at the bruise, then bind my torso.
As she did, Linus stood up to survey the scene, saying, “Dad and Papa are going to be so pissed off about this.”
I imagined they would be. The whole area, which had been so peaceful and idyllic the day before, buzzed with activity now. Several police officers had gone out to the boat, and in addition to now having two men handcuffed and seated on the dock, waiting to be taken away, they were in the process of bringing out loads of what looked like bricks from the boat’s hold.
Another team of men had the back of the van open and were pulling out its contents. There was now a row of handbags, some of them open to show the guns inside, lined up outside the boathouse. Zane stood in the middle of everything, talking to someone on his phone, while Fenn and a couple of the others nodded and looked like they were waiting for orders.
When Zane noticed me watching, he moved his phone aside for a second, then said something to Fenn. Fenn nodded, then made his way over to us.
“Good job, guys,” he said as soon as he reached us.
Linus backed quickly away from him, putting me and the paramedic between them, which was the biggest sign his heat had ended that it was possible to get.
“Did your boss get everything he needed?” I asked, my voice coming out hoarse and wheezy as the paramedic finished binding my ribs.
“Nothing is broken,” she added quickly. “Just bruised. You’ll still need to make a trip to the hospital, though.”
I nodded, then glanced up at my brother as she packed up her things and moved on to one of the wounded criminals.
“Zane’s not my boss,” Fenn said, looking far too satisfied with himself, given the situation. “At least, not yet. He did mention something about me putting in a transfer to BSI, if I’m interested.”
“Are you?” I said, groaning as I muscled myself to stand.
Linus might have been suffering from post-heat touch aversion, but that didn’t stop him from leaning into me so I could put my arm around him. I could feel that his need for comfort outweighed his instinctive dislike of touch just now.
“I might,” Fenn said with a shrug. “It’s not that I don’t like thwarting shoplifters and standing around for crowd control at events, but this was….” He glanced around at the yard, the arrests that were being made, and the illegal arms and substances being collected for impoundment, and shrugged. “This was kinda fun.”
I snorted a laugh and shook my head. “You’ve got a strange idea of fun.”
Fenn grinned and slapped my upper arm, then immediately looked sorry. “How are your ribs?” he asked.
“I’ve had worse,” I said, probably more seriously than I should have. But I’d had much worse. I had the scar on my forehead and several all over my body to prove it.
My scars and bruises were nothing compared to the swirl of emotions I felt from my omega, though. Fenn seemed to sense Linus and I needed a few minutes alone. He made an excuse to leave and headed back to Zane.
“What do we do now?” Linus asked, clinging to me.
I slipped an arm around him and pulled him close, even though I could tell he felt all prickly and weird. “I guess we wait for instructions,” I said. “You know they’re going to want tointerview us about every last detail of how we got here and how much we knew in advance.”
“They’ll believe us when we tell them we had nothing to do with the drug deal, right?” my omega asked, looking up at me uncertainly.
I bent down to kiss his head, even though it was agony with my bruised ribs. “Yeah, I’m sure Fenn has already taken care of all that. Zane knows we’re involved on his side.”
Linus nodded. I could tell he wasn’t saying more because just about every last ounce of energy had been sapped out of him.
That was why I flagged one of the policemen over to ask what they needed from us. The guy was a beta, but he seemed sympathetic to everything we were feeling. He checked with Zane, and Linus and I got the okay to grab a few things from the house, then to claim a place in one of the ambulances heading to the nearest hospital with police supervision.
It was just our luck that the other passenger in that particular ambulance was Lucas.
