“Is your bite poisonous?” Trevor asked Adam as they made their way to the gym.
“Apparently,” Adam said.
Trevor would have loved to hear more, especially about what kind of frigging shifter Adam was that allowed him to do something like that. But then another thought struck him.
“How do you…you know…kiss a woman with a mouth like that?”
Alina shot Trevor a look like he was crazy, but Adam chuckled.
“Carefully. Very carefully.”
* * *
“What the hell are we going to do with her?” Alina whispered to Trevor as they sat back against one of the walls in the gym, her gaze on Sage, who was presently curled up in Staff Sergeant Derek Mickens’s arms, sleeping. “It’s not like Derek can hold her like that for the next three days until we figure out what to do with the hybrids and other prisoners we had to put in her room.”
Trevor sighed and wrapped his arm around her, pulled her closer. “One problem at a time. Sage is calm right now. That’s as much as we can ask for at the moment.”
He was right. They’d dealt with enough problems for one night. Seeing so many of his friends seriously injured had taken a lot out of Trevor. He might have been trying to act like he wasn’t upset, but Alina knew he was hurting. Sighing, she turned her gaze back to the feline hybrid and the only person who seemed to be able to keep her calm and accepted they couldn’t solve every problem in one night.
It had taken hours for the chaos inside the gym to calm down enough for Alina to take a breath and allow herself to think for one second that maybe everything was going to work out okay. Maybe everyone they knew and cared about would make it out of this alive.
She, Trevor, and Adam had entered the gym carefully after dealing with Thorn, fearing the worst. But while the fighting was over, that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything left to be done.
First, there were the injured to care for—and there were a lot of them. No one had gotten through the battle unscathed. Declan had been clawed up so badly, he was in some kind of self-induced deep sleep hibernation mode that scared the hell out of Alina. He looked dead, but Trevor assured her he was healing and would be fine.
Danica had just regained consciousness a few minutes ago but still had a concussion. Minka, Dreya, and Braden were nursing broken bones. Jaxson had suffered multiple knife wounds and a dislocated shoulder. Clayne’s thigh had been ripped open from knee to hip, nearly to the bone. And even though Alina had no idea how it had happened, Evan ended up with a gunshot wound to the shoulder. She hadn’t even realized he’d come to help. As if all that weren’t enough, Morgan was still passed out from losing so much blood.
Zarina had been waiting outside the gates of the DCO until the shooting had stopped, then rushed in as fast as she could. The Russian doctor hadn’t bothered getting the worst of the injured to the lab but simply performed surgery right there on the floor of the gym, starting with Morgan, then moving on to Clayne, Evan, and Jaxson, one right after the next like some kind of machine. Only after she’d gotten the seriously wounded stabilized had she moved them to the lab for X-rays, casts, and stitches. Landon had suggested calling in additional help, but Zarina had shaken her head.
“These are my patients,” she told him. “I’ll care for them.”
While Zarina had been caring for the injured, Alina and Trevor had focused on secondary concerns. First, they’d convinced the local police and FBI agents who showed up at the front gate that all the shooting had been nothing more than a big training exercise. Unbelievably, the BS line had worked, keeping the place from getting overrun with law enforcement types who would have had a serious problem understanding why there were so many people in the gym torn to shreds. Alina had no idea how they were going to hide this, but step one was keeping it quiet.
Then they’d turned their attention to another dicey problem. Several of Thorn’s hybrids and even more of his paid muscle had given themselves up, and no one knew what to do with them. Adam suggested they simply execute them, but neither Alina nor Trevor would allow that. Still, it wasn’t like they could cart them off to jail, either. Trevor had used the threat of jail to try to get Thorn to drop his weapon, but she had no idea what the charges would have been. Conspiracy to start World War III?
While Thorn’s men wouldn’t have been much of a problem in prison, did they really want to turn a group of intelligent and lethal hybrids over to the justice system? Alina could imagine the CIA getting their hands on them so they could start up a shifter-like program of their own.
But they sure as hell couldn’t let them go, either. As Alina had already learned with Sage, the DCO didn’t have cells for holding prisoners, especially ones who could tear through walls with their fists. Left with no choice, Landon’s Special Forces buddies had herded them into Sage’s makeshift prison. Now they had nowhere to put the feline hybrid.
While Sage had held it together and even protected Jaxson and several of the analysts, after watching so many people get hurt, she’d lost control and started lashing out at anyone who came near her. If Derek hadn’t been there, who knew what would have happened?
But like Trevor said, one problem at a time.
“To tell you the truth, I’m more worried about Tanner than Sage,” Trevor said softly.
Alina glanced at Tanner. He wasn’t physically injured beyond a really nasty bite wound on one of his arms, but the mental wounds he seemed to be suffering from were obviously severe. Right now, he was sitting on the floor by himself, his gaze fixed on the bodies of the men and hybrids he’d torn to pieces after he’d completely lost it. The expression on his face was so empty and lost, it was painful to see.
She couldn’t imagine what he was going through. Sage might have lost control, but she’d never tried to hurt any of the people she knew. The same couldn’t be said of Tanner. According to Landon, Tanner had turned on Carlos Diaz. The only reason Diaz had survived was because he was a shifter. While no one blamed Tanner for what happened, his actions still weighed heavily on him. Alina knew from experience that pain like Tanner was feeling couldn’t be eased with a few words. He was going to have to deal with it on his own—at least until he was ready to let someone help him.
As if he’d been having those same thoughts, Tanner slowly stood up and headed for the front entrance of the gym. He must have felt Alina’s eyes on him, because he stopped and looked at her as if wondering whether she might try to stop him. Part of her wanted to, but she knew deep down that he needed some time to get things straight in his head. After a moment, Tanner turned and walked out.
On the other side of the gym, Landon and Ivy were arguing with Diaz. Alina couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it seemed to be getting heated.
“What’s that all about?” she asked Trevor.
He followed her gaze, then chuckled. “Diaz thinks he was turned into a shifter because he was bitten by a hybrid last year. Landon and Ivy are trying to convince him that isn’t possible and that if he’d give Zarina a sample of his blood, she could confirm that for him. Diaz doesn’t seem thrilled with the idea.”
Alina studied the Special Forces soldier. “Is that possible? Could he have been turned from a hybrid bite?”
