“Fine. But I really don’t have time to go out to the airport. We’ve got a delivery right before he lands.”
“I can manage the delivery.”
Adri just shook his head. If they weren’t under threat, Jay could’ve handled it, but Adri’s jaguar wouldn’t rest unless he could eyeball the delivery staff himself. The vampire wasn’t usually involved in that side of the business. He wouldn’t notice if something was off like Adri would.
“I need to be here.”
“Fine. I’ll message the doc and tell him to come straight to the gym, then.”
Adri bit off another yawn. “He already told me he’s cleared his calendar for the next three days. I doubt he’s going anywhere else.”
Jay came further into the room, pulling him to his feet and shepherding him out toward his apartment. “I’m glad you’refinally accepting the bond between you,” he said, voice soft like he didn’t want to panic him.
Adri huffed. “It’s not like I could avoid him forever.”
“Didn’t stop you trying,” Jay pointed out.
“I swear it doesn’t mean I’ll abandon any of you.”
Jay’s sharp laugh startled him as they reached the door to his place. “No one ever thought it would mean that except you. No more excuses. No regrets. Lock him down already.”
Waving off his friend, Adri staggered off to bed, setting his alarm for two hours later so he’d have plenty of time to shower and get himself more presentable before he dealt with the delivery. He hadn’t told his friend the real reason he’d refused to stop working on that schedule, despite it being long past midnight, was that he didn’t want any distractions once Rafe returned. He didn’t intend to let his mate out of his bed for the rest of the day.
It wasn’t his alarm that woke Adri up an hour and a half later.
A concussive boom loud enough to have his jaguar reeling as his eardrums bled had him shooting upright just in time for half his roof to collapse on top of him. If he’d still been lying down, he would’ve been crushed beneath one of the concrete structural supports. Instead, he took a glancing blow to the head as he rolled for cover, choking on masonry dust. The floor dropped out from beneath his feet as he shifted, sinking into animal instinct and letting his jaguar’s enhanced senses minimise the damage they took.
His apartment had been on the top floor of the building, along with Jay and a few others. The rest of his fighters lived on the floor below. When the world finally stopped disintegratingaround him, he was pretty sure his bed was now resting at street level, and one of his legs was pinned between shattered construction materials. Somehow, the rest of him had managed to land in a pocket of relative safety, but he couldn’t see a thing.
Letting out a sawing roar of anger, Adri dragged his mangled limb clear and scrabbled at the wreckage in the direction he was pretty sure his window had been. He neededout. Needed out so he could dive back in to save his people. Needed out so he could rend whoever did this limb from limb and paint the streets with their blood. Needed out so his mate could find him and he could burrow into his scent and finally breathe again.
CHAPTER 14: ADRI
If he hadn’t shifted,Adri probably wouldn’t have been able to drag himself through the gaps in the haphazardly arranged remains of his building to get clear. The pads of his jaguar’s paws were much better able to navigate the uneven surfaces that his bare human feet would have been, but he was pretty sure he’d stood on a shard of glass somewhere that had lodged in his foot. He didn’t have time to take it out as he directed the fighters who’d got clear and the neighbours who’d come running to search the wreckage. Their shifter senses at least meant they could hear the muffled breaths and cries for help from within.
A low growl sounded behind him as he hauled a doorframe to the side and threw it behind him. Adri hissed as he twisted on his injured foot to face the noise before Rafe’s familiar scent rolled over him like a blanket, right before an actual blanket wrapped around his shoulders.
“I followed a trail of your blood to you, kitten. You couldn’t take two minutes to let your body reject whatever’s in your foot? Sit the fuck down and let me get it out,” Rafe said, grabbing a pair ofsweats from a wolf shifter passing by and shoving them at Adri’s chest hard enough to make him stumble before pulling him into an embrace so tight he couldn’t breathe.
“The pack’s here?” Adri asked, finally taking in the collection of SUVs parked around them and Marco’s commanding presence talking into a phone in the distance.
“Of course, the pack’s here. You’re ours, and so is everyone in that building. Now get dressed so you can sit down.”
Adri winced again as he pulled the sweats on, a cry of protest leaving his lips as Rafe swept him up into his arms to carry him over to the open boot of his SUV. One of his pack mates offered to help, but Rafe snarled so viciously that the guy just backed away with a smirk before returning to the chaos of the bomb site.
Holy fuck. Someone had bombed the building. Guilt flooded through Adri. How had he failed his people so badly?
“This wasn’t your fault,” Marco rumbled, reaching out to grip his nape firmly as Rafe dropped to a crouch with a torch gripped between his teeth and medical tweezers in hand to sort his foot out.How had the Alpha snuck up on him?
“You’re still healing a concussion from whatever fell on you,” Rafe growled, his hands soft and gentle in sharp contrast to the anger in his voice as he pulled a sliver of glass free. Apparently, he’d said that thought aloud.
“Breathe, Doc. He’s safe,” Marco said.
“I wasn’t here when he needed me,” Rafe shot back.
Dropping the glass into a bin, Rafe held a towel to his foot as he felt his shifter healing finally knitting the skin back together. It was only a small injury. If he hadn’t been scrabbling around inthe rubble and continually pushing it back in, it would’ve healed immediately.
“I’m okay, Rafe,” Adri said, tugging the doc closer by his waist.
