“Are you hurt?”he demanded as he undid the ropes around her wrists and ankles.He hugged her and she fell against him with a soft sob.“I’m okay.Are you?”
“Hell yes,” he said.He leaned back, smoothing the hair away from her face.“They’re all dead.They won’t be a threat to us anymore.”
“I knew you’d come for me.But Colton did too.He took me to lure you here so he could kill all of you.And then me too, because I’m human and I know the secret.”
“He was psychotic,” Ford said.“He would still be alive if he’d just walked away.He lost everything, including his life, because he didn’t know how to accept defeat.”
He helped her to her feet and then lifted her into his arms.
“Why are you half naked?”she asked.
“I shifted.”
“Oh.You did?”
“Colton shifted first.It would be foolish to fight a horse as a man.”
“Is everyone else okay?I heard your friends come and the two guys who were with Colton ran outside and left me alone.”
“Let’s find out.”
He carried her outside where his friends were discussing what to do with the bodies.
“How are you?”Crew asked Darcy.“We have a friend who is a medical doctor at the park if you need anything.”
“I’m okay, just a little sore from being tied up.I had a headache from when they knocked me out, but it’s gone now.”
“If you need anything, just ask,” Crew said.
“What’s going to happen to them?”Darcy asked.
“We don’t leave shifter bodies for humans to find, so we’ll burn them, but we’ll do it back at the farm.”
They’d come in two vehicles, but it was dangerous to try to carry two dead bodies and a dead horse on the road to the farm, so it was decided that Avi and Grey would shift, and they’d wrap up the bodies and the guys would take them through the woods to the farm with Crew in his human form to watch out for them.
“I’ll drive one of the vehicles,” Khyle said.“You guys can drive the other.”
“We’ll meet you at the far end of the field,” Crew said as Grey and Avi began to strip and hand their clothes to Khyle for safekeeping.
Ford put Darcy on her feet and finished dressing.They didn’t want to leave anything behind.“We’ll be there,” Ford said.He sent Darcy to sit in the truck so that she didn’t have to watch them handle the bodies.They used a tarp, blankets, and rope they found in the cabin and made a large, makeshift stretcher for the two males to pull together.It wouldn’t be an easy trek through the woods, but the cabin wasn’t actually that far from the farm.They’d found a place just far enough away that Grey hadn’t been able to track it.
Ford had only been able to find the cabin because of his connection to Darcy.
When they were on the way, Khyle and Ford walked through the cabin and made sure there wasn’t anything incriminating or that would identify Colton and his people.They gathered the pipe bomb material to dispose of at the farm and then headed to the vehicles.
When Ford was behind the wheel of the truck, he turned on the engine and looked at Darcy.“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’ll be much more okay when we’re away from here and back at home.”
“Home?”
“The farm.”
His brows rose.She’d never called the farm home before.
She smiled.“All I could think about was you and the herd.Since my parents died, I’ve never really feltat homeanywhere.I had a home, but it wasn’t the same.It was just a place, a bookmark in my life.But with you, I feel at home for the first time.And I definitely want to move in.For real.I don’t want to stop doing something because I feel like it might be too fast or Cruz might get mad.I want to be with you because you’re mine.”
“You’re mine too,” Ford said, his voice rough.He could have lost her tonight.But he didn’t.They’d come out on the other side of this ordeal victorious, their herd safe.
