“Is he dead?” she asked as Dragon probed the wound on her leg.
“Yes.”
Swallowing the lump of emotion clogging her throat, she nodded even though he wasn't looking at her. “Th-thank you.”
At her thanks, Dragon’s gaze snapped up to meet hers. There was surprise in his. Did he really think that she thought he was a monster? That she would react badly to him killing the man who had broken into her home and attacked her?
She’d left because she couldn’t be part of what he and his team were planning, not because she didn't understand why he wanted revenge, and certainly not because she believed him to be a monster. She thought he was a man who had been badlyhurt, prepared to lash out at someone innocent if it got him closer to the guilty person. That didn't make him a monster, even though it wasn't right by any definition of the word.
“It was b-because of the w-woman, wasn't it?” she asked, her gaze now drawn to the man lying dead in her living room.
“Twenty-four hours after you were accosted by her, someone shows up at your house in the middle of the night, no way it can't be related,” Dragon replied as he pushed to his feet and disappeared into her kitchen, reappearing a moment later with the first aid kit she kept under the sink.
“It had to have been this D-Dr. Gardner man, r-right? He sent that man here to k-kill me.”
Dragon’s gaze refused to meet hers as he knelt beside her and began to wrap a bandage around the gash on her leg. If he wouldn't look at her, it meant there was something he didn't want her to know.
But she had every right to know.
Whatever plan the guys had enacted with this Rose woman now included her. She’d been dragged into it, and she didn't want to be kept in the dark. Keeping her distance was no longer an option. She was part of this, even if she didn't have the emotional or mental capacity to deal with anything else right now.
“What?” she prompted, reaching down to grab his hands and stop him, and hissing when pain flared in her arm.
Glaring at her, Dragon’s hands closed around her shoulders, and he eased her back down. “Now I get Steel’s thing about no moving,” he muttered, making her brows dip in confusion as she had no idea what he was talking about.
“You know something,” she pushed, not willing to let him be another person in her life keeping her out of the loop to protect her. Her brothers had tried to do that for years as they dug into the past to find the truth about their parents, but it didn't makeher feel protected, it made her feel like an outsider in her own family.
Cassandra knew she wasn't part of Dragon’s family. He didn't really owe her answers, but she’d tried to walk away and it hadn't worked. Now she was in this whether she wanted to be or not, and she wanted to know what she was up against. What she had to be prepared to face.
“Tell me,” she insisted.
“He dropped something,” Dragon told her. He tucked the blanket over her legs and moved to kneel by her shoulder, gently picking up her arm and bandaging it as well.
“Dropped what?”
“A syringe.”
“A syringe?” she echoed, not catching on.
Violet eyes meeting hers, for once Dragon didn't shield what he was feeling, allowing her to see it all. Fear, regret, guilt, remorse, concern, and worry. “I don’t think the plan was to kill you tonight, little rabbit. I think the plan was to kidnap you and use you as bait to lure us in the same way we tried to use Rose to lure in her brother.”
Chapter
Six
January 5th
4:39 A.M.
Exhaustion was etched into every one of Cassandra’s features.
After bandaging up her wounds and leaving enough time to ensure her attacker was dead and couldn’t be revived, he’d called the cops. While he would have loved to keep the guy prisoner, take him back to the mansion and interrogate him, it would be quicker for the cops to ID him and then use that to get answers.
With Cassandra’s safety on the line, it wasn't the time to focus on an outlet for his rage. They needed as much intel as they could gather as quickly as they could gather it. Once they had a name to go with the man who had clearly been intending to abduct Cassandra and use her as leverage, Prey could start doing a deep dive into his background.
Somewhere in it would be a link to Dr. Gardner that they could use and exploit.
For now, though, he had to focus on the woman sitting beside him. Paramedics had stitched the deeper wound in her calf and cleaned and bandaged both wounds. She’d refused painkillers,and Dragon was pretty sure it was because she was afraid of being at a disadvantage if another attacker came after her.
