I force my eyes open. “You’ll stay?”
He smiles gently. “Aye, I’ll be right here.”
“Absolutely not! I can’t quit now! There are more reasons than ever to investigate the company.” I give Ethan myyou’re beingoverprotective, calm the hell downstare. It’s one I’ve perfected over years of missions together.
He glares at me, his muscular arms folded across his broad chest. “You can investigate from a safe distance.”
“And what about all the people who work there? They can’t retreat to a safe distance.” Some of the workforce could quit if they can find alternative employment, but what about those on the mandatory work programme? They literally can’t leave until their six months are up. Bryn has several months still to go.
I haven’t been allowed to see him yet, and it’s driving my tiger nuts. He’s no longer supernova hot, but Harley is now in with the Draig brothers and my pack don’t want to let me out of their sight. They’d be too much of a giveaway of my real identity, especially because Ayo and Harley vaguely know each other. There’s already a chance Harley will recognise Ayo’s scent in the waiting room when he leaves, but that can be explained away as the task force questioning me about the explosion.
Skye, true to his word, was sitting in the visitor’s chair when I woke up, fully clothed this time. Cal has been standing silently behind him since the pack arrived. Ayo is sitting on the end of my bed, Jet dragged in another chair from the waiting room and made Kit sit in it, and Ethan’s in full alpha-with-an-injured-pack-member mode.
Jet leans on the back of Kit’s chair. “What if Ayo sets you up with a personal shield? Is that a thing?”
Ayo’s brow furrows. “I’ve never put a shield on someone else when I’m not inside it with them, and I’d have to consider how to anchor the spell so it stays active when I’m not there. I guess it might be possible to make it into a type of charm? Hmm, I’d need to find a stable enough element to handle that much power.”
“Fae can sense magic just like you can, right? So that would potentially blow my cover. We can’t risk it.” I mirror Ethan’s pose—arms folded, glare fixed in place. It’s less effective from a hospitalbed, admittedly.
“We don’t want to lose you,” Cal says quietly.
“What he said.” Skye’s Scottish accent is still thicker than usual, but at least he’s calmed down enough to stop insulting me.
I sigh and relax my arms. I can stand my ground without being so confrontational about it. They’ve had a hell of a scare.
Kit has been quiet the entire time they’ve been here. I understand why—they’ve been through a similar, albeit far worse, experience, and me being injured in an explosion must be reminding everyone of that hellish time, Kit most of all.
“What do you think?” I ask them.
Kit blows out a breath. “Honestly? I thought starting fresh here in Birchester would mean an end to life-or-death missions. It’s even been a couple of months since I had a nightmare or flashback.”
Jet perches on the arm of their chair and puts his arm around them.
They lean into him. “That said, I’m concerned about the implications of what happened today, and what your friend Felicia said. What are Far Out Freight transporting that’s resulting in so many injuries?”
Jet tightens his grip on them. “From the amount of destruction Doc P described, there’s a real possibility it was some sort of weapon that caused this afternoon’s explosion.”
Ayo sucks in a sharp breath. “Like a bomb?”
Jet shakes his head. “Not that large. It had the impact of a hand grenade, although magical in nature.”
I reach up to rub my mildly aching head, but Skye snags my hand and guides it back down before I make contact.
“Leave it,” he says.
I frown. My head injury is more or less healed at this point, but whatever. “Doc P mentioned foreign magic earlier.”
Ethan rubs his beard. “The question is, what kind of weaponised magic would our mysterious doctor consider foreign?”
“I think he meant foreign to Bryn, but it’s a good question.” I was a bit out of it at the time and could have misunderstood. “We need to ask him if he meant fae or earth magic.”
“Or demonic magic,” Ayo says, looking between us when we all wince. “You’ve dealt with demonic objects before?”
“Worse,” Ethan scowls. “We dealt with a fucking lesser demon in Venezuela a few years back.”
“None of us want a repeat of that nightmare,” I say, shuddering at the memory.
“There is another possibility,” Cal says evenly. “It could be something not actually intended to be a weapon.”
