Page 61 of Bad Blood Panther

She hit the green button. “Hello?”

It was the last person she’d expected it to be—and the last person she wanted to hear from.

Alton.

“Jenny, Jenny, Jenny,” he said, his voice slithering into her stomach like snakes. “You took my son and hid him from me. Did you really think I’d let you get away with that?”

Chapter 22

“How did you get this number?”

It infuriated Jenny that her voice shook. Hearing Alton’s voice sent her right back to being a scared little bunny, on the lowest rung of the Broken Hill ladder. Xander went still, his cleaning rag in mid-air, his attention totally focused on her.

Flynn put down the goldfish bag, poised for a threat.

“You thought you could hide from me? You thought I wouldn’t find you?” Alton laughed, that soft, crazy laugh that made her stomach twist. Nothing good ever happened after that laugh.

“Stay away from me,” she said. “Stay away from my son.”

“I’ll always find you, Jenny,” was all he said. “Bring my son back to Broken Hill, or I’m coming for you myself.”

Xander lunged for the phone, but Alton was already gone.

He looked at Jenny’s face. “That was him, wasn’t it.”

She nodded. Xander clenched the rag in his fists. “Fuck,” he said. “Did he threaten you?”

She nodded again.

“Dammit, Flynn,” Xander said. “Can I go out there and kill him?”

Brandon looked up. “Kill it?” he asked, sounding interested.

“Not unless you want to end up alpha of his fucking clan,” Flynn said. “If he comes here, though, be my guest.”

“He knows where I am,” Jenny said. “At least, he says he does.”

“Cindi must have told him.” Xander snarled.

“Or he got it out of her,” Jenny said. She knew what Alton could do when he wanted to know something. He was relentless, and he didn’t care how much pain he caused.

“Shit,” Flynn said, watching her face. “What did he do to you?”

Xander stepped back, his eyes dark with concern. “Jenny?”

She bit her lips, shame washing over her. “He’d punish me, if I did something he didn’t like, or he asked me something and I didn’t answer, or he thought I was lying.”

Xander’s voice deepened to a growl. “Punish you how?”

She hunched in on herself. “Hit me, mostly, or pull my hair, or twist my arm up behind my back.” Xander’s cat was growling now, and his claws sprang out of his fingertips. “Or sometimes lock me in the closet.”

Her cat hated that. The dark and the closed-in feeling. The stuffy air, not knowing when they’d get out…but if she broke out it made it worse. She’d only done that once.

Xander paced back and forth, his claws extending and retracting. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. I can’t believe he did that shit to you.”

“It’s okay.” She just wanted him not to be so upset.

Xander put his hands on her shoulders. “It is not okay. You did not deserve that, not even if you fucked up all the time, which you did not. If I ever get my claws on him…”

Flynn spoke up. “As satisfying as it would be to rip that fucker apart,” he said, “and as much as paperwork pisses me off, I think we need to go through official channels on this.”

Xander turned to him. “Like you did with Brody? Get Broken Hill to release Jenny and Brandon and register them with the Bad Bloods?”

“He won’t let us go,” Jenny said.

“Yeah,” Flynn replied. “But we need to start there. We’ll get blood samples and have Mina Reston do a DNA match in her lab. We’ll take that to Broken Hill. If Raines won’t acknowledge it, we can take it to the Shifter Council.”

He gave Jenny one of his feral grins. “And if that’s the way it goes down, I know a kickass Negotiator—and he fucking thinks he owes me one. But we’ll start with Broken Hill.”