Page 9 of Bad Blood Alpha

Chapter 4

Ten minutes later Flynn was sitting on a hard wooden stool in Kira’s safe house, with her surgical kit spread out on the rickety excuse for a dining table.

Safe “house” was a stretch. It was a shabby room with a kitchenette, in a seedy hotel that seemed to cater to long-term renters who had very little money and probably lived on the wrong side of the law.

Not that there was anything wrong with that. Flynn had been on the wrong side of the law most of his life, and he’d lived in worse places than this.

It was almost a cliché: sagging double bed with a stained, threadbare coverlet on it; ancient wallpaper with water stains, peeling in the corner; harsh overhead light with a cracked glass bowl fixture.

Tiny bathroom where even if you bothered to scrub, you’d never get the rust stains out of the sink or the bathtub.

He watched Kira, her face taut with concentration as she worked on his wound. Blood ran down his arm, and she wiped it away with practiced hands.

He wondered if she lived here all the time. If she did, she had very few possessions and no damn life. There was nothing personal in the room; nothing decorative or even entertaining. No books, no photos, no TV.

Maybe it was just a bolt hole—someplace to go when she needed to hide out for a bit.

From all the things chasing her?

He clenched his jaw as she made an incision in his shoulder with a razor-sharp scalpel. Now she was spreading the edges with some kind of stainless steel torture device while probing the wound for the bullet still lodged in there. Nobody could say she wasn’t prepared for any eventuality, even impromptu surgery.

He admired that in a woman.

She dug deeper into his flesh and he flinched, air hissing through his teeth. “Shit,” he muttered. “Mother Teresa, you ain’t.”

She just rolled her eyes. “Stop whining. Who knew a great big lion like you would be such a pansy?”

He just muttered “fuck, fuck, fuck” under his breath while she dug for the bullet. Only because he was pretty sure saying “fuck you” to a woman holding a scalpel was a bad plan.

“What makes you think I’m a lion?” he said instead.

She gave a faint snort. “All the shifters in Nashville know about the mighty Flynn and his Bad Blood Crew.”

He didn’t like that. He liked being under the radar, nobody knowing who he was. Ghosting through life.

But too much had happened to the Bad Bloods, and too many people had been involved. The Nashville wolf pack, and the Silverlake wolves, who lived in Idaho but were known all over the country for their Enforcement work.

Hell, his crew had fought the Nashville wolves in a battle that split the pack and ended with half of it moving to Idaho to live next door to the Silverlakes.

Everybodyhad heard about that shit. But he didn’t care about that right now. He wanted to know about her.

“Yeah?” he countered. “Does everybody know about you, too?”

“Nobody knows about me, Lion,” she said. “I like to keep it that way.”

She wiped away more blood, inadvertently touching the wound with her bare fingers. Flynn felt a jolt, and blue sparks flew into the air.

He jerked away. “What the fuck was that?” he asked, instantly suspicious. “That was magic.”

“Healing magic,” she said. She closed her fist, looking upset. “I usually don’t have any trouble controlling it. Sorry.”

That was a lie; he could hear it in her voice.

“Didn’t anybody ever tell you not to magic people without their consent?”

“I said I was sorry,” she said tightly. “Sheesh, pansy lion. It can’t hurt you.”

“Lie,” he said softly. She raised her eyes, meeting his gaze.