she was with him.
He gave an innocent shake of his head. “Hey, I didn’t make the call. I asked that Browning guy to do it when I was rushing inside.”
“Your neighbor called Mason, but we were already on our way up to check out something else,” Jeremy offered as an explanation, before shooting a frowning glance at the puddle of water he was leaving on her floor.
Before she could fire off another sharp-edged remark, Cian crossed his arms over his chest, propped his broad shoulders against the wall and cut his piercing gray gaze from her to Wyatt. “So what happened?” the Irishman asked them, lifting his brows. “The neighbor was waiting out front when we got here, but he didn’t know anything. Just said that he heard screams and fighting. We searched the woods back there but couldn’t pick anything up to follow. And the rain is coming down hard now. It hasn’t left anything on the ground to track.”
Keeping it short and succinct, Wyatt gave them the rundown. “I think whoever the scouts spotted on our land tonight paid Elise a visit. I was searching the woods behind the house when I heard her scream. There were two Lycans inside her house, wearing masks that covered everything but their lips and their eyes, which were brown in their human forms. I fought them, and they took off when they heard the rest of you show up.”
She could tell by the look on the Runners’ faces that they knew he’d left out a portion of the story. And though she understood why he would have to fill them in later about what had happened in her room—that she’d very nearly been the victim of another sexual assault—Elise was thankful that he didn’t make her sit there and listen to a recounting of the horrific event.
Looking at the others, Wyatt asked, “Can you guys give us a second?”
“Sure,” Mason murmured, clapping his hand on Jeremy’s damp shoulder as he steered his partner toward the door, motioning for the others to go before them. Without looking back, the handsome, rugged Runner said, “We’ll take another look outside and see what we can find. Maybe we’ll get lucky and pick up a scent.”
“Yeah, about that,” Wyatt grunted, sounding kind of shocked and embarrassed. “I forgot to mention that they had their scents masked.”
A few stifled curses could be heard out in the hallway, as well as a low laugh that sounded as if it was coming from Cian, who probably thought that important lapse had something to do with her. Mason was at the back of the group, and he stopped and turned in the doorway with a scowl that would have scared the hell out of most people. “No scent at all—same as the ones who attacked us in the Alley?”
Wyatt nodded. “Yeah. Just like those assholes. They were also stronger than they should have been.”
“Shit,” Mason growled, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Did they say anything that might reveal their identity? Or what they were doing here?”
They both shook their heads, but Elise wasn’t sure Mason believed her. “We’ll take that look outside,” he told them, “but I want you both at my cabin for a meeting in the morning.”
She frowned as the Runner left the room. She didn’t want to go to the Alley tomorrow morning. After tonight, all she wanted was to...to... Hell, she didn’t know what she wanted.
“How long will it take you to pack?” Wyatt asked, his deep voice pulling her from her troubled thoughts as he moved to his feet.
She tilted her head back, staring up at him in confusion. “Pack what?”
“A bag. You can’t stay here by yourself. You’re coming home with me.”
Her jaw dropped as she blinked. “Is that some kind of sick joke?”
“Naw,” Carla drawled, popping her head back into the room from the hallway. She’d obviously decided to ignore Wyatt’s request for privacy. “I know what Pall’s joke face looks like, and that isn’t it. He’s dead serious.”
Gritting her teeth, she said, “I’m not going anywhere with you, Pallaton.”
He pushed his hands into his front pockets, his eyes hooded as he watched her stand up, grab a couple of clean towels from the basket of folded laundry that was sitting on her dresser and start laying them out over the puddles that’d been left on her floor. “Don’t let pride make you stupid, El. You know this is the smartest thing you can do.”
“Wow. Do you have any idea how arrogant you sound right now?” She clenched her teeth as she tossed a towel to Carla, then snapped the last one open, laying it over the water that had dripped off of Cian. “What is it with you guys always bundling up us little women and dragging us off to the Alley? Where in God’s name did you all get the idea that we can’t survive without you around to protect us with your big bad selves?”
He didn’t say anything in his defense when she turned back to him with a blistering glare. But he didn’t need to. He simply shifted his gaze to the bruise she could feel forming on her cheek, then lower, to where she was clutching the edges of his shirt over her chest, reminding her of just what he’d saved her from, and she trembled with fury as he slowly lifted that knowing gaze back to hers. “You son of a bitch,” she whispered, and his expression tightened, the skin around his eyes and mouth revealing his tension and rage, though he seemed determined not to express them in front of her. For some reason, that just made her even angrier.
“We can argue as long as you want, but it isn’t going to change the outcome. Either you come back with me, or I’m planting my ass here with you. And I do mean with you, El. I won’t be shoved out on that short-ass sofa in your living room. There’s not much left of it, anyway.”
“You’ve lost your freaking mind.”
“Probably,” he muttered, scrubbing the palm of his hand against the hard angle of his jaw. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you need a keeper.”
“I can stay with my brother!”
He arched one perfect midnight brow. “You do realize this is his wedding night, don’t you?”
She flushed, wracking her brain for an alternative. “With Jillian and Jeremy, then.”
“Won’t work. They’ve already started turning their spare room into a nursery.”
She blinked, stunned. “She’s pregnant?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. But they’re hoping she will be soon and wanted to get a head start on things.”
“Oh. I...I didn’t know.”
As if he knew exactly what she was thinking, he said, “They only just decided this week to start on the nursery, or I’m sure she would have told you.”
She chewed on the corner of her lip. “I can always sleep on their sofa.”
Zoing! His right brow arched again, as if it was spring-loaded, those dark eyes starting to glitter with a spark of humor, as if he were beginning to find something funny in her belligerent desperation. “When I have a perfectly good spare bedroom? I don’t think so.”
She was so frustrated she wanted to scream. “Who cares what you think, you arrogant ass? I do not take orders from you! Why can’t you just leave me the hell alone and stop trying to control me?”
Hmm.
