Heart's Desire

Chapter 26 - Monty

"Fine," Page concedes, writing the name down in the little notebook she keeps in her shirt pocket, like a real old-school sheriff. She shakes her head. "I gotta admit I overlooked Jake as a suspect. Law-enforcement tend to be a blind-spot for other law-enforcement."

Dane frowns and rubs his hands over his hair. "Yeah, I know what you mean."

Of all of us, he'd taken to Jake the easiest and the most, seeing in him a fellow officer he could trust to have his back.

"Well, I'll be in touch," Page says, touching the brim of her hat. "I'll need statements from everyone, but for the moment it can wait. Meanwhile, I put out a state-wide BOLO on Jake. I'll keep you informed."

She leaves, and Dane comes to join me where I sit at Sasha's kitchen counter, perched on a barstool with my broken hand bathed in ice.

"Fuck. What a mess," he says, letting out a long breath and covering his face with his hands.

"We got Mom and Dad back," I remind him. "That's what matters."

At the moment, they're upstairs in Sasha's room, resting. Dad had finally shifted back to human form, and they both look better for a hot shower and a change of clothes.

Meanwhile, Kit lies unconscious in one spare room, and Julian's still asleep in the other. Martin and Freya watch the kids outside, and Sasha has retreated to her back porch, where she sits curled up with a blanket on her bench swing.

Dane lowers his hands from his face and glares at me, his amber eyes bloodshot with stress.

"Why'd you let him go?" he growls.

I do my best to glare back at him, but it's kinda hard when he looks like he wants to cry but can't.

"Because getting torn to shreds by a feral wolf wasn't my top priority, Dane. Mom and Dad and Kit were."

"What do you mean, 'feral?'" he asks, eyes narrowing.

I blow out my breath. Between getting everyone back here and settled in, and dealing with the sheriff, I'd yet to tell him everything.

I take a sip of the neat bourbon whiskey Martin had poured me to help with the pain.

"I mean, he looked like a normal wolf, except his eyes were red and his teeth were a nightmare," I say. "He had this rabid strength, and... I dunno. There was just something unnatural about him. Never seen anything like it, apart from a Lycan, and I've only seen one of those."

"The one you saved the triplets from?"

"Yep. Dumb kids." I sip my drink.

Lycans are rare—a diseased melding of man and wolf that occurs when a Bite goes wrong. They're the inspiration for a lot of pop-culture 'werewolves': bipedal, with long arms tipped in blade-like claws, and a mouth full of tangled, razor-sharp teeth.

One had wandered into our territory when I was a teenager, and Travis, Martin, and Noah had almost gotten themselves eaten trying to catch a glimpse of it.

"Anyway, I don't know if I coulda brought him down, even if I had gone after him. You know I'm not a fighter."

Dane sighs and rubs the back of his head. "Yeah, I know. How's the hand, anyway?"

Hurts like a motherfucker," I say, grimacing, "but it'll heal up in a day or so, once Dr. Meyer sets the bones."

Shifting with broken bones is never a good idea, and if the breaks had been clean to begin with, they certainly weren't now.