Page 16 of The Rabbit's Foot
“You need to hold on to me, okay? Just hang on and let me do the work. We’ll be back home shortly.”
Home. Funny how that word took on a different meaning when Mal said it. He clambered onto the motorcycle and waited until Alp slid his arms around… oh. Shit. The tears sprang anew as Alp looked at the residual limb where his hand had been. The skin was no longer inflamed, but seeing the damage was more than Alp was ready for. He thought he could deal with it, but he couldn’t.
Fucking Hyde had taken Alp’s hand, maimed him. Forever. Sure, the damage had healed, leaving the pink skin all smooth, but his hand? That would never heal. He sobbed into Mal’s shoulder, devastated by the loss. He was sure he was prepared, but he wasn’t. How could one ever be ready for something like that?
Before he knew it, Alp was lifted off the bike and carried back to the edge of the woods.
“What—?”
“Shhh. It’s all right. Trust me?”
As Alp watched, Mal stripped off his clothes and shifted into his wolf form. He leaned close and sank his teeth gently into the cuff of the oversized coat, then pulled Alp down to the ground, where Mal proceeded to wind around him. Alp wanted to protest, to say he was fine, but he wasn’t. He needed Mal, again. Only Mal could make things better.
“Thank you, First.”
And with those words, Alp mourned his lost limb, his lost years, his lost family.
His lost life.
Chapter 7
Mal’s stomach tightened as he held Alp. What had happened to the man that had scarred him so? Or, more importantly, who had done it? He wanted to ferret out every bit of information, but now was not that time. Alp was grieving, and Mal needed to be patient. Right now, he wasn’t even sure Alp knew they were back in the motel room. He’d been sobbing since they’d been at the lake. It had been near impossible to get him back on the bike, but he’d managed it. Once he got them both into the room, he slid the jacket from Alp’s form, then lay him down on the bed and drew the covers over him. The shivering didn’t stop until Mal lay behind him and wrapped his arm around Alp’s waist.
More importantly, Alp had called Mal his First, and for some reason, it didn’t chafe as much as Mal thought it should. He cared for Alp, both as rabbit and as human. When he told Alp he wanted to be his First, he’d thought only in the short term, but now? He could see Alp being part of his pack. All two of them.
“First?”
The word didn’t freak Mal out as much as he once thought it would. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.” Alp’s voice cracked. “I know you didn’t want this, and I—”
“Are going to shut up now,” Mal insisted. “I told you, I wanted to be your First. And my wolf wants it too.”
Alp choked a laugh. “Are you sure he’s not just fattening me up to make a meal out of me?”
It was a joke, and Mal knew it, but his wolf took offense. “No, most definitely not. He—we—care about you.”
“I know. It’s just… I’m such a fuck up. My own stupidity got me taken to the lab, and—”
“Lab?”
Alp tried to sit up, but Mal put a hand on his shoulder and held him down on the bed.
“Talk to me. Let’s get it out, so it stops having power over you.”
Alp waved his arm. “They’re always going to have power over me. They’re the ones who took my hand.”
Mal’s wolf roared up. “Those fuckers! I’ll kill them all,” Mal vowed.
“You can’t,” Alp said, panic in his voice. “There’s too many of them. They’ve got a whole complex full of labs and doctors and—”
“Dead men,” Mal snarled. “Every one of them. They can’t get away with hurting you.”
Alp rolled over and buried his face in Mal’s chest. “Not just me. They have dozens, maybe hundreds of shifters there. They like experimenting on the young because they bounce back the fastest. They can do whatever they want, and the shifters will heal the damage.” He sighed as he looked down at his missing hand. “Most of it.”
“I will kill them,” Mal said again. “It doesn’t matter what it takes—I will gut them all and leave their corpses to rot.”
Alp blew out a breath. “I want him dead. Not just for what he did to me. He hurt so many. Killed a lot too. They can’t go unavenged.”
