“It’s just me in the plow,” the human answered over the whirling fury of the storm. “I stopped because of the wrecks up ahead—”
The man quit talking mid-sentence, so clearly Rhage was erasing things. Too bad there was no mental tricksy-trick that could get rid of a wreck on the highway. As well as the police, who were no doubt about to show up.
“Please stay in the vehicle,” Butch said softly. “Doc Jane’s already here and Rhage is handling the humans. It’s wicked dangerous with all this snow.”
The cop wasn’t the demanding kind so his tone was well far off from any kind of this-is-an-order. The advice was also common sense.
Naturally, Wrath’s first instinct was to tell the brother to back the fuck off. Except he’d beensohelpful already.
This was all his fault.
Up in front, the shotgun seat’s door was opened, and Wrath flared his nostrils, testing the air for a scent. When he didn’t get one, he knew it was V’s mate—and hell, she was triaging her ownhellrenalong with Tohr, wasn’t she?
“Where the fuck’s Manny?” Wrath growled to the cop.
“Already on his way.” More softly, “And Ehlena’s with him—”
The other front door opened with a horrible screeching, like the steel had gone self-aware and had plenty of pain receptors.
“What’s going on,” he hissed. “You’ve got to give me something.”
He only had smells, all of them bad.
Up in front, Doc Jane and Ehlena fell into a fast back-and-forth of medical speak that his brain couldn’t track. The one thing he got was confirmation that the surgical RV was on theway, and they were going to move Tohr first. That much he understood—
“Oh, my God! I’m calling nine-one-one—”
A new human voice now. A woman’s. Someone else on the scene.
“We already did.” Rhage cut her off, all casual—and given the sudden flaring of female arousal, it was clear he’d stepped in front of her, and she was getting a load of him. “They’re coming.”
“Oh…that’s good…”
As those syllables trailed off, no doubt Hollywood was stripping her memories, but there was a strong possibility she was just drinking in all that blond with the Bahamas-blue eyes and shorting out even with the accident and the snowstorm. Meanwhile, George bumped Wrath’s hand, seeking reassurance. The poor dog was scared, all kinds of muscles tense and quivering.
“It’s okay,” Wrath said as he burrowed deep into the chest fur and found warmth. “I’ve got you.”
The wind howled even harder, and more snow blew into the interior, flakes hitting his forehead and cheeks, a couple getting up his nose. In the next lane over, cars passed by slowly, the engines murmuring at a timid idle against the aggression of the blizzard.
“They’re coming soon.” He stroked George’s shoulder. Then more loudly, “What’s going on now?”
He didn’t know who he was talking to, and he didn’t care. He was flailing in the darkness that consumed him, drowning in all he could not see, choking in a sea of vacancy that only gave him pops of sound and smell and touch.
“What the fuck is happening!” he barked.
“The van’s here,” Butch said. “Let’s get you out of here first.”
A new voice now, Phury’s: “We’re ready for you, my Lord.”
He jerked his head in the direction of the exhausted words, and that’s when he sensed that people were looking at him. All of them, including the humans. In his blanket of blindness, he strained to reach the world around him, to access through secondary channels what others had at their fingertips so readily, thanks to their sight.
All he found was his own isolation and anger.
And a mourning for hisshellanas if she were the one who was hidden in time, and he was stuck here in a present he couldn’t get free of.
“Please, my Lord,” Phury said softly. “Let’s get you safe.”
The last thing he wanted to do was leave, but he had no options, not unless he wanted to act like the asshole he honestly was.
