Broken Wolf: Moonbound Series, Book Seven (22 page)

They had to get off the island. That was the only thing that mattered. He didn’t care about Damon or Vadik or Andrea or anyone, when it came down to it.

There was only Clara.

R
AINIER
DUBOIS

R
ain held
the muzzle of his M4 against the guard’s temple and glanced at Luther. “Do you have the cuffs on him?”

Luther nodded and put the first guard on his stomach. “I swear to you, they’re coming out of nowhere.”

“They must have walkies or something, then.” He drilled the guard’s dark eyes with his own. “Do you have walkies?”

The man didn’t answer and Rain repeated himself in Spanish. Still, no answer.

“We’re on our way to you,” Warrick’s voice came through the communicator in his ear.

Rain raised a tentative finger and clicked it on. “Roger that.”

Luther finally got cuffs on the second guy and Rain dropped his weapon, stepping back.

It was the third time they’d been jumped by guards, and he still wasn’t sure they’d caught the last guy. But they couldn’t afford to chase down any more of them. They needed to regroup and get the prisoners down to the beach.

And they had to take Brown. The first of the Rangers to fall.

“The last time I was here, they had walkies. But I don’t see them on these ones.” Luther put the second guard on his stomach, next to their dead companions. He kept one foot on the kid’s back.

Rain was sick of killing boys. Fifteen or sixteen was one thing, but these boys… the ones that had finally surrendered… they were too young.

His hands itched to get around Adrian Rossi’s neck and squeeze. He’d been planning how he’d kill the asshole for months. He wanted to see it happen. Slowly. To watch the man’s eyes as he died. To know that the bastard knew that they’d won.

To know that he’d avenged his friend’s life.

Donovan climbed to his feet, groaning with each movement. “Where are they?”

“On their way.” Rain pulled the first boy to his feet. “You’re coming with us, kid.”

“They probably don’t speak English,” Luther said, but Rain ignored him. He didn’t care if they could understand him. They were coming off the island. Everyone was coming off the island.

“Let’s start taking them down to the beach.” Rain pushed the boy out in front of him. “Luther, you get the other one.”

He moved out into the darkness. This whole mission had made complete sense until he saw the first boy’s face. They couldn’t kill any more of these guards, whether they were pointing guns or not. He’d seen men go to Afghanistan and Iraq and come home from having killed kids—real kids—and never be the same. He didn’t want that for his Rangers.

Not for the Black Wolves.

Rain clicked on his comms. “Bravo team, what’s your twenty?”

A crackle in his ear and Duke’s voice said, “At the house. Half the upstairs has been blown away by the bomb.”

“And Rossi?”

“We haven’t seen him yet, Commander.”

Voices sounded behind him and Rain whirled around, his gun up. When his hands left the boy’s shoulders, the kid ran off through the trees.

Rain yelled after him, telling him to stop, once in English, once in Spanish. But the boy wasn’t stopping. And he was done shooting kids. “Let him go,” he said to Donovan, who started to clamor after him.

The wounded civilian froze.

Through the trees behind them, Banner crashed ahead with a limping guard in-tow. Must have been the one Luther wounded. The young man had a wide, frightened face, but Rain could see echoes of Elise and Marco in his features.

One of Rossi’s children. Were they
all
Rossi’s children?

Behind Banner came a man in black pants, carrying a black-haired Andrea VonBrandt, with Maggie at his side.

Warrick and Young brought up the rear, behind a red-haired girl in a short white dress, and a mostly-naked man in a loin cloth.

Rain shook his head. This was one for the books. “Who are all these people?”

Maggie slipped her arm around Luther’s waist and hugged him. She pointed to the redhead. “You remember Clara? She brought us Faye.”

Luther reached and Clara crashed into him, tears in her eyes. She looped one arm around his neck and one around Maggie’s. She was babbling something about Faye that Rain couldn’t understand.

“This is one of the Rossi kids,” Banner said, pushing the limping guard ahead of him. “He surrendered to us. Or so
she
says.”

Rain couldn’t tell if he meant Maggie or Clara, but he looked the boy over. “You. Boy. You’re coming with us.”

Warrick and Young slung Brown’s body between them without a word. There were never words when they lost one of their own on mission.

There would be time for words when they got him back to North Carolina. But now, they needed to get all these people off the island.

“To the beach, everyone.” Rain signaled them onward. “We have a couple of people who need medical attention.”

Banner fell into step beside him and the cool, crisp air passed over them as they walked. He’d want to know what happened to Brown.

Rain didn’t want to say the words.

He died at the hands of a ten-year-old boy. Twelve at the oldest.
The same boy that was now dead on the forest floor, by Brown’s own bullet.

Rain didn’t want any of those words to pass through his lips. And even though he’d have to give a full report to Cap when he got back to base, he wasn’t sure how he was going to explain the night’s events without feeling like it had all been a dream.

“When we get to the beach,” Rain said at last, “You signal Colt and let’s get Andrea and Donovan on the first boat.”

“We need to get them directly to the dock at the Puerto Villa,” Luther said from over Rain’s shoulder. “Julianna can get them to a hospital without raising any attention from the police. She still has pull.”

Banner’s grimace was visible, even in the dark morning air. “Rossi’s daughter?”

“They’re all Rossi’s daughters.” Luther thumbed backward. “Doesn’t make them evil.”

Rain glanced back at the redhead, walking beside Maggie. Did Luther mean that the redhead was Rossi’s daughter? She certainly didn’t look like Elise or Marco. At least, not obviously. Maybe the nose. Maybe the shape of the cheekbones. But she didn’t have the patrician look that Marco and Elise had.

“How can they all be Rossi’s kids?” Banner grunted. “I’m itching to get my hands on this bastard.”

“We all are,” Rain added.

When they got down the hill, to the edge of the bush, before the beach, Banner stopped to signal Colt, and they all started to plow through the sand.

Vadik ran ahead, crashing into the surf and running until he was at the edge of Alex’s boat. He deposited Andrea inside and climbed in after her.

“Send Donovan with Maggie,” Rain called out, over the crashing of the tide. “Colt, I want you to take Luther with you and take these two.” He pointed at the guards. “Young and I will head back up the beach and rejoin Duke at the house. They still haven’t pinpointed whether or not Rossi died in the explosion.”

Vadik glanced up, his eyes wide. “The bomb?” He shook his head. “Rossi didn’t die in the bomb. He was down by the hunting ground, having some woman cast a spell on me.” He pointed at the limping guard. “He was with us. He knows where Rossi is.”

Rain grabbed the young man and hauled him against the side of the boat, sloshing him in the water. “You know where Rossi is?”

The boy nodded.

Clara called out, hanging out the side of the boat. “Don’t hurt him! He’s my brother. Please! He cooperated.”

Rain ignored her cries and pushed him harder against the side of the boat, bearing down on him with all his weight.

The boy grunted and his face scrunched up in pained lines.

“Where. Is. Rossi?” Rain hissed at him.

The young man shut his eyes tight and turned his head. “I don’t know.”

The water continued to whoosh around them, pushing the boat up and down behind their bodies, in the dark waves. Banner was pushing the two handcuffed young men out of the waves while Colt pulled them in.

“How can you not know?” Vadik crawled to the end of Alex’s boat and got down in the boy’s face. “You remember me? The man you tortured, and turned into a wolf, and left me to be killed by a psychotic hunter?” His accent got thicker as he kept talking. “Your father was with us. Where the fuck is he?”

“Damon!” Clara cried out, lunging for him. But the half-naked man caught her around the waist and kept her inside the boat. “Damon, tell them where he is. You promised you’d help.”

With watery eyes, Damon looked at Vadik, then at Rain. “He won’t be at the villa. We were at the power station, trying to get it back online.”

Rain’s heart skipped and thumped almost to a halt. “The power station, back online,” he repeated.

“That’s impossible,” Vadik said. “We blew it to the sky.”

“He was still trying,” Damon insisted. “Geraldo has a generator in the bunker and they’re going to try to restart the security system.”

“Boss, Bravo Team is at the house. They’ve likely got it cleared by now. Rossi has to know that he’s lost.” Banner pushed the younger guard into the boat as Warrick and Young loaded Brown’s body in and climbed up.

“Remember what Vadik said,” Maggie said, a somber tone in her voice. “Back in the hotel. We were trying to get inside Rossi’s head, and he said, if the madman thinks that he’s lost once before and he’s about to lose again, he’s always got—”

“An escape plan,” Vadik finished for her. “He would have a way off the island we don’t know about.”

“And he would go for the babies before he left,” Clara said.

Rain’s blood almost froze in his veins. The water moved around his legs, dragging him away from Damon just enough that someone pulled the boy into the boat. Vadik.

“The babies?” Rain repeated, icy blood thudding in his ears.

“He keeps the babies somewhere,” Clara said. “Not with us in the house, because he doesn’t want the girls raising their own children. Whenever someone has a baby, he takes them away, and he keeps them somewhere.”

“Do you know where?” Rain sloshed over next to Clara’s boat and grabbed her arm. “Tell me how to find them.”

“We have to go!” Vadik yelled. “We have to leave this place right now. I need to get Andrea to a hospital.”

“Clara,” Rain repeated. “Where are they?”

“I don’t know.” Tears slipped from her bright eyes. “He never told us where.”

Damon’s head rose, carefully, and Rain caught the movement in the corner of his eye. He whirled on the boy.

Damon’s lips opened and, at first, no sound came out. Then, with a hard glance at Clara, he said, “There’s a bunker…”

C
lara looked past the nurse
, dressing the wound on her thigh, to Owen’s freshly shaved face. So different. She’d gotten so used to seeing him half naked and shaggy. Now he was wearing light blue clothes just like the nurse had given her after a mandatory shower. But his face…and his hair. It was so light. She’d never seen him without a beard or with close cut hair. The eternally angry grimace on his face had turned up into a hopeful smile. His blue eyes sparkled as they met her gaze.

“Clara.”

“Almost done here,” the nurse said, taping a bandage over the angry welt where the hunter’s bullet had grazed. “There you go.” She patted the pair of light blue pants next to Clara on the hospital bed. “Put those on. Do you need any pain killers?”

“Pain killers?” Clara repeated, not understanding the question.

“She wants to know if you want any drugs to help dull the pain,” Owen answered, walking to the bedside.

She shook her head. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

The nurse shrugged. “All right then. I’ll be back with your discharge papers. The doc said you are good to go.”

“What about our friends?”

“There’s a whole group of people waiting for you outside the door. But if you mean the woman who came in with the ugly arm injury, the report from the OR is that she’s doing better than they expected.”

OR?
Clara wanted to ask more questions. But she opted to just ask Owen after the nurse left.

She snatched the pants and slipped them onto her bare legs. The nurse had given her a wispy pair of underwear, but she still felt naked, even with them on. She hopped to the ground and winced. The impact jarred the wound on her thigh.

Clara pulled up the pants and settled the elastic band onto her waist. Owen pulled her against his chest and buried his face in her damp hair.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“God, Clara. I love you so much. More than I thought I could love anyone…ever.”

She smiled. “I think we’re mates. Like Vadik said he and Andrea were. We were meant to be. I can feel it. The way our magick wraps itself around each other.” Clara slipped her arms around Owen’s waist and hugged. His warmth infused her exhausted body.

Their magick swirled peacefully. The connection she’d felt that very first day in the cages had grown tenfold, but there was something missing. Something deep inside her said there could be more…should be more.

“I think you’re right,” he murmured. “I talked to the little one…Maggie, I think. We’re going to wait to find out what happened on the island, and then they’ll arrange us a flight out of Choaca.” He pulled back and cupped her face.

Tears burned in her eyes. They were leaving. He was taking her home just like he’d always said he would. “To your family?”

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Maggie stepped through the half open door and poked her head around the curtain. She had a large duffle bag in her hand. “Julianna brought clothes for you both. We did our best to guess on the sizes and shoes. She put some money in there for you as well to cover anything you might need to get restarted in Iowa.”

Owen kissed Clara’s forehead and turned to face Maggie. “Thank you. There aren’t words to thank you eno—”

Clara touched his arm. “Eventually it will all be a distant memory.” She met Maggie’s gaze. “What matters is that we are together and you and your friends… your team made that possible.”

“Thank you for taking care of my friends. Vadik told me what you both did for them.” Maggie put the bag on the floor and threw her arms around Owen’s neck and then turned and embraced Clara too.

Clara patted Maggie on the back before the small woman backed away, wiping a tear from her eye.

“Andrea wouldn’t have made it without you,” Maggie said.

“How is she?” Clara asked.

“She lost a ton of blood, but the doctors are saying she should pull through. Her arm will never fully heal, too much tissue was—” she gulped. “It was really bad.”

Clara nodded. “I know.”

Maggie took a deep breath. “She’s going to survive though,” she continued. “She’s in recovery with Vadik. I know he’d like to thank you personally, but he won’t leave her side.”

“I’m just glad you came back for all of us.”

She nodded, her gaze disconnecting from Clara’s, almost as if she were experiencing something outside of the room. The look reminded her of Vadik’s stare when he’d said he could
feel
Andrea.

“Have you heard anything else from the island?” Clara asked.

“No.” Maggie wiped her palms along her hips.

“Maggie?”

The tattooed woman looked up again. “Yes.”

“Vadik said he and Andrea were mates. Is there a way to know if Owen and…” Clara paused and looked up at Owen.

He nodded for her to continue.

When she glanced toward Maggie again, the small woman had a small smile on her face.

“Your magick will tell you. A cord will start to form or you will be pulled so tightly together that you can’t think of anything else. It happens differently for different people.”

“The pull was immediate and—”

“Crazy strong?” Maggie asked.

Owen nodded and hugged Clara tighter against his waist.

“Andrea and Vadik. And you,” Clara pointed to Maggie’s wrists. “You all have these tattoos. There’s something about them. They aren’t like your other tattoos.”

Maggie sighed. “The tattoos come with the bonding spell. I can bond you two, but let me warn you. It’s not something that can be undone. You’ll live, barring no fatal accidents, for a hundred years. It’s much different than human life.”

“A hundred years? From now?” Owen stuttered. “Meaning we’ll live to be—”

She gave Clara a once over, then Owen. “Till you’re about a hundred and thirty or so? Yes. Once the spell ends you’re wolf spirit leaves your body. As a human again, you’ll age more rapidly and pass within about ten years of old age. At least that tends to be the consensus among the packs I know who’ve documented the process.”

“There’s so much I never knew. I don’t even know about packs. About how any of this is outside of what my father allowed us to know. So much I would never have known if you hadn’t come looking for us,” Clara whispered.

Owen kissed the top of her head. “We’ll learn together.”

Clara’s head was swimming. She’d never been off the island. Never been around anyone that didn’t know who she was. Didn’t know
what
she was.

Now Maggie and Owen were talking about how to watch the moon schedule and to be sure their jobs allowed for flexibility so they could go shift every full moon.

On the island, everyone had shifted, except for the men in the house on the beach. That was the only place they didn’t go during the full moon. Now she had to worry about people seeing her shift. What they might do to her?

“I want you to bond us,” Owen said, his voice deepening. He rubbed his hands up and down Clara’s arms.

She sucked in a breath. She was with Owen. That was all that really mattered. They were together. Safe. They could start a life together. Maybe even a family.

“Are you ready, Clara?” Maggie asked, stepping closer.

Clara nodded.

Maggie laid a hand on each of their wrists and murmured a strange litany of words Clara couldn’t understand.

A tingle flitted across Clara’s skin and then heat flared along her wrists. Beautiful green marks entwined and wrapped themselves around both she and Owen’s wrists. Their magick billowed and, with a rush unlike anything she’d ever experienced, Clara
felt
Owen. She felt the tugging of the skin where it was healing on his shoulder, and the heat of the tattoos lacing across his wrist. She felt emotion and longing growing inside his chest, matching hers.

He looked down at her and smiled. “That’s pretty damn amazing.”

Her mouth parted and she took a deep breath. “This is what was missing.”

“Not anymore,” he said, dipping toward her mouth. His lips slanted over hers and she was instantly awash in so much emotion and…she could feel how much he loved her.

How much he was enjoying this kiss.

They were one, in every sense of the word.