Walk on the Striped Side (20 page)

He didn’t seem
to be the only one mortified at what was left behind because his mate doubled
over and started to puke her guts out.

He began to go
to her, however a noise on the stairs stopped him. He looked up and found his
brother standing there in his tiger form with a dead wolf hanging from his
mouth. Alec tossed the body to the side and then took a flying leap at a second
wolf that came barreling out of a hallway in his animal’s form. The two
collided with a sick thud and went rolling out of Gage’s line of sight.

He didn’t worry
about his brother because he knew the six-foot, four hundred fifty pound tiger
could handle one much smaller wolf easily. He did, however, end up vaulting up
those stairs anyways because, at that moment, the rest of their group came into
view ringed by wolves. Minna was struggling to carry the much larger frame of
the presumed captive Alpha Corvus, while Davies, Adam and Jenna were all
attempting to keep her safe from those who had surrounded them. They were
outnumbered and trying to fight off wolves who were taking every chance they
could to lean in and swipe or bite at any of them. Once they had one person
weak enough to take out, the small, safe circle around Minna would be gone and
the Corvus wolves could go in for the kill.

Clearing the
steps in just a few mighty leaps, using his powerful legs, Gage launched
himself at two wolves and tackled them to the ground. As the three of them
landed on the ground, Gage had his hands wrapped around the neck of one of the
wolves, squeezing to cut off his air supply. Claws ripped slowly and deeply
down his back, yet he didn’t let go of his quarry. He couldn’t if he wanted to
live. So he used the adrenaline from the pain to crush his victim’s windpipe
and watched as the man flailed wildly, struggling for that breath that wouldn’t
come, before the light dimmed from his eyes.

Knowing he could
only kill the shifter by beheading him or ripping out his heart, Gage tore out
his throat with one swipe of his claws and then finished by using his claws to
tear through the back side of the neck, ensuring that the spine had been
severed.

His victory was
short lived because claws gripped his own neck and sunk in as the German wolf
roared in rage over what Gage had done to his pack mate. Gage felt those claws
sink in far enough until they scraped the outside of his own windpipe, and
that’s when he started to worry. One wrong move and he could accidentally help
the fucker decapitate him. The problem was, Gage was face down with the wolf on
his back, which put him at a severe disadvantage when it came to reaching his
enemy.

Left with only
one option, and not a great one at that, Gage reached up with his hands and
grasped the wolf’s wrists. Using as much crushing strength as he could, he
heard the sick sound of bones breaking as he attempted to pull the claws
threatening his life out of his neck. Both the wolf and he were using every
ounce of strength they had to force their muscles to go which way they wanted
them to go. So thank God that Gage was the bigger bastard here because
centimeter by centimeter he started pulling those inch and half long claws out
of his flesh and away from his vulnerable throat.

Looking to turn
the tables around and surprise the wolf, he waited until only the tips of his
attacker’s claws were grazing his skin and then Gage turned his head. This
caused his neck to be shallowly ripped open, however it also gave him the
opportunity to sink his fangs into his enemy’s arm, biting down all the way to
the bone. The wolf screamed in agony and let go of Gage in shock, which gave
him the chance to rear his head back and head-butt the man right in the face.
The crunch that followed told him that he’d broken a nose, but that wasn’t
enough to get the feral wolf off his back. Gage turned his upper body to swipe
backwards at the man with his claws, yet he met thin air instead of a body. His
brother had the man’s neck in his mouth, dragging him back off Gage as he bit
down savagely.

“Get your ass up
off the floor, Ivanov, and let’s get the fuck out of here!” Davies barked.

Gage got to his
feet while holding one hand over the bleeding wounds of his neck. It helped
stop the blood flow until his body started to heal itself, and he didn’t want
Elena to see the injuries and freak out on him. His throat hurt like a
motherfucker, but he’d take the pain any day over the possibility of not having
his throat ripped out.

He followed the
others down the stairs with Alec racing ahead to stand by Elena and a terrified
Zane. Davies had Marcus Corvus slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry,
while Jenna and Adam flanked him for protection. Minna was right behind them
with Gage bringing up the rear. If they were lucky, they’d make it to the truck
without pack reinforcements showing up.

When they made
it to the first floor of the house, Gage sighed in relief that he could see the
remaining members of their group that had been tasked with securing the outside
of the structure during the mission just outside the front door waiting for
them. He saw his brother changing back to his naked, human form just off to the
inside of the front door, and used his own body to block the view from his
mate.

Gage grabbed
Elena’s free hand because her other one was being held in a crushing grip by
Zane and pulled them outside so he could start a head count of their group.
Everyone was there… except the vampire.

“Where the hell
is Baines?” he growled. If that bloodsucker had betrayed them, Gage was going
to hunt his ass down and kill him very slowly by hanging him upside down and
draining the blood out of his body with slit wrists.

Tyson stepped
forward, pulled his hand off his neck and slapped a folded up gauze against his
wounds to help staunch the flow. “He went to get the truck after we cleared the
perimeter so we could haul ass out of here a little faster. He should be here
any minute. Jesus, you’re bleeding like a stuck pig.”

Before Gage
could rip his second’s head off for saying that in front of his visibly shaken
mate, Alec popped in with that smart-ass mouth of his. “Funny, that’s what I
said to your sister after I popped her cherry.”

As Tyson snarled
and lunged for Alec, Gage couldn’t help thinking that sometimes he really did
love his brother.

CHAPTER-TWENTY-TWO

Elena

The plane was in
the air and it was heavy one kid, one vampire and one nearly dead Alpha. The
vampire was sitting next to Jenna, chatting her up like he had a death wish.
Adam glared at the man as though he was mentally peeling the skin off his body
in two-inch strips. Jenna, on the other hand, was giving Rhett an amused look,
almost like she thought he was brave, but she was also stroking her mate’s hand
with her thumb in plain sight. A subtle hint that she was very much taken.
Rhett was either dumb as a box of rocks or didn’t care because he just kept
talking and flirting.

The unconscious
Alpha was lying on a portable stretcher in front of Minna, who was on her knees
tending to his many wounds. The man looked like a walking skeleton; he was so
thin and he had cuts, bruises and oozing sores everywhere that was visible.
Elena knew that shifters were supposed to be these incredibly tough and
resilient creatures; she still didn’t understand how someone could survive
looking the way that man did.

The boy,
surprisingly enough, was sitting on one side of Elena, curled up just as close
as he could get without actually sitting in her lap. His arms were wrapped
tightly around her waist, his head was burrowed into her side, and he was
scared shitless. Elena could feel his body trembling.

She couldn’t
imagine what the little guy had gone through. Watching his mother murdered
right in front of him. Being beaten and mentally tortured by the man he’d just
learned was his father. And then watching her roast members of his father’s
pack to death with her flamethrower. Her heart nearly broke in half for the
small boy’s situation, but she was also a wee bit worried.

What if he
became too attached to her?

She got that he
was latching on because Elena was the only person who’d had the time to be nice
to the kid so far. When you’re little, scared and in an unknown place, you
latch onto the person you think is going to keep you safe. All of that was fine
and dandy, but she couldn’t keep the kid forever. In fact, she might be
allergic to children in general because just the thought of them made her break
out in hives. Anything remotely resembling motherhood was not in her cards
right now. Nevertheless, Elena would do her best not to freak out and pry the
kid off her side like she’d just found out that he was diseased with the black
plague, however she was also going to have to help find him a home.

Her mental light
bulb went off. If the kid’s father had been an enforcer, then the dad was a
wolf. If the dad was a wolf, the kid was probably a wolf. Looking over to Jenna
and her mate, Adam, who looked like he wanted to choke the flirtatious vampire,
she wondered if the couple could take him. They were wolves after all. Or, if
they couldn’t take the boy themselves, perhaps they could find a good wolf home
for him in Adam’s pack.

Zane squeezed
his arms around her waist, and she looked down at him. He was staring up at her
with those big puppy-eyes, and she almost melted at their sad, pleading
expression. Almost, but not quite.

“What’s up,
kid?”

Zane’s stomach rumbled
loud enough that everyone in the passenger area of the plane could hear it, and
the poor kid blushed at the sound.

“Let me guess,
you’re hungry?”

Zane shyly
nodded.

Looking over at
the group, she found both Alec and Gage staring at her intently, which was
seriously unnerving. Refusing to let them see her discomfort with their probing
stares, she asked, “You got any MREs in this place?”

Alec started
gagging at the word MRE. “You can’t feed the boy that!” More cat gagging, which
was the worst sound in the known universe in Elena’s opinion. “MREs…” Gag.
“…are like eating cardboard.” Gag again.

Annoyed to be
chastised for trying to help the kid out, Elena snapped, “Cough up the damn
hairball already and stop that racket. It’s making my hand itchy for the
baseball bat that I promised to beat you with.”

“Here,” Tyson’s
voice rang out. “Catch.”

Elena held her
hands up just in time to catch the MRE that came sailing her way. Looking at
the package, she read the contents. “Beef ravioli. That doesn’t sound so bad,
eh, kid?”

His eyes got
wide at the sight of the package and his stomach rumbled loudly again. She
opened the package and took out the main course. Ripping off the top of the
plastic packet with the ravioli in it, she handed it and a spoon to Zane, who immediately
started shoveling food into his mouth like he hadn’t eaten in days. Of course,
he probably hadn’t, yet Elena had never watched a kid eat before, and with this
situation, he kind of reminded her of a vacuum. He was sucking that shit in so
fast that he was barely chewing it at all.

In fact, Elena
was pretty sure he didn’t even taste it for the first several bites he was
consuming it so fast, and her theory was promptly proven a couple of minutes
later when Zane scrunched his face up, his lips twisted in distaste, and he
might have even turned a little green. Then his internal vacuum of a stomach
hit the reverse button and everything he’d eaten moments before
projectiled
out of his mouth in the most impressive display
of regurgitation that Elena had ever seen. She couldn’t help sitting there in
shock as she eyed the kid’s vomit sliding down the opposite wall of the plane.

“And THAT is why
I call those God awful things ‘Meals Ready to Eject’,” Alec crowed.

A few members of
Gage’s unit were gagging, some of their group were looking at the young wolf
with pity and the others were trying to cover their laughs so they wouldn’t
make the boy feel uncomfortable. Zane gave her a sheepish look and whispered
sorry as he handed the ravioli back to her.

“No worries,
kid. I guess you didn’t like the ravioli. Can someone get me some towels and a
bottle of water so we can get him and this mess cleaned up?”

Tyson once again
handed her supplies, and she started to wonder if the man had some magical bag he
kept this shit stored in. He seemed to be prepared for just about anything.

Elena wet one of
the small hand towels and helped to clean off Zane’s face. Luckily, there was
no puke on his clothes—no way to wash laundry at ten thousand feet. After
unbuckling her seat belt, she cleaned up the nasty projectile vomit as best as
she could and stored all the dirty towels in a trash bag that, once again,
Tyson had produced for her. That lion was starting to freak her out. Once she
washed her hands in the bathroom, she came back to her seat, picked the MRE up
off it, and sat back down.

Zane’s head was
hanging in shame and she felt sorry for the kid. Bumping his shoulder with her
arm, she tried to soothe him. “Don’t worry about it, man. It happens to all of
us.”

“It’s not that,”
he whispered.

Confused, Elena
asked, “Well then, what is it?”

The kid’s
stomach rumbled again loudly and this time he rubbed his hand in circles over
it. “I’m still hungry.”

The boy had just
finished puking like a drunk frat kid and he was still hungry? Good Lord, just
what kind of iron stomachs did these shifters have?

Gage grabbed the
opened MRE package off her lap and pulled out two smaller unopened packets.
Handing them to Zane, he said, “Here, cookies and a pop tart. Eat those to tide
you over and we’ll get you a real meal once we get home.”

Zane tore into
the packets like a crazy little madman and started stuffing cookies in his
mouth until Adam barked at him, “Eat slowly or you’ll make yourself sick
again.”

Elena watched in
surprise as Zane stared at Adam, but then dipped his head so he was no longer
making direct eye contact. Perhaps the kid realized that Adam was a dominant
wolf and regarded him as one would an Alpha?

Just as it
seemed, Adam realized that Zane was a young wolf in the need of protection and
guidance. If that was the case, maybe it wouldn’t be that hard to get Adam to
take Zane into his pack. The thought gave Elena a small sense of relief. She
might not want to be a mother right now, however that didn’t mean she wasn’t worried
about what would happen to him.

She watched as
Zane slowly munched on his cookies before letting her head fall back against
her seat and closing her eyes. Maybe they could get through the remaining eight
hours of the flight home without anyone trying to kill each other in annoyance.

Relaxing her
body, she was willing herself to take a nap when she heard Logan say, “Somebody
put Mission Impossible on the TV.”

“You play that
fucking movie one more time and I’m going to be an only child in this family!”
Jenna shouted.

Elena sighed.
So
much for not killing each other
.