Thirteen more to go.
It was much faster than any human could have done it, of course, but by the time I stumbled out of the stairwell passage on my brother’s penthouse floor, I was panting and my chest was heaving in a way that was most un-wolf-like of me. I really needed to spend more time as a lycanthrope, that was for sure.
I shifted back into my human form, my shirt stained with sweat and still heaving a bit, just in time for the elevator door to ding. My brother and Cherry stepped out.
“Are you okay?” Cherry asked, looking as fresh as a flower.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said bluntly before lifting my leg to kick open my brother’s door.
Except my foot never made contact, because the door suddenly opened. The momentum of having nothing for my foot to collide against sent me slamming into the foyer of my brother’s place.
Ow.
I didn’t know which hurt worse, my pride or my cheek where it had slammed into the light-switch cover. Thank God for our accelerated healing. If I’d ended up with a black eye from that, whoever had tried to attack Jackie would have succeeded in killing a VanMarche, because I would have died from embarrassment.
“Whoa, sorry there, Paulie. Didn’t realize?—”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence because I whirled and pulled him into a hug, crushing him harder than I probably should have.
Twice! Twice now someone had tried to take him from me. I knew my baby brother had his issues, had shit he needed to work on, but he was a kind, artistic kid trying to find love and approval in all the wrong places.
“You’re okay,” I murmured, unable to stop the rumble radiating throughout my chest. Although I had never been in line to inherit the pack, I had the alpha designation just like Chris and Luther. I still felt the need to protect, to cherish, to support, and raise. And my inner wolf wasextremelypleased to see our charge was not only alive, but seemingly quite well.
“Where’s your attacker?” Chris said, shoving past us. He’d never been much of a hugger, that one.
Now that I thought about it, only our mother and Jackson were huggers. Strange how that worked.
“Oh, right,” my younger brother said, gently extricating himself from my embrace. Once we parted, I felt a bit strange. I straightened my shirt and hair as if I were arranging myself. I didn’t quite have the verbiage for what I was feeling, but it was almost… unprotected in a way? Like I’d exposed myself too much and now was pinwheeling to recover and be even-keel, always professional Paul.
But then I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. Cherry was staring at me with that enchantingly mismatched gaze of hers. But instead of piercing through me, or looking into the beyond, her expression was quite soft—kind, even.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to build the wall up.”
Build the wall up?
I didn’t know what she meant. I also didn’t have the time to ask her about it before she followed my brothers.
I had a lot of micro-theories floating around in my head of what had happened, including my brother’s attacker jumping through a window and running away like Batman, but none of them involved a darkly dressed, balaclava-clad figure hog-tied on the floor in Jackie’s living room with?—
“Are those deGiotto silk ropes?” I asked once my brain processed what I was seeing. “Why do you have those?”
“Why ask questions you don’t want the answer to?” Jackson asked, flopping down on the couch across from the assailant.
“How do you know those are Shibari ropes on sight?” Chris challenged at the same time.
Shit.
“He never said Shibari ropes,” Cherry commented, looking like she was having thebesttime. “Just the brand, deGiotto.”
“Shit,” Chris muttered.
“Ah, bet you guys didn’t know you’d be learningthatabout each other.” She laughed as she traipsed over to the assailant and pulled the knot at the back of his head, releasing the silk bandana that had been gagging him, and then pulling off his balaclava. “Also betyouthought your night was going to go a lot differently.”
“Fuck you!”
“Hey, I’m not the one tied up with kinky ropes right now, mate,” Cherry said, grabbing a cushion from the high-end, up-ended loveseat nearby and plopping down on it in front of the attacker, like he hadn’t just tried to kill my brother. She was either incredibly confident, or incredibly crazy.
Or psychic and seeing something I’m not.