His entire body tensed but he nodded. As the soldiers neared, Lucas fought with his wolf for control. I laid my free hand against his cheek and his wolf settled. “Easy, Wolf. You have to trust me.”
Lucas blinked and for a fleeting second he reminded me of a scared little boy. Yeah, a scared little boy who could rip my throat out if his wolf surged at the wrong time. Of course Ordy and the others would immediately kill him, but that would be a waste.
We got him loaded onto the chopper and I sent the boys back to the Humvee. They argued, saying Simon told them to ride with the injured werewolf. I wasn’t about to leave him–not that Ordy or the others would hurt him, but Lucas wasn’t comfortable around them.
“Breanna?”
I looked down into his handsome face. “Uh huh?”
“Are you an angel? I mean, I must be dead or something, right?”
Being a witch and a woman in the military, I'd been called many things, but never an angel. “I’m not an angel and you most certainly are not dead.”
His face softened. “I think you’re an angel.”
He thinks I’m an angel? Damn, how hard did he hit his head?
The chopper ride took fifteen minutes. We needed to go to a hospital equipped to tend injured werewolves. The human pilots looked a little surprised when I ordered them to fly to a hospital farther away than their normal flight pattern, but one look at the stripes on my shoulder garnered me a curt “yes, ma’am” and the chopper took flight. They had no clue their injured cargo was a supernatural.
The hospital helipad was on the roof and a team of medical staff, all Elvin folk, were milling about. Naturally gifted healers of the supernatural world, the peaceful blue-eyed, blond-haired elves were always the ones who took care of injured werewolves, vampires, or whatever other non-human came through the doors.
The humans thought supernaturals were of a religious faith that did not believe in any type of blood testing or transfusions. It wouldn’t be cool for some third-year medical student to come across the undead blood of a vampire or the ramped-up metabolism of a werewolf. It took keeping the right people in the right places. The Divine Council, the ruling body of the supernatural world, did a great job of managing all the details.
We hadn’t talked during the ride to the hospital, our hands locked together. His wolf was quiet. His breathing was soft. His heart had calmed. As the elves circled the chopper, I softly kissed his forehead.
“We’re here, handsome.”
The lost little boy look was back. “Can’t you come in?”
It felt good to be wanted, even if it was by a werewolf delirious with pain. “Probably not a good idea,” I answered, hoping my voice didn’t crack.
“Okay,” he said, “but can I see you again?”
Brown eyes swallowed me.
“Take care of yourself, Lucas Benelli.” I brushed another kiss on his forehead as the nurses wheeled him away. His fingers slipped from mine as he disappeared behind the enormous double glass doors of the hospital. It took every ounce of strength I had to climb into the waiting chopper.
He’s gone. Suck it up, buttercup, and move on.
“To the base, ma’am?”
“Yeah.”
He thought I was an angel?
Every instinct in my body said I should go in the hospital and make sure Lucas was all right. He was injured. He was vulnerable.
He needs me.
I banged my fist against the chopper door. An unknown witch among supernaturals would cause nothing but trouble and Simon would wring my neck if I got all of Italy in a tizzy.
I was under orders not to engage. Going in the hospital would be further engagement. Damn.
As the chopper lifted, I slipped on my headset. Simon would be furious and I needed to get a hold on myself before we landed at Camp Ederle. He would blast me for disobeying orders and doing something plain damn stupid like riding to the hospital without any backup. He would be right, of course. Simon was always right.
I settled into the back seat and rubbed my hand. Lucas had held on so tightly he’d left bruises. Holding werewolves’ hands as they were transported for medical treatment wasn’t new, but with Lucas, there was something that ate at me. The sadness and fear in his eyes made my chest hurt.
I should not have left him.
An invisible rope tugged me to go through the double doors of the hospital. I could wait with him for a little while. Hold his hand while the doctors checked his injuries.
Too bad I didn’t have an invisibility spell. Wonder if they’d have noticed an owl?
With muscles bunched, I was ready to leap from the chopper when a wave of power swept across the helipad. An Alpha werewolf, probably the Italian Alpha, was in the building. Anger–no, make that rage–coursed through the air. One very pissed-off Alpha was on the premises and a lone witch was not what he needed to see.
Chapter 2
Lucas
The sharp smell of antiseptic assaulted my nose and bright light needled my eyes. My mouth tasted like cotton and what the hell was wrong with my leg? Had a train hit me?
“Lucas? Can you hear me?” The worried words of my father rattled in my head. Why didn’t painkillers work on wolves?
“Turn the lights down, Josef. They’re blinding him,” my mother chimed in her feathery soft voice. “Lucas, you’re in the hospital. Your father and I are here.”
The fuzzy figures of my parents standing over me came into focus.
“Tell us what happened.”
“Oh, Josef, please let the boy wake up before you interrogate him,” my mother snapped. Only she could get away with talking to the Alpha of the Italian Pack in such a manner.
“Gemma, I am only trying to determine what course of action I should take.”
“Hey, Mom.”
My mother leaned down and smiled. “Oh, honey, we were so worried.”
“What happened?” my father demanded as he moved to the foot of my bed.
“I crashed my bike.”
Josef Benelli slammed his hands on the bed railing. “Why were you on the mountain road?”
And here we go.
“I’d been to see Tristyn.”
Not what he wanted to hear.
My father snorted and rubbed his temples. “Why were you not with your mate?”
I tried to sit up but stopped abruptly as sharp pain slashed across my side. “Tessa is not my mate.”
“You are to be joined at the next full moon,” Mom said as she perched on the chair beside my bed. “The Alpha has declared as such.”
I lolled my head in the pillow. “I can’t have a conversation with Tessa without it ending in a fight. How could I possibly take her as my wife?” I meant the question rhetorically but my father answered.
“You do not need to talk to her. You need to bed her and produce offspring for the life of the pack.”
Now I knew why he and Mom fought all the time. My father wasn’t exactly up on modern thinking.
“Is that why you went to see Tristyn, because you’re worried about your impending mating?” My mother’s brows knitted, her gaze darting from me to my father.