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His sister immediately pushed to her feet, snatching Jack’s empty glass from his grasp, and walked to the kitchen to fix them both a drink.

Loren cleared her throat. “So. Did anything happen here while we were gone?”

Sab took a moment to think about it, still distracted by what just happened. Ivy was setting things down on the counter and shutting cupboard doors so loudly, she managed to distract Tanner from what he was doing on his tablet. Just for a second, but it was still an accomplishment.

Sabrine’s face smoothed with shock. “Oh gods,” she breathed.

“What?” Lace asked.

Ivy came back, setting Jack’s drink before him as she sat down.

“I almost forgot to tell them,” Sabrine said to Logan.

“Tell them what?”

“About Tamika,” Sabrine responded.

The alpha’s eyes widened. “Oh, that’s right.”

“While you guys were gone, Tamika was stabbed,” Sabrine said.

Tanner fumbled his tablet and nearly dropped it.

Loren sucked in a gasp. “Is she going to be okay?”

“I don’t know,” Sab admitted. “I hope so. She lost a lot of blood, so they put her in a medically induced coma.”

“What happened?” Darien demanded. “How’d you hear about this?”

Logan responded, “We were the ones who found her.”

“Logan and I were keeping an eye on your house while you were gone,” Sabrine explained. “The day the explosion in Yveswich happened, we came here and found her unconscious not far from your driveway.”

Darien’s brow furrowed.

Tanner said, “Sounds like she was trying to get to our house.”

“Mm-hmm…,” Darien agreed, his expression severe.

His phone buzzed on the table.

The room grew so silent, you could hear a pin drop. Loren had the feeling she wasn’t the only one holding her breath as Darien picked up the phone and checked the caller identification.

The look that crossed his face… Loren wouldn’t say he was disappointed—that wasn’t the right word. But she knew Darien well enough to tell that it wasn’t who he’d hoped it would be.

“It’s not them, is it?” Jack asked with a frown.

Darien shook his head. “It’s Roman.”

66

Hell’s Gate

ANGELTHENE, STATE OF WITHEREDGE

“I just wantedto give you a heads up,” Roman was saying, “in case he shows up before I get there.”

Darien stood on the back deck, phone in one hand, cigarette in the other, as Roman filled him in on everything that had happened today at the walk-in clinic in Arbor. The shit Shay had seen on the news. The cops that had turned up looking for Pax. He told him everything that happened before, too—Pax’s bizarre, Surge-like episode. How Roman’s brakes had failed, sending their car spinning off the road, windshield shattering.