Page 33 of Blood & Bond (The Bouchers #2)

“What happened to her?” Charlie asked as he began to cry. He wrapped his hand around her foot.

“She was shot,” Josiah replied when I couldn’t seem to get the words out. “And she’s got some good scratches on her arms.”

“Oh god,” Charlie choked out.

I knew he loved her, but I needed him to shut the fuck up.

I was hanging on by a very thin thread. When Josiah and Alice spoke, they were matter-of-fact.

They didn’t get emotional. They just did what needed to be done.

The way they moved around the room was habit, comfortable, businesslike.

That’s what I needed. I couldn’t take on Charlie’s worry. It felt suffocating.

My father’s hand tightened on my shoulder.

Lucy woke up with a cry when Josiah pulled the large piece of glass from her forearm. She shot up in bed so fast that none of us were able to stop her before her fist swung for his throat.

“Lucy,” I yelled, catching her around the shoulders as she lunged for him.

She froze and turned toward me. “Ambrose?”

The sight of her big brown eyes nearly brought me to my knees.

“Hey, baby,” I replied as she went limp in my arms.

“Fuck,” she breathed. Her entire body shuddered.

“You sleep through me digging a bullet out of your thigh, but wake up when this one pulls a puny piece of glass from your arm?” Alice asked. She shook her head and strode toward the sink. “No sense.”

Lucy let out a painful sounding laugh and then groaned.

“Get her something for the pain,” I ordered Josiah.

“She nearly took my head off,” he said as he walked toward the cabinets along the wall.

“You’re back,” Lucy croaked when she caught sight of Charlie at the end of the bed.

“Told you I’d be fine,” he replied tightly, shaking her foot a little.

Before I could warn him not to jostle her, Lucy inhaled sharply.

“Your mom?” she asked me, her eyes filling with remembered dread. She looked up at my dad.

“She’ll be fine,” he assured her gently. “Immortal, remember?”

“I…She…” Lucy’s face fell, and she began to cry in great, wrenching sobs. Her chest heaved with each breath she took.

“You’re okay,” I soothed. “It’s over. Shh. You’re okay, love. Everyone is okay.”

Josiah came over and carefully leaned over the bed so he could reach her arm. A minute or two after he’d administered the pain medication, her sobs slowed to a gradual stop.

“What the fuck?” I yelped as her body relaxed completely against me.

“Just the pain meds,” Josiah said over his shoulder as he hurried to the sink. “And she’s probably exhausted. Did you see what she did out there?”

I held Lucy for a few minutes, relishing the feel of her breath on the base of my neck.

My father stood at the head of my mother’s bed, smoothing his hand over her hair as Alice and Josiah got to work.

“Should someone help him?” Charlie asked, staring at Matthias’s prone body on the floor.

“He’s next,” I told him as I finally laid Lucy back down on the pillow. “He’s mated. He’ll be fine.”

“Oh, good,” Charlie said faintly.

“How’s it going in here?” Chance asked from the doorway.

“Working on your mother,” Alice replied. “Go away.”

Sven began to cough.

“Erik?” Alice glanced over her shoulder at her mate.

“I’ve got him,” my dad replied, crossing the room.

“Ulf,” Chance called, grimacing when Alice shot him a glare over her shoulder. “You should come see this.”

I stared at him blankly. He wanted me to leave my mate?

“I can stay with her,” Charlie said hesitantly. “If you…” He glanced between me and Chance. “Just until you get back, if you want.”

Chance nodded.

Gritting my teeth, I leaned down and kissed Lucy’s cheek, breathing her in. She was safe. She was asleep. Her brother was there. I could leave her for a few minutes.

I followed Chance out into the house, and the first thing I noticed was the smell. Death had a distinctive smell, and violent death even more so. Beau and Reese were standing in the kitchen.

“We didn’t want to get in the way,” Reese explained, glancing past us. “How’s everyone doing?”

“They’ll live,” I replied flatly. “Where’s Danny?”

“He left,” Beau said, pointing with his thumb. “The woman wanted to go home. Insisted.”

“His mate.”

“Yeah.”

“Did he find out why she was in that garage?” I asked.

“She said she had no fucking clue,” Chance answered. “Last week, a couple of guys ambushed her in her driveway. Took her to the garage. She couldn’t figure them out. They fed her, let her use the facilities, didn’t hurt her. They just seemed to be waiting.”

It didn’t make any sense, but I didn’t have the headspace to try to puzzle it out. “What am I supposed to be looking at?” I snapped. The whole night had been an epic clusterfuck, and I just wanted to get back to my mate.

“I told you it could wait,” Beau chastised Chance.

“We need to clean up the bodies,” Chance argued. “They’re starting to fucking reek.”

Reese messed with something around her neck, and when she pulled it toward her face, I realized it was a kitchen towel. She covered her nose and mouth with it and gestured toward the living room.

When we reached the edge of the mess, she stopped.

“Walk us through it again, baby,” Beau said gently.

“We started there.” She pointed toward my wing. “In Beau’s room. Lucy and Alice met Mattie and me up there after they’d woken us up. I made a few shots out that window.”

She paused, and Beau slid his hand down her back. She leaned into him and continued.

“They saw me, so we changed rooms.” She pointed to the opposite wing. “We used Chance’s room. Lucy said she was right behind us, but she never came up.” She looked around the room. “She stayed down here.”

“Best guess,” Chance continued. “She opened the windows. See how the frame is open a few inches, each one? It’s uniform. So she posted up at the windows.”

“There were so many outside,” Reese said, her voice muffled. “Too many. Your mom had gone down to protect your dad, but the three of us knew it was only a matter of time before they reached the front door. I couldn’t stop all of them.”

I looked around the room. The couch and one of the chairs had been moved, making a barrier between the living area and the front door. She’d found a defensive position.

“She took out all but one on the front porch,” Beau said.

“With a pistol,” I breathed.

“Glass outside on the porch. She shot at least one of the windows out.”

“I didn’t see Lucy when she was shooting. When I came to the top of the stairs, she was literally throwing her pistol at one of them.” Reese let out a watery laugh.

“Did she hit him?” I asked, my gaze roaming over the bodies.

“In the face,” Reese confirmed. “It knocked him back enough that she was able to get the bat off the couch.”

“That fucking bat,” Chance said, shaking his head.

“They just kept coming,” Reese whispered. “I was doing my best, but with Mattie and Lucy down here?—”

“You did great,” Beau said.

“Then your mom got shot.” Reese stumbled over the last word.

“And Lucy went crazy, like the Hulk or something. She started in with that bat and took two guys down before she got to the shooter. He caught her, though. He tried to lift her off the ground, but Lucy threw herself back, and they both went down.”

My chest felt like it was about to cave in. We’d believed a fucking liar and left our mates without enough protection. Vulnerable. And now Lucy, my mother, Sven, and Matthias were paying the price.

“They wrestled,” Reese said as she gingerly picked her way through the room.

She came to a stop where I’d found Lucy.

“He was on top of her, but somehow she managed to wiggle out.” Reese shook her head.

“I’m not sure how she did it. I was still trying to stop the men coming in through the window.

One second, she was under him, and the next, she was on his back with her arms around his neck.

I shot that one as he came up behind her.

” She pointed to the body that Chance had dragged off Lucy’s limp body. “And he fell on her legs.”

“Look at this, Ambrose,” Chance said, crouching down by the body that Lucy had been laying on top of. He pointed.

The man’s eyes were nearly gouged out of his head, and his neck was broken.

My mate had broken the man’s neck.

Good.

“Watched her do it from the window,” Chance said, rubbing his hand over his mouth. “It was clean, Ulf. Precise.”

I nodded and lifted the dead human’s hand and checked the nails. They were bloody. He was the one who’d scratched her forearms.

I rose to my feet, my boots crunching on the broken glass all over the rug.

“You did good,” I told Reese, turning my head to look at her. “Thank you.”

She let out a little hysterical laugh.

Chance shook his head and pushed to his feet.

We gazed around at the bodies around us. Some of them were mangled from my mother’s shotgun. Some had huge exit wounds from Reese’s rifle. A lot of them had smaller bullet wounds from Lucy.

Silently, I made my way over to the front door while my brothers followed, and Reese walked back to the kitchen.

“I wonder who did that,” Beau said, gesturing to the sideboard pushed against the door.

“Sven?” Chance asked as he moved toward it.

“Could be.”

I helped him scoot it back against the wall where my mother kept it. The door had been shot to hell, and it swung open once the cabinet wasn’t holding it closed anymore.

“Leave it,” Beau ordered as I pushed it shut again. “I’ll figure out a way to keep it closed.”

I stepped away from the door. With the windows wide open, it wasn’t like the door would keep someone out anyway. “What happened to the security? Anyone know?”

“I found two outside and sent them home,” Chance replied, leaning tiredly against the wall. “The others are either dead or taken.”

“Fuck.” There should’ve been more than enough of them to hold the property, but we hadn’t imagined an assault of that size.

“We’ll deal with it tomorrow,” Beau said as he walked back toward Reese.

I went back to Lucy.