Page 41 of Illusory (The Marked Saga #8)

I wasn’t sure if it was the vast amount of alcohol I had consumed, or the fact that the bar brawl involved three lethal vampires and a room full of intoxicated werewolves, but I couldn’t seem to make a lick of sense out of anything. Bodies and blood seemed to be spilling all over the place as the sound of warring wild beasts permeated the air like a blowhorn.

What the hell just happened ?

My panicked, unfocused eyes flew to Trace, who was exchanging blows with Aemon and two other wolves, but before I could say or do anything useful, another group of tussling Supernaturals slammed into the pool table I was leaning against, causing it to skid away from me. My ass hit the floor about two seconds before my head did.

Screams and growling expletives filled the air as I stared up at the ceiling and the wooden beams that lined it. All of which was spinning wildly out of focus. Tessa and her great ideas.

This was all her damn fault, and for what? She abandoned me twenty minutes into the night to go make out with her old flame, or whatever the hell Americo was to her. We should have stayed home like Gabriel told us to. Now God only knew what was going to happen to us and how badly the guys were going to get hurt, and worse, I was too inebriated to get up and be of any help to them.

Dammit, Jemma…stop wigging out and do something! I scolded myself as I continued laying there like a useless bag of dicks. Maybe if I take off my heels I could manage to —

A crushing foot slammed down against my thigh, making me welp out in pain. That was definitely going to leave a mark.

I needed to get my butt up STAT, or I was going to wind up stomped to death on the floor of some werewolf tavern in the middle of nowhere. Of all the ways to go, that would easily be the most embarrassing.

And yet, all I could do was lay there, staring up at the spinning ceiling while begging my eyes to stop seeing double. Another body slammed against the ground to my left, drawing my attention to the floor beside me.

At least I had company. “Fancy meeting you here.”

The guy’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as he groaned out in pain.

“Woah. Are you okay?” I asked stupidly because he obviously wasn’t okay, but instead of answering me, he shook away the stars from his eyes and then climbed back up to his feet, howling as if he was about to go do a keg stand. As if he was having…fun.

Granted, I’d heard enough rumors about the werewolves and their penchant for fighting, sex and general debauchery but this was just insane. These people were insane. I needed to get out of here.

Also, it was really killing my buzz.

Bracing my hands on the floor, I rolled onto my stomach and began crawling under the shelter of the massive pool table. I needed to regroup for a second and get away from all the stomping feet and the bone crunching blows that were flying around me like wasps. At least for long enough to find my damn sister and map ourselves a viable exit strategy out of this nuthouse, knowing the guys would follow us soon after, considering we were the whole reason they were here to begin with.

A hand came down around my ankle and then tugged me backward, dragging me out from my hiding spot and landing me under Dominic’s protective body as he hovered above me with a swollen cheek and busted lip, yet somehow still looking like the sexy god that he was.

“Going somewhere, angel?” he asked with a smirk and then winced as the cut on his bottom lip strained.

“Oh, no! You’re hurt,” I said dimly, my hand reaching up to cradle his face as chaos and destruction poured down all around us like rain. Even in this hellscape of madness, all I could see was him.

“Yes. I’m extremely wounded,” he said as another crooked smile twisted the corners of his lips. “But you can make it up to me later,” he informed and then pulled us up in one fluid motion before tossing me over his shoulder and blurring us through the crowd toward the front entrance.

Thunderous snarls and excited howls filled my ears from every direction as Dominic dodged bodies and rogue fists and weaved us through the tavern that had erupted into absolute mayhem.

“Looks like we’ve overstayed our welcome,” he mused as he set me back on my feet and then whistled over my shoulder, his hand gripping my elbow and stopping me from swaying into a face-plant.

Curious, I turned to look at the aftermath of our little night out just as Gabriel barreled through the crowd with my wasted sister cradled in his arms. “Car. Now.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” said Dominic as he attempted to scoop me back up again.

“Wait! No!” My palms slapped against his chest to stop him from picking me up. “Where’s Trace? We can’t leave without Trace!” I said as my wide, panicked gaze flew back to the rowdy crowd, unable to spot him amongst the bedlam.

There were too many fights going on, too many fists being thrown. And why did it look like the wolves were fighting amongst themselves then too?

“I’ll get him. Go with Gabriel and wait in the car for me,” ordered Dominic, drawing my attention back to him.

“What? No!” I said, shaking my head violently. “You’re crazy if you think I’m leaving you in this—”

“I cannot get Romeo out of here in one piece if I’m worried about you,” he cut in before I could finish my protest. “Go with Gabriel. We’ll be right behind you, angel. I promise .”

I hesitated for a moment, not feeling right about any of this but then finally nodded, knowing in my heart that Dominic would keep his promise to me. He would return to me with Trace as promised…

Even if he had to kill everyone in there to do it.

* * *

It felt like an eternity before Dominic and Trace finally burst out of Bad Moon Rising and zipped across the parking lot to Gabriel’s waiting SUV. I couldn’t help but notice that despite the absolute shit-show that had broken loose in the tavern, we’d all managed to make it out of there relatively unscathed, save for a few bumps and scratches that were already well on their way to healing.

It was strange, considering the amount of testosterone and bone-crushing fists that had been flying around back there. Something told me there was a lot more than just ‘dumb luck’ at play.

“Um, so…is anyone going to explain to me what just happened?” I asked as Gabriel peeled out of the parking lot and onto the desolate stretch of road that would take us out of Avalon territory and back toward Hollow Hills.

I was sitting in the back seat, smack in the middle of Dominic and Trace while Tessa sat up front beside Gabriel, though her head was slumped against the cracked passenger window, making it hard to decipher whether she was trying not to throw up or just passed out entirely. Judging by her ill-fated undertaking to prove that she could outdrink me, I was betting on the latter.

“What the hell do you think happened?” snapped Gabriel, not even bothering to meet my eyes through the rearview mirror. His hands were gripping the steering wheel so hard, I thought his knuckles might pop out of his skin from the tension.

Apparently, he was still very upset about us opting out of his direct order to stay home.

“I asked you to do one simple thing—to give me one goddamn courtesy—and what do you do instead?” he went on angrily as I shrunk back in my seat, cursing myself for even opening my big fat mouth. “You marched on down to the first werewolf bar you could find. It’s a miracle we even made it out of there in one piece!”

It was kind of a miracle, and I definitely still had questions, though now probably wasn’t the best time to ask them. “I’m sorry, Gabriel. We didn’t think there was any harm in going—”

“No, you didn’t think . You didn’t think at all. That’s the problem with the two of you. You never think!”

Ouch . That felt a tad harsh.

Then again, he wasn’t exactly wrong. Neither one of us bothered to give a thought past the point of what we wanted to do at that moment—what we felt we had earned. There was no sense in trying to deny it to him.

“Okay, so we didn’t think, but in our defense, everything was fine until you guys showed up and pissed them all off,” I pointed out and then immediately regretted my entire existence.

“Dammit, Jemma!” he boomed, his voice bouncing off the close quarters of his SUV. “You shouldn’t have been there to begin with! What if the Order or the Roderick sisters had shown up and you were drunk and unprotected? What if you were being followed? We had no idea where you were! Anything could have happened, and we wouldn’t have had a clue where to even begin looking for you! Don’t you get that?”

I dropped my head, unable to argue back, especially since I was flying solo on our defense team.

Thanks for the solidarity, Tess .

“You’re right. I’m sorry. It was stupid. We shouldn’t have snuck out.” As much as a part of me wanted to defend our right to have a single night of fun and normalcy, we shouldn’t have done it behind their backs. Anything could have happened to us, and the guys would have forever blamed themselves had they not been able to find us in time.

Which really begged the question, “How did you guys know where we were anyway?”

Gabriel finally met my eyes in the rearview mirror, his own still fiery and thin. “How do you think?” he answered as though I should have already known that answer.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t have—” I stopped short and narrowed my gaze as I turned to look at Dominic who was watching me with amusement in his eyes. “You traced my phone again, didn’t you?” I accused.

His smirk gave me my answer even before he confirmed it aloud. “You always were a quick one, love,” he said, though I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

Apparently, not quick enough , I thought to myself dryly, knowing I’d walked right into that one.

“Once we realized the two of you had disappeared, it was just a matter of tracking down your location,” he went on, his dark gaze running leisurely down the length of my very short dress and then pausing on my thighs, as though his mind had suddenly gone offline.

I quirked my brow at him. “That easy, huh?”

His gaze snapped back up to mine as an easy smile curved his mouth. “Nothing about you is easy, angel, but I suppose that’s what keeps me coming back for more,” he said, his voice dropping low enough to make my belly warm.

I turned to glance at Trace, suddenly feeling uncomfortable, as though the warmth I’d felt had scrolled up to my face and written itself into the lines of my cheeks for everyone to see.

Trace’s eyes darkened minutely, as though he were picking up on the change—as though he were feeding off it.

It was bad enough that I was in love with both of them, and that my body, despite my best efforts and intentions, constantly reacted to everything they did, but did they have to know about it every single time, too?

“Of course, we had to make a small pitstop first,” continued Dominic as he stretched his arm along the backrest behind me, drawing my attention back to him. “Seeing as you and your sister decided to go to the one place Revenants are very much not welcome.”

“You should have taken the hint,” grumbled Tessa from the front seat without bothering to turn around or even lift her head up from the passenger window.

At least she was still alive.

“Now, Tessa, where would the fun have been in that?” retorted Dominic, his tone light and teasing. “Besides, you know I favor wit and strategy over hard labor.”

My curious eyes stayed pinned on Dominic. “What pitstop?”

“I called in a favor with the Silverclaw pack,” he answered as though it was just another run of the mill part of his day. “They proved to be precisely the distraction we needed.”

“Wait. Are you saying there were other wolves there helping you?” I asked, wholly confused because everyone knew werewolves did not play nice with vampires. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was coiling a strand of my hair around his index finger, or because I was just too inebriated to follow his logic, but none of what he was saying was making sense to me.

“Helping me? Certainly not,” he said and then chuckled. “The Avalon-Silverclaw rivalry goes back centuries. They hardly needed an excuse to turn up tonight. All it took was the faintest hint of bait and they were on it like sharks.”

Well, that explained why there had seemed to be so many fights going on at the same time, and how the five of us managed to make it out of there without losing a single finger or toe.

I couldn’t help but wonder if the Avalon wolves had fared as well as we had. As bad as I felt for leaving them to fight it out themselves, I knew I wasn’t willing to risk my family in the process of helping. Nobody mattered more to me than the people riding in the car with me at that moment, especially the two I was slotted between.

Besides, like Dominic had said, the Avalon-Silverclaw rivalry went back centuries, and they hardly needed an excuse to show up tonight. Their beef had nothing to do with us.

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

At least that was what I kept telling myself in the hopes that it would quell the sinking feeling of guilt that didn’t leave me until long after we arrived back in Hollow Hills.