Page 79 of The Runaway

“Fall back!” The faint shout came from the far end of the street, where gunfire was peppering the air. “Fall back!”

The remaining few soldiers scrambled about, forming a tight little cluster as the rioters closed in on them. “Stay back, you mongrels,” one of them shouted, while they beat a hasty retreat down the road.

Adalene didn’t even bother to watch them go. She turned back to Niles, who had managed to regain his feet by now, though he was hunched over and clutching his ribs.

“Can you walk?” She would have loved to take the time to remove the shards of glass from his arms, but it would have to wait until they were somewhere safer.

“If we go slow,” Niles said, gingerly resting his arm over Adalene’s shoulder. “Let’s get back to the hotel. I don’t think the respite’s going to last long out here.”

It certainly wasn’t. The soldiers were probably regrouping at this very moment, preparing to come out again and beat the rioters into submission. They needed to be long gone from here before that happened.

But as they turned to leave, Niles caught sight of the two downed soldiers. “Did you do that?” he asked, in the sort of tone that said he was expecting her to say no.

“Only one of them,” she replied, sending him a look that fell just shy of a smirk. “But don’t worry. He deserved it.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“Keep pressure on it for another few minutes,” Gabriel said to Lucas, as he watched the young man peer at the cloth he’d had pressed to his head for the fifth time in two minutes. “I know it looks like it’s stopped bleeding, but I’d rather make sure than make a mess everywhere again.” Bloody impatient youth, he thought to himself, with no real irritation.

Once they’d got back to the stables, he’d had the chance to help Lucas wash the blood out of his hair and clean the cut. Doing so had made it start bleeding again, but it was only a trickle, and he expected it to stop fairly soon. He’d treated enough battlefield wounds to know what he was doing, and Lucas’s cut was relatively minor.

Fay’s friend Jean was doing okay as well, sitting down on a pad of straw in the corner of the stall with a cotton pad pressed to his head. The stall was fairly spacious and would have made a comfortable bed for the four omegas who’d originally hired it, but with seven of them in here now, it was a little cramped. Connor was sitting in the corner keeping out of the way, while one of the other omegas was ferrying basins of water back and forth to clean people’s various cuts, and another omega had fetched some food from a secret stash somewhere or other. Gabriel and his group had gratefully accepted some stale bread, having used up the last of the food they’d brought with them the night before. If they were lucky, they’d be able to buy some more from an inn once the rioting settled down, but it was just as likely that the inn owners would shut their doors for the night, refusing to allow anyone in who might cause the slightest hint of trouble.

Now that all the urgent tasks had been seen to and Lucas looked to be on the mend, Gabriel stood up, brushing the straw off his pants. “I’m going to go look for Niles and Adalene,” he said to Connor and Lucas. “You two wait here-”

“Help! We need help! Please, he’s bleeding!” The desperate cry came from the end of the stable, and Gabriel dashed out into the aisle to see what was happening. A man and a woman were dragging another man through the door, a long, dark stain on this man’s trousers.

“Bring him here,” Gabriel ordered, grabbing a wooden stool from the side of the room. He wasn’t a trained medic, but he’d quickly learned that his time in the army had made him far more experienced in treating wounds than anyone else here. He settled the man on the stool, then found the tear in his trousers where he’d apparently been stabbed. He ripped the gap wider, then grimaced at the long cut. It was bleeding freely, but Gabriel took the time to check both the colour and the nature of the bleed. It was seeping, not pumping, and it was a dark crimson colour, instead of bright red. Good news, as it meant the knife hadn’t hit an artery.

Gabriel dashed back to the stall and grabbed a clean cloth from the stack in the corner. They’d been made by cutting up a towel that someone had produced out of nowhere. He placed it over the man’s wound and pressed down firmly. “We’ll need to keep pressure on this for a while, then sooner or later, you’re going to need stitches,” Gabriel told him. “Do you have any other injuries?”

“He got pushed over when everyone started stampeding,” the woman who’d come in with him said. “I did too. I think we’ve both got some nasty bruises, but nothing more serious than that.”

“Sir? Is that right?” Gabriel asked, wanting to hear it from the man himself.

“Yeah, just bruises,” the man said, his voice strained. “Aside from the fucking knife in my leg.”

“We’re going to take care of that for you,” Gabriel said, trying to sound both confident and soothing. “I’ve seen far worse than this, believe me. You’re going to be fine.”

“Hey, Gabriel,” Lucas said from behind him. “Looks like you’re going to be here for a while.”

“Yeah, this is going to need stitches,” Gabriel told him. “I’ve got a needle and thread in my bag. Can you grab it for me?” Lucas nodded and hurried back to the stall, returning with Gabriel’s rucksack, with its plethora of useful bits and pieces inside. Then he called for one of the omegas to bring a basin of water and a clean cloth.

“So, if you’re going to be here for a while,” Lucas said, once that task was seen to, “then I should go out and look for Niles.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” Gabriel snapped. “You got hit in the head-”

“It’s barely a scratch,” Lucas said. “And besides which, Niles is my brother. And Adalene’s basically family. And running around on the street right now is no place for an omega, whether or not she’s with Niles. I’m not going to go starting any fights. But if they’re at the hotel, they’d be better off coming here, and if either of them are injured, they might be having trouble walking back.”

Gabriel scowled and gritted his teeth, but at the same time, he knew Lucas was right. “Take some sort of weapon with you,” he said. “Even if it’s just a plank of wood, it’s better than nothing. And don’t get into any fights, and if someone starts shooting at you, you turn around and run in the opposite direction. Antoine’s going to have my hide already for losing Niles. I don’t need to lose you as well. And even if it seems peaceful out there, don’t take that for granted. These things can spill out in unexpected places.”

“I’ll be careful,” Lucas promised. He grabbed a thick broom handle from beside the door, where someone had stowed it when they’d come in. Then he disappeared out the door.

???

Adalene scanned the street for the fifteenth time, praying that Gabriel would show up soon. After a slow, protracted walk, she and Niles had made it back to the hotel, and thankfully, this part of the city was pretty quiet – for the time being, at least. The inn was closed – no big surprises there – but she’d set Niles down at one of the tables out the front and taken on the task of patrolling the street – either for any sign of their companions, or for soldiers or rioters out to make trouble.

Niles was slowly picking the glass fragments out of his arm, as she’d discovered the third time she’d circled back to check on him. He had a neat little pile of slivers set out on the table, and he’d begun ripping up a spare shirt he had in his rucksack to tie around his arm as makeshift bandages.