Chapter 58: Captured.
Yara.
I’m laughing as I watch a little boy who looks just like Warren running through the grass, laughing happily as his father chases after him.
“I’m going to get you,” Warren calls.
“No, you not!” the boy squeals and tries to run faster on his chubby little toddler legs. I smile, looking down at the baby in my arms, nursing as I rock her back and forth. She has my auburn hair, but as she looks up at me, I see her father’s brownish-green eyes looking back at me.
A howl of attack goes up and I’m jerked back into a dark room.
“Yara, hurry, we’re under attack!” Warren says.
“Our babies! Where are our babies?” I ask, frantic to make sure they are safe. I look around disoriented that we’re in our bedroom and it’s dark when we were just outside playing on a sunny, picturesque day. Warren’s hands cup my face, and he pulls my gaze to his. “Yara, we don’t have babies yet. I just marked you a few hours ago. Come on, we’re under attack. You need to get to the hospital!”
“I…” I turn, looking at the empty bed behind me. “It was so real.”
“Baby, we’ll talk about it when this is done, but right now, we both have to go. Snap out of the dream, Yara. The pack needs you!”
“Right,” I say, getting up and rushing to the door.
Warren’s growl stops me and I turn. “Clothes, Yara!”
I look down at myself and realize I’m still naked from our marking and mating.
“Right!”
I turn to head to the closet.
“Baby, I have to go. I need to know that you’re okay.”
“I’m good. I’m good. I just…” I shake my head, pushing away the nearly overwhelming desire to have those two children in my life. “I’m good.”
“I have to go. Take care of my mate,” he says, kissing me hard before rushing to the door.
“Take care of mine!” I call out, hearing him leap over the banister as I pull on a shirt, then hearing Arric’s paws hit the floor downstairs as I pull on pants.
The minute I’m out the door, Bradley is there. “Ready, Luna?”
“Yeah, let’s go,” I say and begin to jog down the stairs. I see Noelle standing at the edge of the Beta floor.
“I don’t know where to go,” she says, and I can hear the tremor in her voice. Being attacked is a scary thing.
“You’re with me,” I say to her and keep jogging, hearing her fall into step behind me.
“That’s a nice mate mark, Luna,” Bradley says.
My fingers fly up to my neck. “I haven’t even seen it yet!” I say to him.
We collect Anna as we run to the pack hospital. “Do we know who’s attacking? Is it Quinton?”
“I don’t think so, Luna. There are too many of them.” Bradley says, just as more warriors come running up to the hospital.
“Nice mate mark, Luna,” several warriors say as I rush into the hospital.
Dammit, everyone will see it before I will.
“Okay, without Savannah and Piper, who can make triage and crash kits?” I ask.
I hear clapping behind me, and I look over.
I can make the kits, Luna,’ Piper says in the mind link.
I step up to her. “Are you sure you’re okay? I know this must be scary.
You can go to a safe room.”
She shakes her head no. I’m a nurse. You need help, I can help. I just can’t talk.’
“Okay, use your mind link,” I turn looking around. “Who else is assigned to the hospital, Bradley.”
He lists them off. “Get one of them in here. I want someone on Piper and the storage room as all times,” I tell him and I can feel Piper’s relief.
When Archie rushes in, I send him and Piper off to start making the kits.
“Luna, what can I do?” Travis, the warrior from Thomas’ pack, asks, limping out.
“Has my mate cleared you?” I ask, getting the waiting room organized.
“No, Luna, he hasn’t had a chance.”
I look at Bradley who shrugs.
I look at Noelle. She believes in him
and so did Laney. “You do anything wrong, and Bradley here wil remove your head from your body and I
won’t say a thing about it,” Is net
making sure that Bradley knows I’m serious. I can’t be worried that someone on the inside is going to start causing problems. We have enough on the outside.
“Incoming,” Bradley says, his eyes unfocused.
“Do you know how to triage?” I ask Travis.
“Yes ma’am.”
“You triage. Noelle, get the clipboard and start marking each warrior’s status. Anna, you’re on stitching duty.”
“Yes, Luna. Um, but, before they get here,” Anna says, holding up a small mirror. “I didn’t want everyone to see it before you did.”
I stop, looking in the mirror, seeing my mate’s mark on my neck. I smile, my fingers going to it, caressing his mark. “It does look good, doesn’t it?” I ask.
“It really does,” Anna and Noelle both say as the injured start coming in.
“Okay, let’s get to work.”
“Luna, this is Simon’s pack, but it also seems like Brady has joined the fight. Alpha is expecting to see Quinton soon.”
“So three packs fighting us together?” I ask as I stitch up a deep wound on one of my warriors. I’m teaching Noelle as I go so she can start taking some of these harder cases.
“Technically, Simon and Brady aren’t fighting together,” Bradley says.
“They came in from different parts of the pack, Luna. Alpha Simon’s pack first, then Brady’s,” the warrior I’m stitching says.
“Bradley, put another warrior on Piper. I want to make sure Simon doesn’t finish what he started last time.” “Yes, Luna.”
“So, Brady is probably responding to Quinton’s request to attack, but Simon was already here, which is why we have more than our normal group of injured and why Warren thinks that Quinton will come,” I say. “Yes. I’d say so. Alpha is asking if we can switch out the warriors you’ve patched up to watch the hospital so we can send the full-strength warriors into the battle.”
My connection to the pack is stronger now that Warren has marked me.
I can feel all of them and I can tell that they are divided in their battles, getting attacked on two sides by two different Alphas.
“Has he put warriors on the cells?” I ask.
“Yes, Luna,” one of the warriors that’s being treated says.
“If Anna is stitching you up, when she’s done, you can replace one of the warriors guarding the hospital,” I
tell them and several warriors get up to replace the ones watching the hospital.
I jerk, feeling pain down my thigh a moment before it cuts off. Warren just got injured but he shut off the link so I couldn’t feel it.
“I need a status update on my mate,” I say, letting Noelle finish stitching up the warrior I was working on and moving to another one.
I look around, realizing that all of the warriors are trying to connect with warriors on the battlefield to get me an answer. It’s Bradley who pushes an image of Warren and Charlie fighting hard into my mind. “He’s still fighting, Luna,” Bradley says.
“Of course he is. He’s the strongest man I’ve ever met,” I say proudly.
“And Noelle, Charlie is fine too.”
“Thank you, Luna,” she says sighing in relief.
I feel Bradley step closer to me.
“What is it?” I ask him, keeping focused on the warrior in front of me.
“Alpha doesn’t have eyes on Alpha Simon. No one does,” he says, just as a very injured warrior is brought
in. I rush over to him, seeing that his gashes have cut through several arteries and he’s bleeding out.
“Noelle, do you know where the surgical storage room is?” I ask, getting the warrior on a gurney and putting pressure on the bleeding wound.
“No, Luna.”
“Here, put pressure here, try to stop the bleeding. Get him into a room.
Anna, get an IV started on him. Fluids and antibiotics.”
“Yes, Luna.”
I move quickly out of the waiting
room that is my triage room during battles, past the regular storage room where Piper is still putting together triage kits. We’re using them as fast as she’s making them
today. I continue moving f
I downa hallway that isn’t used
often. I walk into the storage room and begin gathering everything that I need to complete the surgery on our warrior when I hear Bradley snarl and spin around, his body filling the door and blocking whoever it is from entering I watch as his claws come out just before I hear a pop sound and Bradley’s body jerks backward, falling to the floor. I drop my supplies, rushing to him.
“Run, Luna,” he wheezes and I realize he’s been shot with a silver bullet.
“NO!” I start to scream, turning to see who it is, when a cloth covers my mouth and nose. I try to hold my breath, try to fight, but in this smal space, there’s no room. He holds me against him as I stare at Bradley, watching in horror as he struggles to breathe.
“Time to come home, Yara,” I hear Simon say in my ear as I finally suck in a ir.
War..’ I begin to call for my mate, but I’m not sure that it went through before the darkness pulled me
under.