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“No.” Dawn would have shaken her head, but her brain still felt a little edgy.
“Don’t tell me no, Dawn,” he snapped furiously. “I won’t risk your life this way.”
“And I won’t risk yours,” she said calmly.
She felt too calm. She knew what was coming though. It wouldn’t take long before the fallout began.
“We’re clearing the island.”
“Then we’ll transport you to Sanctuary and have you locked in a bunker for your own protection.”
“You don’t want to try that,” he warned her quietly, though his voice rasped with shocked fury.
She turned to look at him then. She loved him. She loved him until she felt as though her heart would burst with it.
“We play this out here.” She eased to the side of the bed. “I need a shower, if no one cares. I need to wash the stink off me. Dash, have our shooter, Byron, flown in. He’s the best eyes we have, even better than Jonas. I want him on the top of the house.”
“He’s here,” Callan snarled.
The anger in the room was going to smother her. It was weighing down on her like a heavy, wet blanket as the testosterone pouring through the three men nearly overwhelmed her.
“Moira’s to go back out tonight. I want her with Styx. Tell him his chocolate will become nonexistent if he babies her. I want her back up to peak. I’ll meet with the team in a few hours…”
“You’re no longer lead, Dawn,” Dash reminded her calmly.
“Get over yourself, Dash,” she grunted as she reached the bathroom door. “I trained for this. He’s my mate. If you don’t like it, then go growl at Elizabeth, because I don’t want to hear it.”
“Elizabeth growls back,” he muttered as she closed the door behind her and leaned back against it.
The shaking was starting now. The tremors were working through her muscles and she had to swallow tightly before turning on the hot water and pouring the basin full of a scented liquid soap. Its scent was strong, hopefully enough to mask the smell of fear from Dash and Callan. Because she was scared. More scared than she had been since Dayan’s death.
The past was returning with a vengeance and she didn’t know if she could bear it.
Seth stared at the closed door, then at the Breeds that watched it as well.
“She’s terrified,” he said softly.
Callan sighed heavily as he raked his hands through his hair and gave him a brutally fierce look. “I’ve not smelled fear like that rolling off her since we were in the labs. And it makes me crazy. Son of a bitch. Those bastards nearly destroyed her there.” He stalked across the bedroom. “There was nothing we could do. No way to help her. And there’s no way to help her now.”
“Yes, there is,” Dash said. “We find him and slice his throat for him. It’s that simple.”
“Her blood pressure is also elevated and the hormonal readings on her blood work are off the charts,” Ely said as she moved from the small desk where she had set up the analysis equipment she had brought with her. “If sh
e follows the pattern as she does with the nightmares, she’ll head out at dark to hunt.”
“The hell she will.” Seth wasn’t having it. He glared at the doctor, then Dash and Callan. “She does not leave this house.”
“Then it’s your job to keep her in it.” Dash shrugged, his expression savage though his eyes glimmered with an edge of humor. “Try taking her to the exercise room you have in the basement. Let her work it off there; otherwise the adrenaline will make her crazy. Dawn’s survived, Seth, admirably, by remaking herself. Don’t try to change who and what she is now. Let her fight it out, even if she has to fight with you.”
“She’ll have to fight,” Callan injected. “She has to let the rage out or it festers into the worst of the nightmares.”
“I’ll handle Dawn. I want that shooter and the bastard that attacked her found,” Seth snapped, angry with both the situation and the men who gave their advice so easily.
They wanted to continue to pamper her, and, Seth admitted, he wanted nothing more in this world than to protect her himself. But Dawn wouldn’t be protected. She was ten years past the ability to allow anyone to stand between her and danger.
It didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.
And she had been in that bathroom alone long enough.
