Page 10 of Broken

Chapter 5

It was only about a ten-minute drive to Cole’s safe house on the outskirts of Louisville. Not his, really—it was borrowed from Outlaw Ridge’s allies, the Wild Blood crew, whose territory was a couple hours away. It was tricked out with both high-end electronic security, and kickass wards made by a dragon sorcerer.

On the outside, Cole was calm and efficient, driving in a way that wouldn’t attract attention, keeping an eye out for anyone tailing them.

But inside, he was churning with emotions he didn’t want to examine or deal with, so he chose the easiest. Anger. Over Riker once more cheating him of a kill—some closure, or retribution that would maybe wipe out part of the past, make up for the things Cole hadn’t done back then.

Close some of the jagged wounds his time in Shifter Special Ops had left inside him.

He’d tried to kill Riker twice. Once long ago, at the end of that last gods-cursed mission, he’d slit Riker’s throat and left him for dead.

Not sorry.

And once just a few months ago, when Riker had gone after Boomer’s mate and tried to kill Cole, not to mention attempting to engineer some kind of fucking apocalypse with his sorcerer boss.

That time, Cole had shot him.

And the fucker refused to stay dead.

Now Cole had seen him die—and part of him still wasn’t convinced Riker would stay dead. And even if he did, Cole was saddled with his legacy—this woman who Riker had somehow convinced to care about him.

That made him the angriest. The last thing Riker deserved was someone to love him.

Especially this woman, who was strong and courageous and amazing and… No. Those were the emotions he was not dealing with. He reached down to find her wrist and check her pulse. Was it getting weaker?

He drove a little faster.

When they got to the safe house, Cole used the remote to open the garage door and pulled inside. There was no sign of pursuit, and no one in the neighborhood who seemed like they shouldn’t be there. Just a city maintenance crew in the cul-de-sac down the street, who’d been there the last couple days.

After shutting the garage, he unlocked the inside door and then went around and got Ireland out of the van.

First thing—tend to her wound and get her stabilized. She was still unconscious, and he could smell the blood starting to soak through her shirt. More than there should be—as if the bleeding had gotten worse instead of slowing down. That was a bad sign.

He felt that clench in his stomach again. He had to save her. She’d been fine, when they left the basement, and now she wasn’t. That was on him. He should have taken better care of her—no matter how she acted.

He was failing in his mission. Focus, he told himself. No emotion. Do the job.

Cole carried Ireland straight to one of the bedrooms, stripped back the covers and laid her on the bed. Then he went and grabbed a pile of towels out of the hall closet, lifting her to spread them underneath her. This was going to get messy.

He’d brought his own medical kit, although he’d noticed that the Wild Bloods kept a well-stocked one of their own in the linen closet. About what he would have expected of Brandon Fierro, their alpha. The one thing about a safe house was that you could be ninety-nine percent sure that someone, sometime, was going to drag in there wounded.

He spread out the medical equipment on the table in the bedroom. Then he pulled off Ireland’s jacket, and cut her t-shirt and bra off with his combat knife rather than trying to wrestle them off the normal way.

Her skin was redhead pale and amazingly soft, her breasts generous. And in spite of the blood, her warm-sugar-cookie scent was intoxicating.

Some kind of magical defense? Pheromones that made her smell comforting, welcoming, that gave creatures feelings of warmth toward her?

Cole snorted. If such a thing existed, he had the anti-pheromones. He scared everyone, and he was pretty sure he’d never made anyone feel comfy and brown-sugar happy.

It would sure come in handy sometimes, though.

Focus on the wound.

But when he turned her to examine it, she woke up. “What are you doing?” she mumbled, batting at his hands. “Don’t touch me.”

“I need to take care of this wound.” Sooner rather than later—it was really bleeding now.

She tried to pull away. “Hey,” he said, cupping her chin in his hand and holding her still, looking into her eyes and drawing on his wolf dominance. Sometimes humans could feel it. “I’m going to take care of you. Trust me.”