Page 20 of Broken

Chapter 9

Cole must have gone to sleep, because he woke up in daylight, to the sight of half-naked Ireland. Which would have been great, except she was just taking her zipped bag off the table, and since the books weren’t in sight, they were already in it. She was obviously leaving.

She was also wearing nothing but her pants and boots.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he asked her.

“I told you last night. I have to go find a Bright Fae to take my bracelet off.”

“So you were just sneaking away? While I was asleep? And I thought we were getting along so well.” Despite his sarcasm voice, something twisted inside him. He’d thought… ah, fuck.

She turned to face him. “I saw your phone. I saw all the messages. You didn’t tell me you work for Thanatos.” She spat the name.

Oh, shit. Riker.

Sure enough, she said, “Riker warned me about him. That he’d try to capture me. I was just starting to trust you.” Now she was the one who sounded hurt. “By the way, there’s like a hundred messages from someone called Boomer.”

Fuck. That was all he needed.

Cole said, “Thanatos sent me, but we weren’t capturing you. Like I said, we thought I was rescuing you from Riker. But he does want to know what Riker was up to. So do I.”

“I told you, I don’t know. You can tell him that—I don’t have to.” She looked around in frustration. “Where are my other clothes?”

“In rags, mostly,” he said. “And before you go out there the way you are, have you thought about the Retrievers? I’d bet money they can track that bracelet.”

“All the more reason to find someone to take it off me as soon as possible.” She was still searching the room. “I need my jacket. Where’s my jacket?”

He got out of bed and checked the floor underneath. There it was. He held it up.

“Give it to me.”

He went over to the table and grabbed his phone, still holding on to the jacket. Yep. Messages from Thanatos, and about a gazillion from Boomer. He shoved the phone in his pocket. He had enough to deal with right now. Luckily Boomer was too far away to use the communicator on the specialized dog tags they both wore.

“Give. Me. My. Jacket.” Damn it, she had her knife out again.

He took the knife away from her with a quick twist of the wrist. “Promise not to leave until you hear me out. And until you have a shirt on.”

“Don’t make me hurt you.” She was almost in tears. Then he realized—the jacket had Riker’s bracelet in the pocket. Anyone who had that could make a slave out of her. Including him—or Thanatos.

Silently, he handed it over. Then he went to one of the dresser drawers to get her a shirt. “Look, it’s crazy to go out there by yourself. Come back to the Ridge with me, and…”

But when he turned around, she already had the jacket on and was heading for the door.

“For fuck’s sake—” He couldn’t let her leave like this. He went after her, and tripped over the bedsheets. The two of them landed on the bedroom floor, her on the bottom. And his phone started to ring.

Shit. He hoped he hadn’t opened up her wound again. But at least he had a captive audience, even if her boobs crushed against him were incredibly distracting.

So was his phone. It stopped ringing, and started making a shrill noise that hurt his wolf hearing.

And then it fucking started to talk, despite the fact that he hadn’t answered it.

“Emergency Alert. Outlaw Ridge. Emergency Alert. Cole Hunter, answer the damn phone or I’m having Switch send a drone to blow you up.”

“Fuck,” he muttered. It was his damn brother’s voice.

With Ireland still squirming and swearing underneath him, he pulled out the phone and yelled at it. “What the fuck do you want? I’m busy here.”

“Are you being shot at? Tortured? About to be killed?”