Page 95 of Ruthless Reign

Becca ran ahead, clearing the surface for me to set him down on top of it. His head rolled to one side, and I saw angry red skin at his hairline, where it looked like a bit of his golden hair was singed off.

What the fuck did he do?

I gritted my teeth, trying to tug off his shirt to get a better look at the shoulder that needed setting, but he came to all at once, a hand whipping out to grip my wrist, stopping me. “Don’t,” he gritted out. “Leave it.”

“It’s dislocated,” Becca crooned to him gently. “We need to set it.”

Aodhán shook his head weakly. “No. The shirt. Leave the shirt.”

Something wet touched my hands, and I turned around to seal the blinds shut before turning on the lights, momentarily blinding us all. Aodhán grimaced, sealing his eyes tight.

“He’s been shot,” I said, mostly to myself, shoving his head to the side and lifting his mangled shoulder to find the black t-shirt he wore was covered in blood. As Becca reached over to help me tip him onto his right side, I noticed she was covered in his blood, too, from trying to drag him into the house. But she seemed wholly unbothered by that, the concern in her eyes completely focused on Aodhán, keeping none for herself.

My jaw clenched so hard that I heard teeth crack.

I couldn’t do a damn thing about the bullet wound in his shoulder until his arm was set, but it didn’t look like the bullet had gone through. I’d have to dig for it once I got the bones back in place.

“Set him back down,” I told Becca, and she helped me lower him onto his back.

I didn’t give him time to prepare, using my weight to lean into this chest and keep him down while I lifted his arm back into place to the sweet music of his screaming. As the bones were sucked back into place, his shout choked off, and I felt him go completely limp beneath me.

He’d passed out.

Good.

“Was that necessary?” Becca looked like she was going to be sick.

“Go grab something to use as a sling.”

Her cheekbones flared with defiance, but she did as I told her, coming back a second later with the fucking sheet from my goddamned bed. She ripped it with her bare hands and shouldered past me to bind his shoulder herself.

“I jerked off in those sheets last night, Hawk,” I said, knowing full well I was only saying it to be a dick. “And the night before that.”

She grumbled something to herself that I didn’t catch and whirled around to throw the torn sheet directly into my chest. I let it fall to the floor, watching as she pulled her own shirt off and used her teeth to tear it down the back before carefully gathering it under his arm and pulling it up to tie around his neck.

Her dark indigo bra barely contained her milky tits as they threatened to spill out onto Aodhán’s face. If he woke up, I was going to have to take his eyes.

“How do we get the bullet out?” she asked when she was finished, not rising to my bait. Smart Hawk. I’d like nothing more than to tear into her right now, in more ways than fucking one.

“There’s a kit under the sink.”

“Of course there is,” she muttered to herself as she stalked past me to retrieve it.

The Irishman’s face looked decidedly less punchable while he was passed out, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t deck him if he woke back up. It was better if he wasn’t awake for this part.

I tore the collar of his shirt, exposing the gnarly jagged cut there and there and the bullet hole still seeping red onto our dining room table. It was in the top of his shoulder, near the outside. Someone was a shitty shot. It was all meat there. It should’ve gone right through. Unless it went in at an angle. Becca hovered over me, biting her nails as I took out everything I needed.

It took five minutes of patient digging with the forceps before I got hold of the damn thing and yanked it out. He didn’t so much as stir.

“Shouldn’t Kaleb be back by now?” Becca asked, peering between two slats in the wood blinds while I finished stitching the gash in Aodhán’s collar. It was a hack job if I’d ever done one and he’d have a nasty scar, but the bleeding had stopped. At least, from what I could see. There was a burnt section of black t-shirt on his side and the opening in the cloth revealed mottled purple and blue skin.

“He should,” I said, hating how I sounded but unable to help it. “Let’s hope Romeo here didn’t set a trap that my little brother just walked into of his own free fucking will.”

She didn’t deny it was a possibility. Didn’t defend the unconscious Son lying on my table. And it left me somehow even more angry than if she had. What the hell had she gotten us into with this guy?

I took out my phone to text Kaleb just as we heard footsteps on the porch. I didn’t even get my gun out before Kaleb called, “Just me,” and stepped into the house.

He took one look at me, at Becca, at the slack-jawed Son on the table and whistled low, his eyes going wide as she let the door shut behind him.

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