Page 6 of Beautiful Vengeance

“It’s all right, lass,” he murmured, stroking her head with his free hand as he bent closer to examine her foreleg. The side and back of it were burned, all the fur missing. But the bone seemed sound. His jaw tightened. “Did those bloody bastards throw one of those things at her?”

“I’m checking that right now,” Megan muttered. Kiyomi was beside her at his desk, pulling up the security feeds on the computer screen.

“Yeah,” Kiyomi said a moment later, her dark gaze swinging to his. “That’s exactly what they did.”

She turned the screen around so Marcus could see. The three teens from the last few nights arrived on their bikes, dropped them near the front gate and began lighting off bangers. When Karas appeared in view a minute later, racing toward them up the driveway, they started lobbing them at her.

The first two missed. She cowered, tucking her tail beneath her as she darted away, but the shortest of the three boys threw another at her. It detonated right below her leg.

She dropped to the ground when it exploded and the boys took off, laughing and high-fiving each other. Marcus clenched his jaw, anger pumping through him.

The silence was broken by the sound of a can being cracked open behind him. Chloe stood in the doorway next to Heath, a can of her favorite energy drink in her hand.

Staring hard at the computer screen, she narrowed her eyes. “Those little shits need to be taught a lesson.”

Aye, they bloody did.

Chapter Two

Kiyomi wanted to stay and help with Karas, but it was obvious that Marcus wanted to be alone. Heath brought him a med kit and offered to dress Karas’s wound, but Marcus dismissed him with a curt “I’ll do it.”

In silence everyone filed out of the study, the easy, carefree mood from earlier destroyed. Kiyomi was pissed. Those kids were cruel idiots. And the fireworks were grating on her nerves. The major bounty on her head was never far from her mind, or the two people currently hunting her.

“Can you believe those assholes? Unreal,” Megan muttered as she and Kiyomi followed Chloe down the hall to the kitchen, where a small mountain of dishes was waiting to be cleaned up.

“Oh, it was definitely real,” Chloe said, a savage edge in her voice.

Megan eyed her sharply. “Don’t do anything stupid, Twitch. Let Marcus handle this.”

Chloe shot Megan an annoyed scowl over her shoulder. “I won’t,Itch.”

The two of them called each other by the nicknames they’d adopted as trainees in the Program when they’d roomed together. “They won’t come back tonight,” Kiyomi said, certain of it. Poor Karas. Those little bastards were a menace.

“If they’re smart, they won’t come back at all,” Megan said darkly.

“They’re teenage boys,” Chloe muttered. “They’ll come back.”

The others were already working in the kitchen when they walked in. “How’s Karas?” Trinity asked, a dishtowel in one hand.

“Burned and traumatized,” Megan answered. “Poor thing. She had such a rough start in life, those firecrackers probably reminded her of the bombs. I can’t believe she’d be hurt here of all places.”

Trinity nodded. “How’s Marcus?”

“Pissed as hell,” Chloe answered. “And rightly so.”

Kiyomi stayed quiet, helping where needed as they finished the clean up. She’d never seen Marcus angry before. It made him even quieter and more intense.

After everyone pitched in, Kiyomi waited until it was just her and Megan left in the kitchen before approaching her. Megan was putting up the last of the dishes while Kiyomi wiped the countertops down. “What will Marcus do?” Kiyomi asked.

“Meaning, will he go after them?”

She frowned. “I don’t think he’d—”

“No, he wouldn’t, because he’s too honorable to do something like that. He’ll probably just file a complaint with the police at most, though maybe not because he doesn’t want to draw any attention to him or this place.”

Because of them.

Karas’s tormentors might go unpunished because Marcus wanted to protect the team. Kiyomi felt badly. “I hate that Karas was hurt, and also that it spoiled the night. Marcus went to a lot of trouble for all of us.”

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