Page 66 of Act of Brotherhood
Jannick lifted his hands as if he was innocent. “Same thing.”
“What if you’re wrong about Grid? What if I didn’t imagine my brother was there? What if he attacked the woman I was with?” asked Garth, desperate for his friends to listen to him instead of dismissing everything he was saying. “Just let me go to her. Let me see with my own eyes that she’s okay.”
He’d already tried to take them all on to get free. Turns out, one Viking—who hadn’t bothered to eat or sleep properly in a week while stuck in wolf form—against nearly ten PSI operatives who had eaten and slept didn’t really stand a chance.
Hans looked to Garth. “The human female is fine. The Para-Regs are keeping tabs on her just in case you aren’t crazy. The Outcasts who managed to get you subdued and keep you from harming innocents made sure the human woman had a protection detail put on her, even though neither of them laid eyes on your brother. They only saw you.”
“No. The one called Wheeler saw Grid following Nicolette. He just thought it was me,” said Garth harshly.
“This is getting old, Viking,” said Gram. “The woman is fine. Your brother is not in Georgia. When I was keeping tabs on him, he didn’t enter the states much at all. Canada was as close as he’d come. He prefers to do his dirty work overseas.”
Garth’s gut said otherwise. The men were now taking turns babysitting him around the clock, making sure he couldn’t run off and do something they saw as stupid.
Like get stuck in wolf formagain.
But going to Savannah again wasn’t stupid. Nicolette needed his protection. None of them could see that though. They thought he was overreacting. That he’d imagined Grid being there because no one else had seen him. That Garth’s response was born out of an adverse side effect of the serum he’d tested for Gram’s recovery. Even if it was, he still had the burning desire to check on Nicolette. To see for himself that she was well. Not only that, but he needed to touch her. To feel her soft skin against him and to smell her as he held her.
His body burned for her, longing to be close to her. She consumed his thoughts, and he couldn’t stop the feral need to try to get to her. If the men he called friends were mistaken, and Grid was in Savannah, Nicolette was in grave danger.
Human or not, Grid would harm Nicolette just because he could. Because he’d always taken what he’d wanted growing up. He’d always had to have the best of everything. And if he thought for one second Garth wanted Nicolette for keeps, Grid would kill her just for the fun of it. That was what his brother had become. The monster that he’d permitted himself to grow into.
Maybe Garth was acting like an idiot because of the drugs that had been in his system. But they were gone now, and he still wanted to get back to Nicolette. Back to Savannah to be sure she was safe and sound. He didn’t trust her fate left to two Outcasts and the Para-Regs in the area. She was his to worry about. His to protect.
Mine.
He growled.
Jannick snorted. “There he goes again. Bet he loses his shit and shifts again. Vikings are pussies.”
“Agreed,” said Gram. “Total pussies.”
Garth lifted his hand in the air and flipped off all the ops who were present.
“Precious, Garth. Really,” said Gram with a wink. “The human is fine. Corbin is keeping tabs on the situation there, at least that’s what Hans told me.”
Hans nodded, looking bored with life. “It is true. The Brit has checked in daily with a contact in the area. All is well on that front. Now, are you going to confess to bedding the woman? You said you were with her, but do you mean with her like sex or with her like something boring?”
“I’m telling you all he totally spent a couple of nights screwing her until he couldn’t walk. No other reason for his behavior this week. She had to be something special in bed,” said Jannick with a laugh.
Garth stilled. He knew he’d had sex with Nicolette on the night he’d lost control and shifted. He could vividly remember how it felt sinking into her…but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember much beyond that. Bits and pieces of events were with him, and in them, he saw Grid near a trashcan, mocking him. Even that memory was slightly jumbled. He remembered Cody appearing, and a man named Wheeler coming out of nowhere. Mostly, he just remembered the burning need to protect Nicolette right before his wolf took hold of him fully.
Maybe Gram was right.
Maybe the drugs had done a number on his mind. If that was the case, then how did things end with Nicolette?
Jannick cleared his throat, his expression growing serious. “If we let you run off right now, you’re going to look for trouble. If you turn over enough rocks, you’ll find it—or rather, it will find you. Hans and I know what The Corporation does when it has its hands on twin male shifters. If they get to you because you ran off half-cocked and get stuck in wolf form again, trust me when I say, death won’t come quick enough.”
Hans averted his gaze but nodded. “He’s right, Garth.”
Jannick watched Garth. “We keep you from leaving for your own good. Not to punish you. Besides, if you show up down there and its turns out Grid is really truly following you, and isn’t a figment of your imagination, he’s going to make the human a target because she means something to you and he finds it funny. You know it. So do all of us.”
Garth hung his head for a moment. “I just need to see that she’s okay with my own eyes. Let me call her.”
“We tried that this morning when you finally started walking on two feet again. You spent more time trying to eat us than bothering to tell us her name and her phone number,” reminded Jannick.
“Someone can get a message to her. Have Cody do it,” said Garth.
“Captain, she’s fine,” stressed Jannick before he pointed to Auberi. “Focus on the dickwad in front of you. The two of you can’t stop bickering. Might as well fight it out. Take your aggressions out on the French guy. It’s what we Germans like to do too.”
