Page 86 of Bearly Hanging On

“Down the hall,” he said, gesturing to where the safe room divided off. “I can show you?—”

“How to pee on the toilet like a big girl?” I forced myself to smile. “Nope, I learned that a while ago, and now is not the time to let me know you’ve got a watersports kink.”

“What? OK, I won’t show you.”

That way maybe, just maybe, those wolf Spidey senses of his wouldn’t pick up the way my heart was thundering in my chest. My skin felt chilly and clammy in turns. I got up and marched down the hallway, walking past bedrooms until I found the bathroom. Inside, I locked the door and then turned the volume down as far as I could and still be audible, before hitting play on the message.

“Harper…” I knew what Daria sounded like when she was upset. We’d held each other close as the other sobbed over a guy not worth a second of our time often enough. “Harp, I need you?—”

“Get on with it, bitch.”

How could his voice sound so similar to Mack’s and yet so completely different?

“Harp, stay where you?—!”

The way her voice cut off, turning into a scream, had me gripping the bathroom sink tightly. I was sure my nails had to be leaving indents in the porcelain. But right as I was about to try to call her, the recording continued.

“Hello, my mate.” Dax’s voice was like a trail of slime over my skin, leaving a disgusting residue in its wake. “Seems like my brother has been cruel, keeping you from me.”

I was glad I was in the bathroom, because waves of nausea were washing over me, each one crashing harder than the next.

“Because if you belong to him, then you belong to me too. You’ll come to me.”

“No, Harp?—”

My whole body jolted as I heard a brutal sound, then an accompanying wail.

“No,” I whispered. “No!”

“I’ll find you either way,” Dax said. “It’s up to you how many people get hurt in the process. If you move fast, I’ll be able to stop my associates from… relieving their tensions withyour friend.” My teeth ground together as my sight blurred, tears forming. This was my fault, all my fucking fault. “If you don’t? Well… I’ll tear the lovely Daria apart first, because I need somewhere to direct my frustrations. Then I’ll go after those pretty tiger sisters. Perhaps the bear’s mother?” In my mind’s eye, I saw each of his victims clearly and what he would do to them. “Come to me, but if you bring my brother, just know how it works in my family.”

My eyes were closed now, and I silently sent up a prayer to who knows which god, begging for help.

“The woman has several fated mates, but each one is just a contender. They fight it out until one remains. That male has earned the right to rut with his fated mate. I will tear the heads off each of those idiots my brother wastes time with, bathe in their blood, and then after I end my brother, you and I will rut on a bed made of their corpses.”

Yep, sick, now.

I stumbled over to the toilet, flipping the lid to retch out the pretzels and coffee. After spitting the last of it out, I rinsed my mouth out and then scrubbed my teeth with a spare toothbrush before staring into the mirror.

Daria was dealing with this shit because of me, so it stood to reason I had to get her out of it. I could’ve walked down the hall, told Mack, and no doubt he would’ve gone all Rambo, lurking in the bushes before taking his brother out with a shot to the head.

Trouble is, if it was that easy, why hadn’t Mack done it before?

Dax was obviously just as driven, just as smart as his brother, just not hampered by pesky morals. That allowed him to operate with a level of brutality the rest of us couldn’t stomach. Instead, I had to go and have feelings.

Daria? It was a messy tumble of fear and guilt. Tor? I wanted to smile and punch him on the arm most of the time. Kieran?His quiet, steady energy would’ve been so welcome right now, but what would I have said? He and the guys would’ve rode off to rescue Dar, literal guns a-blazing, and then what? This was obviously a trap. Dax was using Daria, then me, as a means to lure the guys in, and… I swallowed hard, the nausea still there, even if there was nothing left to throw up. A tactic Dax would use to execute them all.

This is why I didn’t let myself get involved with people. Feelings led to connection, connections created points of weakness, and all there was after that was pain. I shook my head, ready to start on a whole avoidant rant when something stopped me.

“Ready to jump, pretty girl?”

I could almost hear, see, Kieran saying that, then Tor, their voices multiplying inside my head, drowning out my fear. I pushed back against it. It was OK for them to talk about making the leap together. I thought that meant negotiating life with three guys who insisted on leaving the toilet seat up, not dealing with murderous brothers. Free Daria, I thought furiously, pushing my brain to come up with a solution. Free Daria and get her to safety. Make sure every single woman in all of our families was locked up with us down here and?—

“Harper?” Mack’s muffled voice came through the door. “Everything OK?”

“Um… yeah,” I said, hastily washing my hands. I blotted my face as I looked in the mirror, trying my best to mask my misery before sliding the door open. “What, are you checking I didn’t fall in now, Fur Face? Creepy, much?”

“You’re really bloody annoying, you know that, right?”

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