Page 131 of Unveil
Sol sucks his teeth, and Nox shifts on his feet behind him, getting closer.
Using his father as cover.
No one else seems to notice, so I shift my gaze away from him. But from the corner of my eye, I catch the flash of Nox’s phone screen as he checks, then pockets it again.
What are you up to, Bordeaux?
“That’s what I was afraid of, Bossie. But now that you’re not only the enemy of my enemy, you’ve become mine as well. So when my getaway driver insisted he come in with me…” Sol juts his chin toward Nox, before smirking at Bossie. “I took the liberty of calling in a new one. Turns out, there’s a couple of brothers who were champing at the bit to help out. You know, yourothergrandsons?”
My eyes bug out along with Bossie’s, and Sol laughs at her shock. “Figured they’d want to be in on this, wouldn’t you say, Orion?”
I take that as my cue and stab the pistol-wielding guard to my right in the thigh as Luna, still sitting in my lap, yanks the rest of the ropes off my chest. The guard’s shriek drowns out Bossie’s orders, and chaos breaks loose as the double doors explode inward, Hatch barreling through, snapfiring into the two men flanking them.
The wind howls behind him, slapping the doors against the walls and whipping rain at his back. Outside, a blacked-out SUV revs in the raging storm, nearly invisible but for Dash aiming his gun through the half-cracked window.
Until Bossie’s voice tears through the chapel.
“Kill them! Kill every one of ’em!”
My stomach drops at her unhinged hatred, and the room erupts in gunfire as Sol, Nox, and Hatch let bullets fly. The man behind me drops, still reeling from the stab wound in his thigh. I pivot around Luna to give his friend the same treatment, only to find myself staring down my own crossbow.
The guard jerks the trigger back… but my custom rig jams it, and he looks down, dumbfounded. I grin right before driving my blade into his gut.
He howls, doubling over. Luna snatches the crossbow from him, flips the mechanism like I showed her, then swivels on my lap to fire with all the aim that I had time to teach her.
Which was, unfortunately, absolutely none.
The bolt flies wide, missing both Bossie and Bart by a mile, snagging a lantern above the altar and sending it crashing down. Oil and fire splash on the carpet, lighting up the dry wood like a Christmas tree in March.
Oh shit.
“Time to go, baby.” I grab Luna’s waist to steady her, keeping my reckless bird from flying straight into danger, and cut the ankle ropes, not caring that the blade slices into my skin.
Then I grab her andrun.
It’s hellish mayhem in all directions, every man locked in a fight, while two Wildes drag a spitting mad Bossie from the chapel like she’s the Holy Grail. Retreating cowards or not, they’re right to guard their matriarch.
And I need to protect my wife.Now.
“We gotta get outta here.”
“Yup, yup, yup. Totally agree.”
We trade weapons, right as the guy we took the crossbow from stretches his bloody hand toward her, now with a pistol in his slippery grip. Luna screams, but I wrench it from his hand and shoot him point-blank in the head. He plops like a sack of meat, and I drop the gun onto his back.
With my fractured ribs, split cheek, and swollen eye, I should be knocked out from pain. But my mantra thunders in my skull, drowning out everything else.
Protect her. Protect her. Protect her.
It jolts through me, and I clamp my bloody grip on Luna’s hand, hauling her toward the doors?—
She’s ripped away from me, screaming.
“Orion!”
Bart drags her kicking and screaming up to the dais, trying to steal my wife and carry her through the same doors they took Bossie through. The last feather, black and bloody, drifts from her bodice like an omen, and all I see is red.
I yank back the steel cable on my crossbow in one brutal pull, the string biting into my scars as I force it to cock faster than it’s meant to, and slot another bolt. I ignore the pain and lock my sights on him.
