Page 123 of Grin and Bear It

“Oh my god, they’re gonna kill us,” Knox whispered.

“No, boys,” I said, wrapping my arm around his shoulder. “I won’t let it. I won’t.”

Chapter61

Lin

“Fuck!” Nash barked from the front seat of the car. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“Calm down,” I told him with a calm I didn’t feel.

My eyes went to the rear view mirror where I watched the two boys sit there in silence, Ellie almost comatose beside them. It was a fucking miracle that we’d made it over to the school in one piece and without a police officer catching us speeding. The whole school had gone into lockdown, but that had let us run into the gym and find them. Declan had filled us in on all of the details, blurting out little chunks until he was done. We’d rung his parents and the other bear shifter families, telling them to come get their sons, before we’d hightailed it out of the school.

“Fuck, we’ve gotta get out of town,” Nash said, thumping the dash. “Out of the state. We can move up to New South Wales.”

“No, we can’t,” I said in a low voice.

“We’ve gotta make a move. We can’t fucking stay here. I’ll find other guys to fulfil our contracts and—”

“We’re not running, Nash,” I told him, then swerved around the corner, coming into our street. Tyson and Cole were already there, pacing back and forth on the footpath, only stopping when they caught sight of us.

“What happened?” Cole demanded the minute we got out of the car, but as he took in the boys’ state, he started getting some idea. “What the fuck happened?”

“Shifted.” Ellie seemed to have to grind the word out. “The painting… Kids saw… A boy started…” She frowned and then let out a hiss of breath. “It’s my fault.”

“A painting?” Nash turned on Cole. “One of your paintings? What did you do?”

“The paintings I keep locked up in my studio so no one gets their hands on them?” Cole shot back. “Nothing.”

“Stop…” Ellie’s hands fluttered through the air like falling leaves, until I grabbed them and pulled her close. “Just stop.”

“We need to get everyone inside.” Ty walked up to the boys, looking them over, then pressing a hand to their foreheads. “The kids are ice cold, probably in shock. They need a shower, some rest and quiet. Everything else comes after that.”

And with that, we had an immediate plan. I steered Ellie inside, hearing the phone ringing and ringing as we entered the house. Tyson steered the boys towards the bathroom, supervising that, as Nash picked up the phone.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, after getting a blast down the phone line. “I notified… I know…”

But Cole? His brows jerked down into a severe frown as he opened the back door and stormed across the grass to his studio, the lock coming away in his hand way too easily. He stomped back as I lowered Ellie down into a chair, moving to make her a coffee, when he threw the lock down on the table.

“Someone’s been in the studio. Cut the lock with some bolt cutters, it looks.”

“So that’s how they saw it.”

Ellie’s voice was little other than a whisper, but we all spun around at the sound of it, Tyson appearing from nowhere, Nash setting down the phone receiver. Because when she looked up, our mate’s eyes were wide open and filled with pain and her scent was the sourest I’d ever known it to be.

“All of the kids…”

I brought the coffee over, setting it down in front of her, then moving her hands to wrap around it when she didn’t respond. A single tear slid down her face. I looked around me for something, anything to fix this, spying Tyson’s muffin tin on the top of the fridge and grabbed it, to finding only crumbs inside.

“They had a photo of the painting.”

I searched through the cupboards, jerking one open, then the next, seeing the disarray in there for the first time, all the snack foods having been demolished.

“Somehow they got a hold of…” Ellie tried to describe it and I went perfectly still, frozen to the spot. “They saw…”

“What did they see, love?” Nash prompted urgently. “What did they see?”

“Me.” I spun around in time to see the tears fall freely. “Me and Tyson, we…”

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