When I next open my eyes, it's later, a lot later, if the dimly lit room is anything to go by, and I'm alone.
Since the space beside me is cool to the touch, and the sheets have been pulled over me, I'm guessing Kier has been gone for a while. Where is a mystery I intend to get to the bottom of.
One glance at my phone has me wincing at how dangerously low the battery has gotten. If I was anywhere else, I'd ask if I could borrow someone's charger, but I have a feeling asking for a favor here will mean handing over something I don't want to give in return.
Before I go after Kier, I send a quick text letting Dayne know that I'm maybe an hour away from running out of battery, so if he doesn't hear from me again, that's why. That or Jaxon has killed me and buried my body in the forest. I'm only half-kidding about the second part.
The moment I step outside the cabin, I notice something different. Namely, Frankie's heavies are nowhere to be seen. Ordinarily, I'd be pleased about it, but with Kier gone, I have a feeling that the two events are related, and not in a good way.
Since we shifters have the benefit of being able to track with our noses, I use mine to trail Kier.
It doesn't take me long to sniff him out. It takes even less time to see that he's in trouble.
Beside the farmhouse, he's close to being surrounded by Frankie's heavies, as well as a few other shifters who must've been hiding in their cabins when I was wandering around earlier. Well, it doesn't look like they're hiding anymore.
There are maybe ten of them closing in on Kier. From what I can tell, the reason they haven't fully surrounded him has to do with the two who are lying stretched out on their backs a few feet away. A swift glance at their bloodied faces is enough for me to confirm they aren't taking an afternoon nap in a strange place.
Before I can say a word, Kier is jerking his head toward me, undoubtedly picking up my scent. "Hallee, go back."
Of course, I ignore him.
I snort as I stomp over. "Nope. Not going to happen."
"If I were you, sweetheart, I'd do as your man tells you. You're not going to want to be here when we lay him out." One of the shifters sneers at me.
"What? You mean like your two friends over there?"
I can tell at once that he doesn't like what I said, nor the tone I said it with, because he turns to me with violence in his eyes. And is promptly rewarded for taking his eyes off Kier with a devastating blow to the back of his head. He thumps heavily to the ground and doesn't get back up again.
Another of the shifters snarls. I'm guessing they were besties. Or something.
"Hallee. Go." There's no give in Kier's voice. No room for argument.
"Yeah, I'm not leaving you. And anyway, one of these guys might have a charger in their pocket."
Kier circles the group, picking one out seemingly at random and launching an uppercut that sends him sprawling on his back. "A charger?"
"For my phone. I figure they must have some purpose." By now, I'm a couple of feet away from Kier, and I'm attracting more and more attention. I don't think it's because they want to tell me I look pretty.
"Hallee," Kier snarls when one swings a punch at me.
I immediately duck, before grabbing onto his wrist and twisting until I hear something breaking. When the shifter snarls and sends another fist my way, I don't bother with his wrist this time. I grab his shoulder and haul him close as I bring my knee up sharply between his legs. With an anguished moan, he goes down and curls in on himself.
"Right, who's-" Before I can finish my sentence, I glimpse one of Frankie's heavies launching himself at Kier from behind, just as Kier is about to flatten another.
I don't think; I move.
I insert myself between the fist and Kier, my shoulder absorbing the blow. Although it's only my shoulder and not something that would hurt a lot more, like, you know, my face, it's still hard enough that I can't swallow a groan as I stumble back into Kier, who, by the time I do, has put his shifter down and turned.
In a move I'm too distracted to follow, he moves me out of the way. A powerful punch later and he breaks something in the shifter's face. Probably several somethings because the impact was that hard.
The reason I wasn't paying too much attention to Kier lands heavily at my feet with a groan, the victim of my punch. But not before his fist glances off my jaw. This time I manage to hold in my cry of pain, feeling grateful that I avoided the worst of it. If I hadn't, I doubt I'd have been getting up anytime soon. I probably would've been joining the heavies on the ground in their extended nap.
As I probe the tender spot, I know it's going to leave a bruise that I can already feel forming.
"Who struck her?" The low growl filled with fury has me feeling a touch sorry for the shifters because Kier sounds pissed. Like, he's getting ready to tear them apart with his bare hands à la Dayne kind of pissed. And it doesn't look like I'm the only one who thinks so.
I decide not to tell Kier the guy who hit me is moaning on the ground at my feet because who am I to spoil his fun?
The shifters still standing glance at each other before suddenly deciding that there's somewhere else they need to be yesterday. That's how quickly they disappear.
I watch them go, a little impressed and more than a little jealous that I lack the ability to scare someone so thoroughly they'd take off in the middle of a fight like that.
"Must be an alpha thing," I mutter.
Kier doesn't ask what I'm talking to myself about. He's heard me doing it far too many times for that. Instead, he turns to me and gently lifts my head, his fingers lightly grazing my jaw.
"It's okay. It doesn't hurt," I tell him.
Under the weight of his heavy stare, I swallow. "Uh, at least not anymore."
For another long moment, he studies me. I'm sure I feel his rage growing as the silence extends, but I'm not sure what to say to calm him instead of making things worse, so I say nothing.
Without a word, he releases his grip on my chin to grasp my arm before I can tell him please, not that one. At my gasp of pain, he lets go of me.
"Hallee?" Kier's voice is all wolf. And not only his voice. His eyes have shifted from his usual bright teal blue to a silvery blue. Whether it was his anger that drew the wolf to the surface or it's my being hurt, I couldn't say.
"My shoulder hurts."
He growls.
"Don't growl at me. I wouldn't have even been punched in the shoulder if I wasn't stopping that guy from punching you in the back of the head," I snap as I point at an unmoving shifter on the ground without taking my eyes from Kier.
He stares at me in silence for several seconds. "You got in the way of an attack meant for me on purpose?"
"I'm here to have your back. I meant what I said."
My words don't get a reaction.
From somewhere behind us, someone opens a door. I pick up Frank's scent a second before he speaks. "The alpha would like-"
Kier cuts him off with an enraged growl that would shut anyone up.
Once he's finished growling, Kier holds a hand out to me. I give him the one that isn't attached to a shoulder that a shifter punched. Without acknowledging Frank's presence, he leads me away from the farmhouse and toward our cabin.
Frank doesn't say a word and neither do I.