Gypsy Rising
Fortunately, I stopped keeping explosive potions in my room for fear of something like this eventually happening.
I’m stuck in a House full of PTSD monsters who freak out and go on ballistic rampages. Shit was expected to happen. Just not on this scale without provocation of any sort.
My mind almost blanks into a numb state of delirium when I snap my shoulder back into place, only to have it fall to the side again.
She damn near ripped my arm clean off, I realize.
It’s barely hanging on. That’s why my fist was beside her head. We fought.
Our monsters fought.
I swallow the bile in my throat.
Our monsters fought because I lost control. And she’s probably only alive because she can’t die.
We’re just starting out, and I’ve already fucked up.
CHAPTER 15
VANCE
“I’m simply saying you should investigate the guy a little farther if he’s clearly using you to get to Violet,” I explain to Damien.
“Violet likes him. She likes your favorite beta. She likes Arion’s favorite beta. She likes Emit’s favorite omegas,” he drawls, seemingly lost in his own head, as he steeples his hands together.
“She trusts them because we trust them,” I dutifully inform the idiot, who hasn’t been right in the head. “What the hell is going on right now? First Emit goes into some damn mating heat that is driving him—”
A howl rattles the walls and echoes down all the long hallways, just as chains rattle and Emit runs into the silver bars of the cage I’ve put him in. The Van Helsing cage and cement room will hold him.
Damien shoots a dubious look toward me.
“He told me to cage him. Don’t look at me like I’m an asshole right now,” I remind him, bristling when the long howl turns desperate and…pathetically sad.
“We’ve spent too much time together. I actually feel sorry for him, damn it,” Damien grinds out, as he crosses his arms over his chest and slinks down in his seat.
Anna pops in very abruptly, and Damien exhales harshly, as he pinches the bridge of his nose and mutters a curse.
“How are you alive?” I ask her very seriously.
She blinks at me. “Go help Violet out of her van,” she says instead, confusing the shit out of me.
Damien stands and goes to the window, brow furrowing.
One whiff of nearly muted Portocale blood, and we both launch ourselves through the open set of bay windows. I land a fraction of a second before him, and I spring forward, practically ripping Violet’s door off.
Her head is leaned over on the steering wheel, arms dangling out to the sides, as blood drips down her twitching fingers. My eyes work quickly, moving over her, assessing the damage.
Fresh stitches line both arms, though one looks to have gotten nearly pulled off her, judging by the stitching. Her shirt is ripped and soaked in her own blood…as well as another’s.
I immediately recognize the second scent.
“Caroline did this?” I ask her with a false modicum of calm, aching to go shred the poor fucking girl just because she’s too broken to know better.
Violet makes a pained, muffled noise when her jaw…fucking hell. How didn’t I notice her mangled jaw before?
When tears start rushing down her cheeks, I quickly grab her, cradling her to me.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Damien. She’d never forgive you and you know it,” I say to him, causing Violet’s eyes to dart all around.
Damien turns visible just in time to open the door in front of us.
His look is as cold as mine, as his jaw tics with the same violent urges I’m suppressing right now.
“Bloody aware,” Damien says through his barely restrained ire.
That blue fucking book is a nightmare of procedures. Most of those procedures call for the woman, whom we all desperately covet, to have her ass stomped without any retaliation of any sort. It’s not okay.
We signed this shit.
We signed it without ever once thinking Violet would deceive us in a way that would affect us.
She’s left us mostly powerless in moments like this.
But she came to me.
I exhale into her hair as I hug her tighter, gently carrying her up the stairs toward my room. I feel Damien trailing me as I go.
“The Simpletons are a dangerous stock, even if they are ridiculous and gentle the vast majority of the time,” Damien states in a tone of forced pleasantry.
Violet grips me tighter around my neck, even though she feels mostly limp, as more tears leak from her eyes.
“Did you at least unleash your own monster to challenge hers?” Damien asks her, his forcibly pleasant tone failing in the heat of his frustrating helplessness.
“Yes,” Anna supplies with a roll of her eyes. “She lost control, so now she’s drowning in pointless guilt for the what-ifs and blah, blah, do-gooder-perfectionism blah. She’s upset that she upset Caroline—you know, the crazy bitch who charged her like a territorial rhino for not fucking the four of you.”
My footsteps halt, and Violet glares over at Anna, who grins and gives her a little wave.
“Your secrets are not safe with me when they’re stupid secrets,” Anna continues. “You brought me back from the super dead. I’d like to keep you among the truly living to pay off that really big debt I sort of owe you.”