Chapter 124

Ollie’s POV

“One silver bullet, Ollie. And it’s all for you,” the caretaker says, leveling the gun straight at my heart.

All at once, several things happen.

The caretaker squeezes the trigger.

My breath catches in my throat.

My mates rage, shifting into even more intimidating forms, halfway between wolf and man. They are large burly beasts, barely fitting in the hallway.

Conrad grabs the iron bars with his hands and, roaring, rips them apart.

Declan pounces forward in a powerful leap, his jaws opened, going straight for the caretaker’s throat.

Wes tugs me into his arms.

The gunshot fires, the smell of gunpowder blasting through the air.

Wes tries to turn me, but he’s not moving fast enough.

Hugh leaps in the way of the bullet.

Then the world stops entirely. Hugh, shifting back to human, looks at me with sudden tenderness. He lifts a shaky hand, but his touch never quite makes it to my face before he collapses.

I try to catch him, but he’s too heavy. We both slump down to the ground, with him half over my lap. Like this, I can clearly see his back and the bullet wound.

If it was a regular bullet, his skin would already be healing, but the silver keeps his body from repealing the bullet and healing up afterwards. He’s stuck now, like a wolfless would be, with a bullet in his back. The blood oozes from the wound, covering my clothes and my hands and forming a pool underneath us.

I will never forget the way he looked at me before he fell. His eyes were so full of feeling, of… love. That wasn’t something I thought Hugh capable of, not even for me, his mate. He was always such a playboy, he could never settle down.

Yet he looked at me like he loved me.

He took a bullet for me, which proved it.

I try to say Hugh’s name, but it escapes my throat like a broken cry.

He’s not responding. His eyes are closed and he’s not moving. Gods, what if he’s already dead?

Tears fall from my eyes, as the very essence of who I am seems to crack down the middle. How could I think I could live without my mates? When now that one of them might be taken away from me permanently, I feel my entire world falling apart.

Wes appears, placing his hands over the wound.

“Keep pressure on it,” Declan says.

Behind him, Conrad is on the phone. Through the ringing in my ears, I can only make out a few words of what’s being said.

Things like, “ambulance,” and, “as fast as you can.”

Hugh has always been the most selfish of the lot, ever seeking his own pleasure, never really doing anything for anyone else. I regret so very deeply that this has to be the time for him to go out of character and change his ways.

He’s not awake, but I still find myself asking his unconscious body, over and over, “Why would you do this? Why would you let yourself be hurt like this?”

Wes, with his hands on Hugh’s back, blood pooling between his fingers, says, “Because we are in love with you, Ollie.” It sounds so simple in his kind, gentle voice. Even in this terrible moment, Wes has the capacity for affection and softness and that rattles me almost as much as what Hugh has done.

Behind Declan and Conrad, I see the limp form of Caretaker Stephens, a man who hated me for reasons that I had nothing to do with. Reasons that, given his own confession, did not sound reasonable.

Exile is a suitable punishment for attempted kidnapping. And then he came back for me.

I don’t condone killing. I take no pleasure in death. But I am relieved he can’t hurt anyone else.

Off the phone, Conrad comes closer. Kneeling beside me on the floor, he reaches out and places a hand on my shoulder. I can see the worry in his eyes, for his brother, but he focuses on me. He doesn’t say anything, but with his cool and solid presence, I can feel that he is trying to convey an aura of safety.

Things are bad, they are scary, but he is here. He will always be here.

Declan too gives off this feeling, as he stands protectively nearby watching over us. I’m scared but I’m safe. I have to believe in them. My mates will do whatever they can to make this okay again.

“Hugh is strong,” Wes says. “He won’t give up easily.”

This time, I believe him.

Sylvia’s POV

I watch the scene unfold in front of me with disgust growing inside of my belly. Truly, I might be sick.

How easily my brothers seem to have forgotten all about me, tied to this chair. For all they know, I’m a victim too!

Yet, they seem to know better now, no longer taking my word for anything. They trust Ollie now, having turned their backs on me.

Maybe I knew this would happen. Maybe my efforts to play a damsel in distress were the last ditch effort of a desperate woman trying to reclaim the love of her family.

For Hugh to have taken that bullet for Ollie…

Would he have done the same for me?

Once I might have thought so, but maybe I was kidding myself. Maybe I’ve always been kidding myself.

The caretaker raised me with the promise that I would eventually be adopted into a prestigious home. All I had to do to get there was lie and cheat, no problem.

But Caretaker Stephens never told me that I would lose it all to some nobody.

I don’t care if she’s a princess of the north, or whatever else the caretaker said.

She will never be as great as me.

For my brothers to not see that, to cast me aside for this… this… fraud.

Looking at them, all huddled around Ollie, I feel a certain kind of way that I haven’t felt since leaving the orphanage.

Like an outsider.

How many times did I watch other kids get picked again and again, holding onto their new family members while I remained in the dark?

Now, it feels like it’s happening all over again.

But what could I do now? How could I stop it?

Just like then, I’m powerless.

When the ambulance comes and Hugh is taken away, the brothers and Ollie will remember my existence. Ollie will tell everyone the things the caretaker said and I’ll be revealed to be disingenuous.

They won’t believe me now. Not if the pack Alphas trust Ollie more than me, which seems to be the case now.

Curse you, Moon Goddess.

The only path really open to me now is escape. Fortunately, these ropes around me are just for show, to earn sympathy from the brothers at their first arrival. Now that they didn’t take the bait, it’s truly not very difficult for me to shuck them off.

I move quietly, keeping as light on my feet as I can, desperate not to make any noise and claim any unwanted attention.

Fortunately, they all seem too concerned with Hugh at the moment, to notice in shifts in the floorboards or other noises I could make.

I give them one last look, disgusted by the way they are crowding lovingly around Ollie.

Then, I turn and run.

This place is no longer my home. I have no home.

And I don’t think I ever will have one again.