Apex smiled again. “Anything I can do to make you feel better about yourself.”
The other male’s chuckle floated over on the breeze. “Any chance that wolven, Callum, was the one who clarified your emotions?”
His self-protective instinct was as finely tuned as always, so he opened his mouth to set a hard line. But then he thought… fuck it.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “I think so.”
For a night that had otherwise proved to be full of bad surprises, finally,finally, something went right. As Kane settled back against the garage’s interior wall, he couldn’t believe that the plan he’d thought up had actually worked.
One hour and fourteen minutes.
And thirty-eight seconds.
According to the strange, glowing digital clock in the back of the ambulance, that was how long it took for them to get the healing vehicle to this fake-sagging structure, carry Lucan down the mountain, and stuff him, the two medics, Nadya, and Rio into the vehicle.
There had been no room for anybody else, and Rio, even though she was the mate, had to sit in the front and watch from there as the three people with medical know-how went to work.
The pair of human healers had been a stroke of dumb luck. The driver had actually come out of the Army with field trauma experience as a nurse, and her partner had likewise been in the Marines as a medic. Though Kane had not known what either of those titles meant, though he could certainly extrapolate on the first, what he was certain of was that Lucan was in good hands.
As they waited for news about how the treatment was going, Kane got up and paced around, and Mayhem propped himself in the corner and went to sleep.
Apex, meanwhile, stayed perfectly still by the exit. Like he’d been flash frozen in a harsh winter.
Only his eyes moved, and they just went from between two fixed points: The concrete floor at his feet and the toolbox in the corner. Back and forth.
At first, Kane didn’t catch on. But then he realized… that wolven, Callum, still hadn’t shown up.
Glancing at Mayhem, and finding the guy twitching like a retriever curled up in front of a fire, Kane went over to Apex.
“None of the wolven have come back,” he murmured to the male. “He’s probably wherever his people are.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. Uh-huh. Yup.”
The former prisoner clearly had no idea what he was saying.
“Why don’t you go out there,” Kane offered. “Look around. Maybe you’ll find where they’re hiding—or, hell, go to that hunting cabin. He’s probably there hiding out.”
An abrupt relief came into Apex’s eyes. “Are you okay here?”
“This is as good a shelter as we can have—also, not only did I not see any guards moving around when we were up on the mountain, the bodies were where we left them, so they haven’t come and collected their dead. I think we made a dent in their numbers.” He squeezed the male’s shoulder. “Go. You’re too distracted. Settle your mind and come back after you find him.”
Apex glanced at the ambulance. Then looked back. “Okay, thanks.”
After a moment where they just stared at each other, Kane got the shock of his life as Apex drew him in for a quick, hard embrace. And then the other male was off, slipping out of the side door.
In his absence, Kane checked the gun he had in his hand. Yes, the bullets were still in it. And even though Mayhem was asleep, he knew that male could go into a defensive position in a moment’s notice.
As there continued to be no sounds that were suspicious, no scents, either, he let the male sleep. They were all overtired, and undernourished, and running on nervous energy. But they were alive.
They werealive.
Focusing on the back of the ambulance—which had the word “AMBULANCE” spelled out across the rear doors in bold red letters—he wished he could affect the outcome that was evolving insidethe vehicle. He’d gotten a glimpse of what kind of treatment bay it offered, and there was equipment in there that he had never seen before—a reminder of how far things had progressed while he had been incarcerated.
In a surge of optimism, he envisioned himself and Nadya living in a small place, which happened to be kitted out as the quarters under the hunting cabin were. Together, they could explore the world around them and get up to date. They could be properly mated and find a collective purpose. They could live out what days and nights they were given, side by side.
Perhaps even with young.
The fantasy instantly became so real and detailed that he began to smile to himself, the future nothing he had dared to dwell on before because it had only promised suffering and sadness.