for my sister. I burst through into her bedroom with my heart thundering so hard I could barely hear anything else, expecting to see the worst.
But there she was, still fast asleep and snoring like a lumberjack. She hadn't even stirred with all the noise I'd made, which explained how Chase had cut her hair without her even noticing. Fucking hell.
For a long moment I stood there staring at her, my chest heaving and my fists clenched at my sides while I tried to get a handle on my rage and fear and frustration.
A movement on the stairs made me flinch hard, then I let out a long, slow breath when I saw it was Zed. He gave me a puzzled, concerned look, and I laid a finger over my lips to tell him to be quiet.
He nodded his understanding and waited as I pulled Seph's blanket up over her shoulders. Then I checked the small gable window to ensure it was locked from the inside—even though I knew how Chase had come in. When I returned to Zed, I was only a fraction calmer than when I'd come running in to save my sister.
"What's going on?" Zed whispered as we tiptoed back down the loft stairs and quietly closed the door at the bottom behind us. "Did something happen?"
A small, slightly hysterical laugh bubbled up in my chest, and I raked my fingers through my hair. But Zed caught my forearm before I could complete the gesture and jerked me closer in alarm.
"You're bleeding. What the fuck happened, Dare?"
I peered at the hand in question and grimaced at the mess I'd made of the skin. It was nothing life-threatening, but now that he'd reminded me, it was stinging like a motherfucker.
Instead of standing there in the hallway and giving him the whole stupid story, I nodded in the direction of his bedroom. He took the hint and strode along the hallway with his fingers still tight around my forearm like he could somehow heal my scrape with the power of his mind. How useful that skill would be in my world made me wish I believed in magic.
Once we were safely in his room with the door shut, Zed pushed me over to his bed and glared down at me. “Stay here. Don’t move.” He grabbed a gun from his bedside table and disappeared out of the room again, no doubt going to do a sweep of the house and ensure Chase wasn’t still lurking behind a potted plant or something. Not that he knew who he was looking for, but he knew a sweep was warranted.
When he got back, he didn’t look any calmer. Hell, if anything, he looked more stressed out. "Dare, start fucking talking before I have an aneurysm."
"Chase," I muttered, looking up at him with regret. I knew he was about to blast me for not calling out for help. "He broke in. Cuffed me to the bed."
Zed's whole body went rigid, and the air crackled with violence. "What—"
"I'm fine." I cut him off before his imagination could run wild. "He just wanted to prove he could. And he took my fucking gun." That was probably more distressing than him breaking into my room in the first place.
Zed's brows hiked. "He took the Desert Eagle?"
I gave a sour nod. "He's been obsessed with it since he’s been back; I kept catching him eyeing it when we were in person. I knew he'd try for it at some stage, but... I wasn't expecting this."
Zed blew out a long breath and sat down on the edge of the bed beside me. "Why didn't you call out for help? Any one of us could have come to—"
"Come to my rescue?" I snickered, trying to soften the mocking in my voice. "I wasn't in any danger. Not really. And at first I was worried that if I screamed, Seph would come to investigate and get hurt."
Zed scowled, taking my injured hand into his lap to examine further. "And then?"
I hissed when his fingertip pressed a sore part of my wrist. "And then he made it clear he'd already visited Seph, so I made the decision to let him go and make sure she was unharmed. Which, as you saw, she is. Just missing a chunk of hair."
Zed gave me a disgusted look, and I agreed with a hollow laugh.
"Want me to wake Lucas up to clean this up?" Zed offered, arching a brow in question. "He needs practical medical