wondered if I was ever going to feel in control enough to get my hazel back. Someone had washed the blood off me, cleaning me up quite nicely, which was one small blessing.
There were bruises, too. One on my jaw and another on the opposite cheek. My neck had hand prints. The smaller injuries would be gone before the end of the week, but the more pressing ones, the gun shots? I would be nursing those for a while, and they would become a myriad of new scars I would have to live with.
Just like the night I left the apartment with Carey, I knew I didn’t have weeks to get back to my best. I had to act, and quickly, so I began to formulate my plan as I washed my hands, then my face. I gingerly tested my body, bending over and wincing in pain as scabs tore and my muscles screamed in revolt at my movement.
When I went back into the bedroom, I found clothing set out on top of the dresser and got dressed. That took longer than anything I did in the bathroom.
Plan. Take Carey back and protect her to the best of my ability, which admittedly hadn’t been too great so far.
How? I really had no idea. Brin was right. If I showed up in Dallas-Fort Worth, I would have to get involved with the mess going on there. I figured the wolves attacking me were working against her father, which meant if I took them all out on their own turf, I was giving Heath the upper hand in his fight, if he was still fighting. It was everything a werecat shouldn’t do. We were supposed to be impartial protectors, guardians for humanity when the supernatural ruined their lives.
I curled a fist as I sat back down on the bed. It was a defensive role. I was tired of defensive, and in the end, I had failed at it. The only course of action I had now was to be on the offensive.
I had sworn an oath. Carey was mine and they took her from me. My throat tightened as I thought about everything that had happened. Tears flooded my eyes, even as I battled with a deep, unsettling rage growing in my chest. I killed people. A lot of people. I tore a man’s throat out with my bare hands after I blinded him.
Ten years ago, I was just an EMT. I had saved people.
Now I was killing them.
I’m a monster.
And the other monsters had taken something that belonged to me.
Hasan once told me there would come a moment when I had to embrace what a werecat truly was. That I would have to accept the beast instead of just living with it. He’d said there was nothing wrong with violence in our lives, because we weren’t human. We were built to be the top predators of whatever region we claimed, and it was in our nature to defend that claim to the last breath.
He probably never thought it would be over a human. He had probably just wanted me to stop feeling bad for knocking around other werecats when they accidentally or purposefully walked into my territory. It had always felt like needless violence to me.
Fighting for Carey didn’t feel needless, though.
“She’s mine,” I growled, continuing to feel the instinctual pull to protect and care for her, accepting it and holding on to it with everything I could. And I’m going to defend that claim to my last breath.
I found the energy to stand up again and walked out of the bedroom, staggering only once and using the wall as my support. I found the fae-human family in their dining room.
“I need to go back to my room and get my things,” I said softly, grabbing their attention. Brin was the one who sighed. I saw the young men around their human mother, who wore such an expression of worry that I nearly opened my mouth again to comfort her. I decided against it as Brin closed the distance and pointed to another door.
“Follow me,” he ordered.
We walked out of the little house and down a trail that led to the gas station. We were silent until we reached the far side of the motel’s parking lot and he stopped.
“This is where we scraped your body from the asphalt,” he whispered, pointing down. I could still see the dark stain of my blood there, and it gave me chills. “This is