The Shadows (Black Dagger Brotherhood #13) - J. R. Ward Page 0,73

her a Bostonian, “Hi, hawre ya!” John Matthew, Blay, and Qhuinn were up next, and then Phury indicated Rhage.

“And Brad Pitt over there is Hollywood.”

He smiled. “Glad you’re here.”

Paradise’s stare stayed on him, her eyes getting big, but not because she was scared. Far from it.

“Yeah, he’s a looker,” someone said. “Until you get to know him.”

“Aww, come now,” Rhage tossed back. “Don’t hate.”

Talk sprang up, with Wrath asking Paradise some questions to get her talking about herself. As the girl refocused on the King, Rhage thought back to before he’d met his Mary. No doubt he would have made a run at that innocent—and would have been successful. He’d had a zero failure rate as he’d controlled his beast by fucking anything and everything that had moved. Which had been good for him. Not so hot for females who’d wanted to keep their virtue.

And he had no doubt Paradise was one of those.

So yeah, he was glad he was meeting her now, when there was absolutely no chance of him getting with her. He had mated his Virgin, just as Vishous had said he would, and his life had been saved.

For some reason, a sick feeling came over him.

Shoving his hand in his pocket, he took out his cell phone. Checked his texts.

Trez, the poor bastard, still hadn’t gotten back to him yet. It seemed stupid to bother the guy again, given everything that was on his plate, but it was hard not to reach out one more time.

Rhage wished there was more to be done to help the guy and his Chosen.

He truly did.

There was no doing any kind of turn signal.

As Layla drove her Mercedes back to the Brotherhood mansion, she had her injured arm propped on the middle console between the seats, a spare jacket wadded up to increase its height and provide some extra cushioning.

The pain was stunning, the kind of thing that was so bad, it registered in her gut.

So no, there was no signaling left or right.

At least there was nobody else out on the country roads this late at night.

It was hours, maybe years, before she made it to the turn off to the compound’s mountain, and the mhis was a nightmare. V’s distortion of the landscape, a security measure to keep them safe, meant that everything was blurry, as if a fog had overtaken the forest. Exhaustion from fighting the urge to vomit, combined with her vision beginning to fail, meant that she felt utterly lost, and her instinct was to lean in and get closer to the windshield—not that that helped.

All that did was just piss her arm off even more.

When the glowing lights of the mansion finally came into view, she prayed, prayed that the Brothers were all out fighting and she could make it to her room without anybody seeing her. Pulling around the just-winterized fountain, she parked next to Rhage’s purple GTO and Butch’s new toy, a black Mercedes that looked like a bread box.

She had to reach around the wheel and push the gear lever in to get the engine into park—and discovered she had to stretch even more to hit the Stop/Start button to turn the sedan off. Then it was a case of breathing shallowly through her mouth as she recovered from the effort. Looking in the rearview mirror, she caught sight of the entrance to the mansion … and had no clue how she was going to get over there. Much less haul herself up to her room.

There was no other choice. Either she did it on her own, or she had to ask someone to lie for her: There was no hiding the injury, not as fresh as it was. And she couldn’t let Qhuinn find out what had happened.

Or, even worse, what she’d really been doing when she’d fallen.

Damn it, this situation was the punishment for her double life—her two opposing realities slamming together, knocking her senseless, exposing her.

Potentially.

Time to go inside.

Layla got a fresh lesson in pain as she opened her door and tried to straighten up from the leather seat, her arm letting out a scream as the broken bone ground against itself.

Recovery breath. A number of them.

And then somehow, she got herself out of the car.

Had the mansion always been so far from the parking area?

Walking around the fountain wasn’t so much a case of putting one foot in front of the other, but shuffling over the cobblestones and trying not to pass out. When she got to