She was shaking so hard she had to grip the open door as Zane grabbed her shoulder.
"Haley, dammit, tell me what the hell is going on."
"Was it Noble?" she screamed back at him. "Tell me, damn you. Who was the breed?" She tried to tear away from him, the sickening fear of Noble, gone, dead. No, it couldn't be Noble. But it had been time for Noble. It had been. She had been waiting for him. She stared around and jerked away from Zane.
"Where is he?" She sobbed again, stumbling around the door and gripping the side of the car as she tried to force her legs to move.
He had said behind the library. Dead behind the library. She wasn't crying now. The fear and the pain was going too deep for tears. If Noble was gone, she couldn't bear it. Not Patricia and Noble. It couldn't happen. Not like this. Not because of her.
As she forced herself around the front of the vehicle, she heard a sound so wild, so animalistic, her head jerked up. It was Noble. She knew it was. She couldn't accept anything else.
"Noble!" She screamed his name and heard the sound again.
It rocked the night. Like the wild lions that patrolled the borders of Sanctuary. If the night was quiet, sometimes, you could hear them. And now, it sounded as though one had stepped into the city itself. Her head jerked around, staring into the parking lot, watching as the flames flickered around it. And she saw him. All that wild black hair blowing back from his savage face. His lips were pulled back into a snarl as he pushed a police officer attempting to hold him back to the side.
Black-leather pants and heavy motorcycle boots. A leather jacket that he was unzipping as his gaze caught hers. He moved like the jaguar he was bred from, a hard, graceful shift of muscle, a ripple of danger.
"Noble." His name tore from her lips again as he snarled. The sight of it, the sound of it, should have been frightening. The flash of his canines, the hard edge to his black eyes, should have frightened her as much as it did the officers and bystanders.
She tried to make her legs move. Tried to run to him but they weren't functioning as they should. She stumbled again and heard his throttled growl a second before he jerked her into his arms. Warmth covered her. She was only barely aware of his jacket going around her shoulders, because he was holding her, jerking her against his chest and swinging her off her feet. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against him to block out the sounds, the sight, and the smell of the fire.
He smelled like the night. Like winter. Like the snow that was drifting around them. There was no death around him. There was nothing of the nightmare and chaos around her.
For the first time since the night had turned into hell, Haley finally felt safe.
"Chavin, be advised of reinforcements landing," the comm link crackled with the information as Noble buried his face in Haley's hair and held on to her. His arms tightened around her as he let himself rest against the hood of the sheriff's cruiser and let himself soak up the knowledge that she was alive. As he held her, he was aware of the breed heli-jet landing on the other side of the parking lot, and of the sheriff moving closer to them.
His head jerked up as Sheriff Taggart pulled the edge of Noble's jacket over her shoulder. He flashed a feral snarl at him, the thought of the man touching her finally sending him past the limits of what little control he felt he possessed.
Taggart lifted his hands, his eyebrows arching.
"She was afraid the dead breed behind the library was you," the sheriff told him, his blue eyes knowing as he watched Noble.
Noble tensed and let go of Haley just enough to activate his communicator.
"Jonas?"
"I have you. We're on scene."
"There's a breed behind the library, apparently dead." Silence filled the line for long seconds. "Fuck. We had Jason covering her."
Jason was young, but fully trained. He wasn't inexperienced.
"I want her out of the open. I'm bringing her to the heli."
"Negative. We have vehicles coming in and a civilian in the heli. Transfer her to one of the secured SUVs." Noble grimaced. No doubt, the first Leo was in the helijet, the breed who only a few knew was a breed, and an interfering bastard at the moment, had decided to check things out himself. That meant there was no way to transfer Haley to Sanctuary. Not and preserve the secrecy of Leo's identity from her.
He listened through the link as Jonas sent Mordecai Savant and Mercury Warrant to check the body and prepare it for transfer.
"You guys are going to f**k with my investigation, rather than just helping me secure the scene, aren't you, Noble." Zane tucked his fingers in the belt of his jeans and rocked back on his heels. "You know that's not going to go over with me. Right?"
"Talk to Jonas about it," he snapped. "My concern is Haley right now, Taggart, and where she's concerned, then your best bet is just staying the hell out of my way."
He turned and carried her to the vehicles pulling into the outer edges of the parking lot. The library was pretty much lost. The books had fed the flames that had whipped through the windows as they burst. It was a wonder she was still alive and relatively unharmed.
Relatively. He could smell her blood, her pain. He could feel her fear and her disbelief, and it was enraging him.
Clamping a firm hold on his control wasn't easy. As he carried her to the SUVs and slid with her into the backseat of the nearest one, he could feel that rage pumping through him. Someone had dared to harm her. To attempt to kill her? The attempt was against her; otherwise, the young lion breed, Jason, wouldn't be dead, and her beautiful truck she so loved wouldn't be a hunk of twisted metal.