“Moira?” She was almost afraid to ask about the Irish Lioness.
“Unharmed. Groggy but coming out of it quickly.”
Dawn turned her head to stare at Dash where he stood at the other side of the bed. Callan stood beside him, silent, his golden eyes flaming with the intensity of his fury.
“Good.” She turned away.
“Dawn, don’t turn from me,” Callan growled.
She turned her gaze back. “I have put my body in front of your mate’s to protect her,” she whispered hoarsely. “You led mine into danger and ordered me back.” She remembered that, distinctly, clearly.
“What happened to you, Callan? Once, long ago, you would have never betrayed me.”
It hurt, that knowledge. Knowing that he had done the one thing guaranteed to force Seth out of her life ten years ago had been bad enough. But now, this time, he had led Seth into danger.
“Callan doesn’t control me, Dawn. Don’t ever imagine that’s possible.” Seth’s voice was hard now, cold. “And the next time you put your ass out there like that I’ll paddle it.”
She turned back to him, her responses still slow as she frowned. “I’m trained to.”
“And you think I’m not?” His lips tightened dangerously. “You don’t protect me. Understand that now. You will never place yourself between me and danger, or you’ll not sit on your ass for a week after I get finished.”
A frown jerked between her brows. He was daring to threaten to spank her?
“I’m gonna shoot you,” she mumbled.
Callan snorted, and Dawn wanted to grin at the sound of amusement she heard in it. But she couldn’t grin. She had to blink against the flash of horror that snapped inside her mind. The feel of shackles at her wrists, her ankles. Cold steel holding her down. She jerked before managing to control the reaction.
“Are you okay?” Ely, ever observant, checked her pulse, her hands carefully covered by the thin gloves she had specially coated to examine Breed mates.
Her touch brought no pain, only a sense of discomfort.
“I’m fine.” She shrugged the doctor off. “Go aggravate Moira and leave me alone.”
Ely grinned at the order.
Brutal eyes flashed in front of Dawn’s memory then. Hazel brown, filled with smug satisfaction, with horrible pleasure, as thin lips smiled. A smile of triumph behind a black mask.
“We’re tracking the tranq we found next to your body,” Dash told her drawing her back. “The attacker took the one he used on Moira, but whoever shot at him frightened him away before he could retrieve the one he used on you. We’re hoping we can trace him with it.”
“What shooter?” She wanted to shake her head, but she was afraid to. Afraid any shift in her body would bring another flash of horror.
“Someone shot at your attacker. Someone positioned in the trees, we suspect. We haven’t found a sign of him, or his scent. We hoped you had.”
Dawn blinked back at Dash. “There was another unknown out there?” she asked faintly. “That’s not possible.”
“All guests were accounted for when we got back to the house,” Dash continued. “There were none missing. All our men were accounted for and none of them took the shot. We were rushing to your location when it was fired.”
“He was going to cut me.” The edge of the blade over her face flashed before her mind. “Mark me.”
“We heard.” The ice in Seth’s voice was frightening to hear. She had never heard him so cold, so killingly furious.
“We heard everything on the link,” Callan told her, and his voice was just as dangerous, just as lethal.
“When the shot fired, he disappeared.”
“Scents?” She frowned. Surely one of them had smelled something.
“Covered. A combination of subtle alterations that we haven’t been able to pick up on the guests. We haven’t placed the underlying scent yet,” Callan told her.