Blood Rule (Book 4, Dirty Blood series) (29 page)

Wes took it and shoved it on his head.
“If it gets ruined being on my head, we have bigger problems than
your hat.”

***

The late afternoon sun slanted across
the grass where it spilled over the corner of the hospital’s roof
across the road. We couldn’t wait until daylight disappeared
entirely. Darkness was for the hybrids. The rescue. According to
George and Wes, this was nothing more than recon. And I suspected
they didn’t much care if Alex got caught.

While we waited for Logan and Victoria
to appear with the patient, we wandered the park across the street.
The very public park. Emma and I had claimed an abandoned
playground. Wes was not far behind us on a bench with George. The
chasm had reopened between us, an old scab torn open again. It
hadn’t been there since we’d left Virginia. And Alex.

I climbed onto the monkey bars and sat
atop them, letting my feet dangle loosely below. Emma followed at
my heels, quiet inside and out.

“
What are you thinking
about?” I asked her.

She looked up at me, startled. “You
don’t know?”

I smiled. “I’d like to hear you
talk.”

“
Oh. Um.” She picked at
the ends of her hair and looked away. I’d given up on her answering
at all when she finally said, “You and George used to date,
huh?”

“
Yes,” I said.
“Why?”

A couple of dog walkers passed by,
their smiles polite and small, but otherwise we barely got a second
look. Even Astor, walking slow circles around our mulch enclosure
while he whispered to himself, drew hardly any attention. Maybe it
was because of the crowd.

The best place to hide is
plain sight.

Where had that come from? I found
George sitting on a bench, listening to Wes, but he was watching
Emma. And his thoughts were centered completely on her.

“
Well,” Emma said,
bringing me out of my thoughts. The way she drew out the word, I
didn’t need a bond to tell me where this was going. “Would it be
weird if— I mean, I know you guys used to be, you know
…”

I couldn’t take the stumbling or
stuttering any longer. I reached out and put my hand on her knee.
She smiled sheepishly, her cheeks reddening.

“
Em, George and I are just
friends. And as long as he doesn’t keep eavesdropping on this
conversation …” I paused and sent George a pointed look. He ducked
his head and went back to talking to Wes. “We will remain friends.
But that’s it for both of us, trust me.”

“
Really? Because if you’re
not sure or if it’s weird …”

“
It’s not weird,” I said
firmly. “And I can tell he likes you so stop worrying.”

She smiled, transforming her face from
shy and quiet to radiant. “You think so? I mean, did you, you know,
read that?”

I laughed. “You’ve both got it bad.
Trust me, mutually bad. Go talk to him.”

She glanced over her shoulder where
Wes and George still huddled on the bench. “Now?”

“
Why not?”

“
I don’t know. There’s all
this stuff going on. Dangerous rescue missions and sneaky meetings
in the park. Maybe I should wait for when things are
calmer.”

“
Sweetheart. I can promise
if you stick with me, things will never be calmer. And we aren’t
promised tomorrow. You should tell him now. In the present. Live
this moment.”

Her eyes clouded with unshed tears and
I realized too late what my words had done. We shared a mental
image of Janie between us before it faded away again.

“
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean
…”

“
It’s okay,” she said,
wiping a stray tear from her cheek. “You’re right. We aren’t
promised tomorrow. I need to seize the day and all that.” She
sniffed once. “Janie was better at this sort of thing than
me.”

“
What?”

“
Spontaneous decisions.
Proclamations of love.”

I smiled. “She would tell you to do
it.”

Emma nodded.

“
I think that means you
have to.”

I watched as George rose from the
bench and made his way toward us. He didn’t pay me a single bit of
attention. His eyes were so fixed on Emma, he almost tripped over
the wood-trimmed border. Emma giggled.

“
Hey,” George
said.

“
Hey,” Emma
said.

I rolled my eyes. “I’m going to talk
to Wes.” I don’t think either one heard me.

Astor stopped me before I could reach
the bench. “You know she’ll have your hide for this.”

“
What? Who?” I looked back
at Emma, but she was intent on whatever George was
saying.

Astor wagged his finger in my face.
“You know exactly. Edie, that’s who.”

The entire trip, I’d waited for him to
press me about Grandma’s willingness to let us leave, but he hadn’t
said a single word about it. Until now. “Astor. Do you know
something I don’t know?”

“
I know lots of things.
Like the fact that your boyfriend over there is afraid to be
tested, afraid he won’t be like you. And he isn’t.”

“
Isn’t what?”

“
Like you.”

“
He’s not immune? How do
you know?”

He shrugged again and tilted his head
as if he couldn’t care less.

“
What else do you know,
Astor?”

“
Your jock-friend is
better at this than you are.”

“
Better at
what?”

He walked away, resuming his circle
around the playground. I moved to follow, determined to make him
tell me what he meant, but Wes called my name.

“
Tara. They’re here.” His
voice was nothing more than a raised whisper, but it sent a flood
of nerves through me and I had to force my muscles to
work.

I turned around slowly.

The sun dipped completely behind the
hospital, casting the three bodies into full shadow. They were
nothing more than silhouettes as they stepped off the crosswalk and
entered the park. But I didn’t need to see faces or even hear their
voices to know which one was Alex. I recognized him by the way he
moved.

I remained frozen to the spot as I
watched him approach. My hands were clammy. I opened and closed my
fists and worked my throat, but there was nothing to swallow. My
mouth felt like Astor’s backyard. Dry heat.

Three more steps. I’ll
wait until he’s closer. Wes is watching me. I can’t run and hug
him. Dammit, I really want to. It’s not like I want him. Wow, he’s
lost a lot of weight. I did this to him. But he’s going to be
okay.

Who needed a pack to have jumbled,
insane thoughts?

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched
Wes. His jaw tightened and he looked tenser the closer Alex got.
Ah, hell. He was going to be pissed either way.

I met Alex’s eyes—their
chocolate-brown depths spoke of so many things I couldn’t wait to
understand—and closed the distance between us. My momentum drove
him back a step. I wrapped my arms around his neck and squeezed. He
recovered his footing and squeezed me back, chuckling.

“
Hey, stranger,” he said,
his breath tickling my ear.

The sound of his voice—here in front
of me, solid, whole, real—made me want to cry. Or laugh. Or do
jumping jacks. Something. But I couldn’t seem to remove my hands
from around his shoulders.

“
Godfrey. I’m not going to
run away. You can let go.”

I did so reluctantly and then cocked
my head. “Did you know I was thinking that?”

“
What?” He blinked back at
me, clearly confused.

“
Never mind,” I
muttered.

Wes, George, and Emma crowded around.
Astor hung back at the edges of the group, alternating between
squinting at Alex and sniffing the air. I could not deal with that
right now.

“
You made it,” George
said.

“
Piece of cake,” Victoria
said. Logan looked at her like she’d lost her mind. I wondered what
I’d missed in the process of them sneaking out here.

“
Will they know you’re
gone?” I asked Alex.

“
Eventually,” he
said.

“
Soon,” Logan
corrected.

“
They’ll send the cavalry
when they figure it out,” I told him.

He opened his mouth to answer, but Wes
cut him off. “Which means we should cut to the chase.”

Alex’s eyes glinted as he regarded
Wes. “Which chase is that?”

Wes shrugged. “Take your pick. How
about why you sold us out to Kane?”

“
I was hoping we could
start small, work up to that.”

“
Fine. What did you do to
disable the bond between Tara and me that day?” George
asked.

“
Wow, another zinger right
out of the gate.”

Wes threw up his hands. “What the
hell? I thought you came here to talk.”

“
I came here to show a
certain she-wolf that her attempt to chew me to death didn’t work
so she’d stop feeling guilty.”

“
Can’t say she didn’t
try,” Wes muttered.

“
This is stupid. Both of
you stop,” I said. “Wes, go sit down. Logan, Victoria, go with
him.”

“
Why does George get to
stay?” Victoria pouted. She’d clearly been enjoying the back and
forth of testosterone. Bully.

“
To get his answers,” I
said.

“
I’m not leaving you,” Wes
said.

“
What do you think is
going to happen in the park?” I asked.

His hands tightened into fists. “He
betrayed us all. We should all get to hear—” Wes began.

I rounded on him, hot
anger bubbling too close to the surface to contain. “You should,
but you don’t. Because you can’t act like a grown up about the fact
that I’m happy to see my friend. Notice I said friend, not anything
else. Because you’re my boyfriend. When you can get that, you can
stay for the conversation. In the meantime, my
friend
and I are going to talk this
out.”

“
Whatever we’re doing, can
we do it before the next century, or, you know, before Edie rolls
up in the Hummer and caps all of us for our stupidity?” Logan
adjusted his hat, which he’d stolen back from Wes, claiming he
needed it to remain inconspicuous inside the hospital, and stared
at the passing traffic.

“
Caps us?” I
repeated.

“
You know, shoots, kills,
whatever,” he said.

“
Obviously. Yes, of
course, let’s hurry,” I said with a laugh.

Wes grunted and stalked off. Logan and
Victoria followed him to the bench.

“
Edie doesn’t know you’re
here?” Alex asked. He glanced behind us at the open view of the
street, looking nervous for the first time since he’d
arrived.

“
No, and you don’t get to
ask the questions here. I do,” I said.

“
How is that
fair?”

I lifted a brow.

“
Okay, fine, it’s fair.”
He turned to George, who had Emma tucked close beside him as if
protecting her. From Alex? That was funny. “I owe you an apology,”
Alex told him. “I shouldn’t have knocked you out and I’m sorry. I
needed to disable your ability to communicate with Tara until I
could get to her, but I didn’t mean to put you out for more than a
few minutes. If I could go back …”

“
You’d what?” I
asked.

I remembered Kane’s words the day I’d
seen him in Vera’s room. He’d said if Alex could go back, he’d do
it all the same in order to protect me.

“
I’d do it differently,”
he finished.

“
How?”

“
I’d … I’d trust you,” he
said quietly.

“
I don’t believe you,”
George said.

“
I mean every word. If I
could go back—”

“
No, not about that,”
George said, waving a hand. “About disabling the bond. You knocked
me out and when I came to, it took forever to get Tara back inside
my head. I know you did something.”

“
I didn’t.”

“
Tell me everything from
the beginning,” George said.

Alex sighed but he didn’t argue.
“After the vote at Jack’s, the plan, Tara walking straight into
Olivia’s territory waving a white flag … it ate at me. It went
against everything I knew to walk in there like that. No weapons in
hand. No strike team nearby. I panicked.”

“
Uh-huh. That’s obvious,”
George said. Wes would’ve been proud of the ferocious glare he gave
Alex. “Then what?”

“
I called
Kane.”

“
Didn’t he think you’d
deserted him after being with us so long?”

“
I didn’t desert,” he
said. “Most kids my age graduate and spend the summer with their
families before reporting for duty. I didn’t have that, so he let
me join up early but then benched me for more training. I got
restless. Then Edie called and I did some recon work for her on the
side. It got a little sketchy so I asked for the leave after all
and he gave it.”