Isaiah (20 page)

“Doesn’t it prove his point about us being stupid for putting up with it?” Steven halfway yelled. He turned the radio down. “I mean, if we were smart—”

“All the smart in the world doesn’t necessarily counter brainwashing, and it’s been my experience that our lepe leaders are masters at manipulating.” Bae gestured at Steven. “Who in your lepe believes they are Bashuan’s equal? No one,” he answered before anyone else could.

“Because I can guarantee you he has undermined the confidence of anyone he saw as a potential challenger to his authority. Tell me—” Bae made his way to stand hunched beside Steven’s seat. He studied Steven’s skin, his eyes and general outward appearance for signs of health issues. “Are all the pure breeds in the lepe as strong as you and Adal?”

Steven goggled at him for a second before pulling the van into what appeared to be a crappy excuse for a rest area. “Strong? Adal told you, sometimes we can barely find the strength to get up. It can take us days to shake whatever it is that has our blood in its grips.”

“Um.” Bae was growing more suspicious by the minute. “What happens before the onset of the attacks?”

Steven put the van in park and twisted in his seat to see Bae easier. “I don’t understand your question.”

Maybe Steven wasn’t the brightest of the two pumapards. “What I mean is, you and Adal are fine, healthy, strong and all that right now.” They didn’t even reek, and Bae just realised it. “You don’t smell of decay.”

Steven looked mortified and Bae actually felt bad. What was wrong with him, having sympathy for the enemy?
But who is the enemy? The two stooges, or the master manipulator-slash-perverted paedophile? I vote for option B.

“Me too,”
Isaiah’s voice rumbled in his head, and Bae’s heart leapt. It took every ounce of his willpower not to turn and run to Isaiah.
“Don’t let them know you’re awake.”

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Bailey Bradford

125

Isaiah agreed and Bae tried to focus more on Steven. “I don’t mean to offend you or whatever, but you and Adal smelt…er, very bad, before. In the alley and when you tried to kidnap me.”

Steven made a choked sound and Adal spoke up. “We were in the almost worst stages of the sickness when we were in the alley. We didn’t even have the strength to grab you.

Bashuan was very angry about our failure. He took the cane to us.”

“What a sick bastard,” Bae muttered, glaring at Steven when he opened his mouth.

“Don’t even defend him to me. This Bashuan is a paedophile, a right bastard who molested who knows how many young girls! And caning? Even my own leader would never do such a thing. He is controlling, manipulative, too, but he knows his followers are the ones who make his power possible.” Bae took a deep breath and tried to exhale some of his anger when he released the air. “Now, from what you’re saying, this sickness comes in cycles. When does it strike? Is there a pattern?”

“No.” Steven closed his eyes and seemed to be thinking about something. When he opened them again, he seemed to have come to some sort of decision. “We hoped that by bringing you to Bashuan, he would favour us, or at the very least, not despise us as he has since our births.”

“He’s your father,” Bae said, a piece of the puzzle snapping into place. “Bashuan is your father, which means he had sex with puma shifters? Or a puma shifter?”

“Plural. He goes back to South Korea periodically to check for Amur shifters, in case they really aren’t extinct there.”

Adal, his complexion wan and expression pinched, shook his head. “No, I think he goes to have sex with young girls. Where he finds them, shifter girls, I don’t know. But my mother and Steven’s died giving birth to us. From what little we heard, they were brought back here by Bashuan when they were discovered to be pregnant. They were young, we were told, probably between fourteen and sixteen. After my mother died, Bashuan quit bringing other breeds of shifters back, but I’m afraid he still goes to South Korea for the very same reason he did before.”

Bae was beyond confused, but he knew there was no logic to crazy power-hungry shifters who controlled their lepes. “So he cuts you and Steven down continuously for being only half Amur, but he thinks it is fine to do what he does? And to reproduce with another www.total-e-bound.com

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breed. You do understand that Bashuan is very, very wrong. He’s a danger to innocents and to his lepe. If he is caught molesting a young girl, what would happen? Would he expose his lepe, purposefully or on accident?”

“I don’t know.” Adal nodded at Steven. “Do you?”

Steven slowly shook his head. “No, but I admit I am very afraid of what would happen, almost as afraid as I am of him.”

Bae wanted to scream that Steven and Adal could take Bashuan out, but now wasn’t the time. He couldn’t undo a lifetime of abuse with a few trite words. “I think you have a lot to discuss. I’m going to check the centrifuge and read the slides.”

What Bae found confirmed his opinion, or at least he thought it did. The white blood cell counts for Adal were almost perfect. He could find nothing in his blood to signify any kind of illness. Of course, he had only checked Adal. Bae gestured at Steven. “Can I have some of your blood now?”

“Why?” Steven asked, suspicion blatant in his expression.

Bae rolled his eyes. “To see if your blood is as clean now as Adal’s.”

“I’m fine?” Adal whispered, his eyes alight with hope. “You’re not just fucking with me for revenge?”

“What would be the point?” Bae huffed. “If I wanted to fuck with you, I’d tell you, you were dying.”

“Oh.”

“How can he be fine?” Steven scowled and shoved up his sleeve. “I don’t believe that.

We’ve had this…this, whatever it is, since we were teenagers. Bashuan said it would likely kill us, since our healer couldn’t help us. Now you’re saying something we’ve had for almost a decade is just gone? I don’t think so.”

“Think what you like, you can Google the results of the tests.” Bae took out a syringe and ampules. A strip of latex for the tourniquet and Bae was ready. “Hold your arm like this and make a fist.” For someone who didn’t believe the results, Steven seemed eager enough for his tests to be done. Bae truly believed Steven was just afraid to hope. Years of being told he was going to die and he was a useless piece of shit had done a number on him and on Adal.

“Ugh! There I go feeling sorry for them again!”

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127

“It’s okay, I do, too.”
Isaiah sounded sincere, felt sincere to Bae.
“They’ve been abused all
their life, it sounds like. How can I hate them for that? It’d be like blaming the kids at the shelter for
having shitty lives. Wrong.”

“You are smarter than anyone I’ve ever met, and you have the most amazing heart. And ass.

And cock. And—”

“Ouch,” Steven whined. “That hurts.”

Bae had the needle in, had in fact done it without having to think of it. “Sorry. I’m being as gentle as I can.”

“I hate needles.” Steven listed to the side then he was falling and Bae yelped as he jerked the needle out.

“Shit! Adal!”

Adal was there immediately. “Fuck, there’s blood—”

“Well no shit,” Bae snapped. “Help me before I drop him or he bleeds to death!”

Adal grabbed Steven and Bae applied pressure to the small wound that was bleeding too much. After several minutes, he lifted his hand and was relieved to see no fresh leakage.

“Someone should have fucking told me he was phobic of needles.”

“I didn’t know,” Adal whined, “I have never had a shot, and didn’t think Steven had either.”

Great, it was a new phobia then. Bae sure as shit was traumatised by it. “Let me unstrap Isaiah so we can get Steven up on the table.”

“He’s asleep—your mate, I mean.”

Bae shook his head as he hurried to the exam table. “No, Isaiah has been conscious for a while now. We’ve just used our mate-link to communicate. More privacy from our kidnappers that way.” Okay, he was feeling snarky, maybe even outright bitchy. As soon as he saw Isaiah, looked into those beautiful eyes, Bae’s temper eased. “Hey, love. How are you feeling?”

“Sore,” Isaiah said, glaring past Adal. “But I’ve had worse wounds from my little cousin Ashley, and she’s only two.”

“I didn’t want to seriously hurt you,” Adal protested. “I’m actually sorry, okay? I just…we wanted Bashuan to accept us and if we could get help from Dr Warren, if he could fix whatever is wrong with us, then that was a bonus.”

Bae had Isaiah free and helped him off the table. “Are you steady?”

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Bailey Bradford

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“Enough.” Isaiah stepped back to lean against the counter. Bae touched his hip then helped Adal settle Steven on the table. When he did so, Bae took his phone and Isaiah’s.

“We aren’t your prisoners any more, understand?” Bae stared Adal down until the pumapard averted his eyes. “Good. Now, go check on Dorso.”

Adal was on the floor in a flash, his attention on Dorso. Bae checked Steven over. “He’s just passed out. Let me see if I can get enough blood for a few tests at least.”

“I should probably give him the vitamins our healer has us take. Sometimes they seem to help.” Adal stood and squeezed by Isaiah to pluck up a bag Bae hadn’t noticed there before. “I always carry them in my backpack.”

Bae watched as Adal took out a white bottle that looked like an aspirin container. When Adal opened it, a sour stench hit the air. “Stop!” Bae turned fully and held out his hand. “Let me have those.”

Adal hesitated, looking at the bottle. “Why? They help, sometimes. Sometimes nothing helps.”

Bae struggled for some patience. “Adal, smell them. Can’t you detect the rancid scent?

It’s the same one as when you and Steven were in the alley, or when you tried to attack me before.”

“We weren’t attacking, we—” Adal sniffed and pinched his nose shut. “But they always stink.”

“Maybe you’re used to it, or know to expect it and so it isn’t suspicious to you.” Bae held out his hand. “I’m telling you, this is what you and Steven smell like when you’re sick.

And after what you both have told me about Bashuan, I can’t help but believe that he’d have the healer keep two potentially powerful shifters in a weakened state.”

Adal shook his head, his eyes just huge in his face, but he handed the bottle over. “I can’t think about this anymore right now. We still have to go back and—”

Bae had had enough. He checked with Isaiah, felt his approval. “And you would take your mate, the one you are supposed to protect with your own life, back to the lepe where Bashuan would possibly kill him rather than acknowledge that mixed blood shifters are every bit as equal as pure bloods are?”

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129

“My mate?” Adal asked in a sandpaper rough voice. “I don’t—” He looked at Dorso, and Bae saw it, the moment it dawned on him why he wanted Dorso so badly. “He’s my mate? He’s my mate. Oh my God, Steven! Wake up!”

“Wait—” Too late for Bae to get his samples, because Steven came to consciousness with a shout.

“What?” He looked around and panic lit his eyes. “Fuck!”

“Apparently you now realise you and Adal are no longer in control of this van,” Isaiah drawled. “And your buddy has some news for you.”

Steven gulped and glanced at Adal. “W-what?”

Adal was practically glowing with joy as he stroked Dorso’s hair. “He’s my mate, Steven. Bashuan was wrong, we are just like the pure Amurs. Dorso, this man, he’s mine. I can feel it here,” Adal pressed a hand to his chest over his heart, then dragged it down to his belly. “And here, and my pumapard is going crazy inside me.” Then Adal growled and pointed at Steven. “He better be all right, Steven. He better be or else—”

“Look,” Bae all but shouted. Dorso couldn’t have had better timing. “Adal, stop threatening your one friend in the world and look at your mate!”

Dorso’s eyelids fluttered and a soft sigh slipped past his lips. “Where’m I?”

Bae was fucking glad he didn’t have to explain that one. He gave Adal a look that said, he’s all yours, buddy. Then he turned his attention back to Steven. “They are indeed mates. I realised it almost as soon as we took off. Bashuan is wrong, and these?” Bae shook the bottle of pills. “These are poisoned, I’d bet my last dollar on it. They reek, as you two do when in the throes of the sickness.”

“No,” Steven said, going so pale Bae thought he would pass out again. He moved to put a supporting arm around Steven’s shoulders. “Bashuan had the healer make those for us to help us. We don’t get sick every time we take them, just—” Adal shut up and his eyes welled with tears. “Sometimes we do, but not always.”

“That makes a sick sort of sense. Poison some of the pills, but not all of them, so the sickness
doesn’t strike in a consistent pattern. Their father is one fucked up asshole.”

“Understatement. I can’t understand such hatred.”
Bae didn’t want to understand it, either.

He had no desire to get near that kind of evil. To Steven, he said, “Look, I can ask Isaiah’s brother Tim to analyse these. He likely has resources I don’t. But I think you shouldn’t take www.total-e-bound.com

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them, and neither should Adal. And, I think you both need to leave your lepe. It’s not safe there for you.”

“No.”

Bae thought Adal was agreeing with him, which…was easier than he expected. Except, Adal wasn’t.

“No, we can’t just run away.” Adal stood and looked at him. “There are some people in the lepe who’ve been kind to us. They don’t deserve what Bashuan has done to them. No one in the lepe does, truly. Yes they’ve hated us, but Bashuan has taught them to. We must go back and challenge him, or else he will continue teaching hate, and doing the sick, evil things he does.”

“Wow, I’m impressed.” Bae wasn’t being sarcastic, he truly was impressed with Adal, but, “Maybe you should leave Dorso here with us.”