Sullivan (Leopard's Spots 7) (19 page)

A sharp knock on the door had him shaking himself out of his thoughts. “Just a sec,” he hollered. He peeked through the peephole just as he heard Sully and Paava in the hallway.

On his porch stood a nondescript man Bobby would best describe as drab. Pale skin, hair and pale blue eyes, he was kind of creepy-looking. Reminding himself not to be a snob and judge by appearances, he put his hand on the lock. He looked again at the man he assumed was either with the fire department, the police department, or the insurance company. Weird that he wasn’t in uniform—

“Don’t open the door,” Sully said. “If you don’t know who it is, don’t open it.” Bobby peered through the hole harder before turning to look over his shoulder at Sully.

“I thought—”

The sound of an explosion ripped through his head as hot pain seared his side. Not an explosion, he realised. A bullet, or maybe a cannon ball tearing into him.

“Bobby!” Sully’s shout was almost as loud as the shot that had his ears ringing. The ground was pulling him down and the door was trying to collapse on him. Bobby put his hands out, or tried to, but his arms didn’t seem to be working right. People were shouting, there were more loud explosions he thought were gunshots—then the world went black.

“No!” Sully didn’t yell it quick enough, and he’d never forgive himself for that.

“Bobby!”

Parts of the door splintered and flew inward as Bobby jerked, his body rocking with the impact of another bullet. Sully screamed again as Bobby went down, his tanned skin going white and his eyes rolling back in his head.

“Goddamnit!” Paava shifted in a heartbeat, something Sully couldn’t do fast at all.

Paava was a huge grey wolf, and he growled, spit dripping down his fangs as he bounded towards the attacker.

Sully ran and dropped to his knees beside Bobby. In his peripheral vision he saw the blond man raise the gun and aim it at him, or at Bobby. Sully roared, and before he knew it, he was morphing, his body transforming painfully and faster than he’d ever managed it before. He heard the shot fired and felt the singe of a bullet graze his nape, but there were other sounds too, those of his bones and tendons popping and changing, and of Paava going on the attack.

Bobby was too still, his pulse weak when Sully nosed his throat. He raised his head up and yowled, gaze locking on the white wolf savagely going after Paava. Despite Paava’s huge size, the white wolf was tearing into him, perhaps fuelled by a mania or some chemical.

Sully didn’t know or care. Paava was going to get killed at the rate he was getting his ass kicked. The white wolf was a vicious beast.

But Sully’s snow leopard wasn’t a pussy cat. No one hurt his mate, especially not some psychotic coward who hurt young boys and shot through doors. The idea that this pale wolf might have been responsible for hurting Mando was an added log to Sully’s angry fire. He gave Bobby one lick and prayed that he would hold on. He couldn’t feel Bobby mentally, and hoped that was due to him being shifted. He knew Bobby was alive—he just needed to stay that way.

Sully leapt, his powerful back legs giving him a good twenty feet in distance. He went right over the battling wolves, who didn’t seem to notice as they were engaged in trying to tear each other’s throat out. Sully landed quietly on thickly padded paws, and before his prey could stop him, he leapt again, this time raking the white wolf with his sharp claws.

The wolf howled and scrambled back, falling on its haunches for a few seconds while Sully stalked it. Paava limped forward and Sully yowled at him.
Go get help for Bobby!
Damn it, he wished he could talk in this form! He flicked his tail towards Bobby and growled, a deep rumble that he felt throughout his body. He turned his attention back to the wolf he was going to kill.

He did so just in time. The wolf wasn’t as injured as Sully had hoped, that powerful body barrelling at him in a blur of speed. Sully reared up and slashed with his claws, catching fur and skin, and hopefully more. The wolf didn’t make a sound, just skidded to a stop and lowered his head, his ears laid back as he bared his teeth.

Bring it on.
Sully flashed his teeth in return and flexed his pads, extending his claws. He flicked his tail so hard he half expected to hear it make a whip-like snap. Before any more posturing could occur, he sprang, jumping hard. He didn’t try to go over the wolf, instead letting all the power that propelled him take him right into the wolf.

They hit with a sickening thud, and pain burst over him in a dozen places, but Sully didn’t care. The wolf yelped, and something snapped. It wasn’t one of Sully’s bones, he didn’t think. He opened his muzzle and got more fur than anything else, but that was okay.

He clamped down and shook fiercely, hoping to break the wolf’s neck and be done with it.

It couldn’t be that easy. The wolf bit his leg, his chest, and scratched at him with claws that weren’t nearly as dangerous as Sully’s, but they still hurt. Sully hadn’t ever truly fought anyone before, but he had hunted prey, and he kept the wolf firmly locked in his mind as such.

The leopard in him took over. Sully used his back legs to rock forward and the wolf couldn’t resist that strength. He toppled the wolf and let go of that fur only long enough to clamp down on the vulnerable neck.

The wolf bucked and pawed at him, whining and trying to bite. Sully adjusted his stance until he was lying on the wolf, letting his weight still the kicking legs. It worked for a second, then the wolf heaved and bit and Sully was scrambling to keep his hold. His drive to catch the prey infused his system and Sully readjusted his bite, his mouth filling with blood.

Somewhere inside of him, he panicked, but his cat took control, shaking the wolf until the creature stilled for the last time. Then Sully stumbled back, recoiling from what he’d done as the shift took him again. He retched until he couldn’t breathe, and crawled over to where Paava and Bobby were. Shards of wood and rocks cut his knees and hands, but Sully didn’t care. He needed to make sure Bobby was alive. As long as he focused on that, he didn’t have to think about what he’d done.

“Remus is on his way. Alpha Jodiah, too, and several of the pack.” Sully grunted in acknowledgement of Paava’s words.

“Sully, I don’t know if he—”

“He fucking will,” Sully snarled, unwilling to hear or believe anything else. “Shut up if you’re not going to believe in him. I do. I believe in you, Bobby.” Sully took Bobby’s hand. It felt cold, and limp, and that scared Sully something fierce. “Get him a blanket!” Paava didn’t say anything. He just got up and ran into the other room. Sully pushed with his mind but couldn’t feel Bobby. His breath hitched and he touched Bobby’s neck, sobbing when he found the very faint flicker of his pulse.

“You hang on, Bobby. Don’t you even think about running away from your responsibilities. That means from me, from your pack, from your family and friends. Man, I know you probably didn’t want to deal with my family coming to visit, but this is extreme.” As lame as the joke was, he’d have sworn he felt a tendril of amusement in his mind, and not his own amusement, either. There was nothing humorous about Bobby bleeding to death on him.

“If you think my grandma won’t find a way to nag you if you die, you are so,
so
wrong.

You’ve met her. She’s not going to be denied the opportunity to pick on you.” Another spiral of warmth leaked into Sully. He leant down and kissed Bobby.
“You can’t leave me, Bobby. You
don’t want to do that. You wouldn’t hurt me like that. I know you wouldn’t. Just, hang on. I know it
hurts. I know you have to be scared, but it’s over. I promise you, he won’t hurt you again. I made sure
of that.”

Something almost like panic seemed to float from Bobby to him then, and Sully sought to ease him, murmuring and caressing his hair, brushing his lips over Bobby’s until someone pulled at his shoulder. He was vaguely aware of a blanket being placed over Bobby’s torso, but other than that, nothing distracted him from his mate.

“Come, son, let us help him.”

Sully snarled and swung out, only to recoil and duck his head in shame when he saw Remus and a man who looked almost identical to Bobby, except older and scarier. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” said the man who had to be Jodiah Baker. “I wouldn’t want my son to have a mate who couldn’t kill for him.”

Sully could do that, would do it—had, hadn’t he? His stomach clenched and he scooted back on his butt as Remus squatted beside Bobby. A big hand on his shoulder startled Sully and he yelped, much to his mortification. He looked up into the understanding gaze of Bobby’s dad. “I’m sorry I let him get hurt. I should have kept him safe.” Jodiah shook his head. “No, son. You did just fine. You kept my boy alive, and you put an end to the person who tried to kill him.” Jodiah looked out into the yard and frowned. “I don’t know who that is. I don’t remember a white wolf—”

“Look past the colour to the creature itself,” Remus said as he began applying something to one of Bobby’s wounds. “Good thing the neighbours here are pack.” Sully hadn’t even thought of that. Bobby’s neighbours weren’t exactly close by anyway.

“What do you mean, look past the colour? Is that a…a racial thing?” Remus shot him an exasperated look. “No, it’s a dyed-fur thing.” Sully couldn’t process that, not when Remus’ hands were covered in Bobby’s blood.

“Dyed fur?” he heard Jodiah ask. “What the—?”

“Go look and leave me to tend your son,” Remus ordered. “You can stay. I will clean your wounds after this,” he said to Sully. “Don’t worry. You have kept him tethered here. He won’t leave you easily, and we aren’t going to let him be taken, are we?”

“No.” Sully got the word out past a throat so tight with emotion, he could hardly breathe.

“I’ll go with Jodiah,” Paava said, “see if I can help him.”

“I could tell them who it is, but they need to learn to look with more than just their eyes.” Remus huffed and used what looked like some sort of torture device to Sully to pull a mangled bullet from Bobby’s chest. “As an alpha, he heals quicker than a normal shifter.

Good thing, wouldn’t you say?”

Sully nodded and turned his gaze up to Bobby’s face. He was still ghostly pale, but there was just a hint of colour to his cheeks and lips.

“It’s one of the benefits of being an alpha. They’re hard to kill, and therefore, nature ensures—most of the time—that they are good men. Sometimes there is evil in our world, like the wolf spirit in the one out there. That spirit would never have abandoned the man it belonged to, because both were rotten to begin with. Damaged, or not. A balance, as your grandmother would say.”

“She did say that, not too long ago, actually,” Sully found himself sharing. “You’ve met her, right?”

“I have. She’s a fascinating woman, and had we not both found our mates, I’d have propositioned her.”

That was too much information, but Sully wasn’t going to mention it.

“Perhaps in out next lifetimes,” Remus mused.

“You believe we’re reincarnated?” Sully asked, unsure why he found it surprising.

“I do. I am a shaman, Sully. I am a spiritual man as well as a spiritual wolf. I believe in every cell of my bodies—human and wolf—that we return again and again, and so I do not mourn those who die, but celebrate their eventual return. As a wise woman once told me, if someone closes their eyes in death, they are only blinking to open them in a new existence.” Sully looked at the slow rise and fall of Bobby’s chest. He felt like he would shatter just to think of Bobby dying, and they hardly even knew each other.

But in another life, or lives, they might have loved each other fully. And found each other again in this one. “How can you be so calm about it? I mean, even if we see them again in the next go-round, we still lose them in this one. I don’t want to lose him. I’m young and there’ll never be anyone else and I can’t imagine not having Bobby even if we did just meet—

”

“Calm yourself,” Remus ordered. “You are exhausting me.” Sully was quiet while Remus worked for several minutes, then Remus glanced at him.

“Who is to say your mate wouldn’t return to you in eighteen or twenty years or more, in another body? One you recognised, even if you’d never seen him before? Or perhaps you recognise the soul.”

“That’s…that’s possible?” Sully’s head spun with the idea of it. He didn’t feel any better about the idea of losing his mate, though. He didn’t want to wait that long for Bobby. Bobby just needed to live and get better.

“Anything is possible. It is a big, wondrous world, and a bigger, more incredible universe we live in. Our minds cannot comprehend the vastness and the magic and beauty in existence.”

“Maybe not, but I’m not trying to.” Sully flinched as Remus began stitching the first gunshot wound closed. “All I want is a life with Bobby. This life.”

“Young ones, only thinking of immediate rewards.”

“Remus, is that shifter out there Breck, one of Cronsky’s boys?” Jodiah asked, coming up onto the porch. “Paava and I both see a resemblance.”

“That would be the Matthew Cronsky who left your pack over you accepting your gay son,” Remus said. “I would think that is very, very likely.”

“Considering I caught Bobby and Breck, er,” Jodiah flicked him a glance, “making out when they were teenagers, I’d have to agree. Cronsky took such exception to me supporting Bobby when he came out, I wouldn’t have risked Breck’s life by telling his father about what they’d been doing when I caught them. Shortly thereafter, Cronsky took his family and moved to a more conservative pack.”

“How long ago was that?” Bobby hadn’t been a teenager in a good while.

Jodiah answered Sully’s question. “Not quite twenty years ago. Sixteen or so, I think. I guess Breck had a long time to be angry that Bobby never came for him.”

“You think that’s what it was?” Sully asked, staring out at the still, bloody form of the wolf. “He thought Bobby would come and whisk him away?”

“I don’t know what he was thinking, and we never will—and that’s fine,” Jodiah added when Sully slumped with guilt. “I don’t care what he was thinking, Sully. I only care that he can’t hurt my son anymore. Thank you for that.” Jodiah held out his hand. “And, welcome to the pack, Sullivan Ward. We are honoured to have a strong shifter like you in our ranks.” Sully took Jodiah’s hand and shook it. “I’m the one who’s honoured.”