Wild Ride: An M/M Shifter Mpreg Romance Bundle Page 11

  “Merissa?” Ryker whisper. He hadn’t known he’d turned human, only becoming aware of it when he dropped to his knees before her.

  Her mouth opened and then she coughed, spraying flecks of blood across the concrete. Dried blood, meaning this torture wasn’t a recent affair. How long had she lain here, slowly dying? And yes, he could see that she was dying. That she should have already been dead. How she held on, he didn’t know.

  “Oh, Ryker,” the woman sighed, seeming to relax. That sort of relaxation frightened him. It went too deep, past exhaustion and into a realm of death. “I hoped...it was you.”

  “Merissa,” he whispered. “What happened?”

  He reached out and began to run his fingers through what remained of her hair. Instinct took over, and he soothed the tightly-corded muscles in the back of her neck as he did so.

  Her voice was rough as she spoke, as if she’d spent a lot of time screaming. He should have come sooner...

  “Jeriko...I knew he was planning something...but I just thought he was going to kill you.”

  Ryker’s throat tightened. “I wish he had,” he whispered. Fire stung at his eyes. “Dammit. The bastard. I’ll...” He stopped. The longer he talked, the more time he took from the one who needed to speak more.

  “Stop,” Merissa sighed, in a tone of voice that seemed as though it wanted to be harsh. “Has nothing to do with you now... He knows about Bo. He knows you have a mate. Spying on you. Thinks you’re soft. No trouble...anymore. So he...decided he didn’t want anyone else soft or weak in the pack.”

  That was wrong. Every pack had omegas. Every pack had those who were weaker. It was the way of life.

  “He told everyone to leave...if they didn’t like it. But when they tried to, he killed them all.”

  “All?” Ryker whispered. “They’re all dead?”

  “Only...only the ones who tried to leave.” Merissa’s body suddenly seized, wracked with spasms of coughing that took a long time to end. “I don’t think everyone who disliked him tried. Too scared. I kept the pups hidden. The ones whose parents didn’t try to leave. But he came for them...”

  The pups.

  Innocent children.

  “What happened to the pups, Merissa? The children?” Ryker could see them in his mind’s eye, even if he didn’t know all their names. Thirty adult wolves, and something like seven very young children with a few scattered others of varying ages. A teen or two.

  “I fought Jeriko when he came.” Merissa’s voice grew fainter. “I don’t know...after that...I think they’re safe... He didn’t get them. I don’t know how long it’s been. I don’t know... In the back.”

  Ryker lifted his gaze and searched towards the back of the long tent. He couldn’t breathe. He saw where the hiding place would have been, cramming between the rear outside wall of the tent and the wall of the shelter itself. “I’ll look,” he said softly, even though he knew if there were any pups back there, he would have heard them by now.

  “Thank you,” Merissa breathed, and some of her suffering seemed to ebb. Ryker drew his fingers away from her hair, and then stripped away his shirt to lay it beneath her cheek so she would be more comfortable. Then, he stood and headed to the back of the room.

  Before he had gone more than halfway, he smelled the blood. Faint and old, it was lost amidst the rust and mold that formed the natural scent of the shelter. And then he saw it, a creeping pond long since dried and fused with the concrete.

  He didn’t want to look.

  But he had to.

  Twelve pups of various ages, including an infant who must have been born only very recently.

  Ryker backed away, his shoulders slumping and his heart gone cold. He saw twelve slits, one for each pup. Death granted not by tooth or claw, but at the swift blade of a knife.

  They hadn’t suffered.

  Choking on tears, he came back to Merissa and crouched down in front of her. Her eyes were shut tight, her breathing so faint he thought she might not be breathing at all. “Are they safe?” she asked, eyes still shut.

  “They are,” Ryker lied. He went back to stroking the other wolf’s hair. He lowered his voice, and she seemed to follow the cadence of his voice down, even deeper into her exhaustion. “They’re all safe. Scared, but safe. They’re being very quiet. Very good little pups. You should be proud of them.”

  “I am,” Merissa said, her lips barely moving.

  Ryker squeezed his eyes shut and bit his lip. “They’ve been taking care of the baby. Keeping her quiet, too. She’s such a lively little thing, though.”

  The woman gave a faint smile. She spoke again, but now Ryker couldn’t understand her at all. The words made no sense, the confused jumble of her lips a nonsensical mess. All he could do was continue to stroke her neck, soothing her until she grew cold and still beneath his fingers.

  Then, he straightened up and passed his hand over her eyes. They had opened in death, but he wanted her to sleep now. She deserved it.

  Rising to his knees, numb and blind, Ryker stumbled the rest of the way through the shelter. He found the bodies of those who had tried to run away, but he didn’t touch them.

  He climbed up the ramp and then began the long walk back through the ghetto to get to the cigarette shop.

  The only person in the store, a man with blank eyes, looked over at Ryker and let out a low whistle. “You look like real shit, man. You need your fix? I got new customer discounts.”

  Slowly, Ryker sank down to sit on the floor and then looked up at the human. “No, thank you,” he said politely to the baffled man. He knew he was in shock, but it still felt strange to be so calm. “I need to borrow your phone. I just watched a woman die and I need to let the police know.”

  He was not a man to trust authority, but in this scenario he just had no idea what to do.

  Chapter 10

  “Bo,” Jason grunted from the front seat of the ambulance as they cruised on their way to the home of a man who was, in his own words, having a panic attack because he locked himself out of his house. It had been one of those days.

  Bo looked up, knowing he was a bit slow. He’d been feeling a little slow all day, and his stomach felt a little weird, too. If he didn’t feel better by tomorrow, he figured he’d take one of his rare sick days and make Ryker take care of him. “Yes?”

  “Call’s for you.”

  Bo blinked with surprise. “A call for me?” All ambulances were outfitted with their own phone and radio devices just in case a call came while they were out. However, that was limited to emergency calls. Specific personal calls were forbidden.

  “Yeah,” Jason said. His eyes were inexplicably dark when Bo glimpsed them in the reflection of the rearview mirror. “Says he’s a cop.”

  “Geez, Bo!” Hannah said, sounding like a middle-schooler taunting their friend for getting called to the principal’s office. “What did you do to make a cop call you?”

  “Shut it, Hannah,” Eric said impatiently, grabbing the ambulance phone out of her hand through the partition and handing it over to Bo. “Here.”

  “Thanks,” Bo mouthed, and brought the phone up to his ear. “Hello?”

  “Your name Bo Everett?”

  “Uh, yes. It is.”

  “Great.” The police officer on the other end of the line sounded incredibly stressed. That was highly unnerving to Bo, who had worked with a great many officers in blue in the past several years; he knew the Seattle police to be incredibly smart and almost sedate in their manner. “We have this guy here. Says his name’s Ryker Hill. Told us you’re his...mate?”

  “I am,” Bo replied, without a pause. His heart started hammering against his rib cage so fiercely that he felt like it might shatter beneath the hard impacts. “What’s wrong? Is he okay?”

  He did something with that gang. Dammit. I knew there was a reason he wouldn’t tell me anything. I knew it!

  “I probably shouldn’t say anything over the phone,” the police officer replied, his tone careful
now. “I need you to come to the station as soon as you can, though. The woman who patched me through to you says you’re currently working out on an ambulance, correct?”

  “Right,” Bo replied, swallowing hard. His throat had suddenly gone dry with dread. “We’re out answering a call right now.”

  “How long is it going to take?”

  “Not sure. Judging by how cooperative this guy is going to be, it’s either going to be only a few minutes or more than least an hour.”

  “One of those, huh?” The officer sounded sympathetic. “I get it. Well, we need you here as soon as possible so give me your call location and I’ll send a cruiser to meet you there.”

  “Got it.”

  The line went dead as the officer ended the call, leaving Bo to listen to the crackling of static.

  “Bo?” Eric asked. “Everything okay?”

  “No,” Bo said wonderingly. “It isn’t.” And then he told Eric the situation, although he didn’t give out the reason that the police needed to see him. Luckily, the older paramedic seemed sympathetic.

  “Don’t worry about it, Bo. You just go off and do what you need to do. I’ll report it to higher-ups, and if you call Envision tomorrow yourself and explain, everything will be just fine.”

  Bo highly doubted that anything was going to be fine after this. He could sense that something was terribly wrong. He didn’t need his animal intuition to know that. The police wouldn’t be involved if there wasn’t something wrong.

  When they reached the home of the man having a panic attack, Bo was slightly surprised to discover that the man was indeed having a full-blown panic attack. However, his help wasn’t needed. It didn’t take four people to administer oxygen and emotional support, or to call the guy’s adult daughter to come and unlock her father’s house. Bo wasn’t needed, which meant that he was able to just turn away from the scene and head towards the unmarked car parked on the opposite side of the street.

  A police officer got out as he approached. Not the one he had spoken to, because this one was a woman.

  “Boniface Everett?” she said.

  Bo nodded. “That’s me. Can you tell me anything? Is Ryker okay?”

  Her face gave nothing away. Neither did the face of her partner, shadowed as it was by the tinted windows. “You can find out for yourself in a few minutes. Please, get in.”

  Bo slid into the backseat of the cop car when the officer opened it for him; there were no handles on the inside of the door. The ride was short and tense, his hands working over each other nervously. He wished someone would have told him something, anything at all.

  He wished he could be angry at Ryker. He wished he could storm into that police station, march right over to the alpha, and smack him across the face.

  But, that wasn’t what he was going to do. He knew it.

  The police led him inside the station, which smelled of stale coffee and overheated computers. A few cursory glances went in his direction from officers throughout the station who were lounging here or there, but they lost interest in him immediately. He didn’t care. He didn’t look at any of them. He just stared intently at the back of the officer leading him along, ignoring everything else.

  He went past a long row of tables and desks, back into a long hallway lined with doors. Most of them were open. They led him towards one that wasn’t, and knocked on it.

  “Come in,” came a gruff voice. Bo recognized it as the officer he’d spoken to on the phone.

  The door opened, and the female officer standing in front of Bo stepped back. “Go on in,” she said, her voice gentler now.

  Bo slid in past her and looked around the room. It looked like a normal office, the sort of place where a meeting with an accountant or financial advisor might be held. An officer with a thick mop of red hair and a shaggy beard sat in front of a desktop computer, nursing a steaming cup of coffee.

  Opposite him, perched on the edge of one of two chairs, was Ryker.

  Bo didn’t think. He didn’t wait. He couldn’t think. All potential thoughts were torn away from him before they even fully formed as he saw his mate slumped in a chair that was too small for his body. Their souls connected instantly and all the pain that the alpha was feeling came crashing into him full force.

  “Ryker!” he cried out softly and lurched towards his mate.

  Ryker didn’t look up. Bo didn’t care. He dove into the alpha’s arms and wrapped his own arms around Ryker’s neck, pressing their heads together.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a shiver traveled through Ryker’s body and he turned his head towards Bo.

  The police officers all drew back for a moment to give them time to talk, to kiss and to do other, normal couple things. However, they didn’t need to do any of that. Their souls did all the talking. The contact of their skin together was enough to replace anything else.

  Finally, the female officer who picked Bo up in her cruiser let out a small cough to draw their attention back to her. “Mr. Everett...”

  “Bo, please.” Mr. Everett was the name of his father, a name that belonged to someone who wasn’t twenty-one years old and young and terrified of the future.

  “Right,” the officer said. “Bo. Bo, my name is Susan.” She paused for a moment as if waiting for him to make some sort of comment on that but he said nothing, still waiting for the bomb to drop. He needed information, and he needed it now. After a couple seconds passed, Susan the police officer continued on. “We found your...uh...mate here in a cigarette store. He called 911 using the owner’s phone.”

  “But why?” Bo pressed. “What happened?”

  Ryker didn’t look up, but Bo sensed his pain. Whatever happened was causing his mate no small amount of agony.

  Susan looked at the alpha wolf, as if she was going to let him tell the story, but Ryker wasn’t interested in doing anything right about then. She let out a soft sigh. “He told us he went exploring in an abandoned factory and found a hobo camp. I’m going to be frank with you here, Mr...Bo. He found a lot of dead children, and a lot of dead adults.”

  “What?” Bo exclaimed. At least, he wanted to sound surprised but already the dots had connected in his mind. The factory was where Ryker had kept his pack at least some of the time. The dead there were his packmates. But why had the alpha gone back there?

  Am I not enough? Were you going to return to them? What did you think you were doing? Frustration rose up inside of him and he stared at Ryker, but still the alpha didn’t look up. He seemed far less powerful than he should have. He looked broken and small, bent in half and molded by weariness.

  “They had all been dead for quite some time,” Susan continued. “So, we know that Ryker didn’t kill them. Recently.”

  “You don’t know that Ryker killed them at all!” Now he was angry. It took a lot to make him angry, and even more to make him furious at a human. Humans were dumb creatures with only one set of senses in their body. They were naïve. He tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this was too much. These were wrong accusations.

  “We don’t,” Susan conceded. “However, you know what they say. The killer always returns to the scene of the crime.”

  The other two police officers had been standing back behind Susan while she talked, but now one of them stepped forward and spoke. “We don’t have any evidence against Mr. Hill right now, so he’s free to go with you. But let me ask you this. Do you believe in his innocence?”

  Bo turned to look at Ryker, trying to see into the man’s face. Truth was always best glimpsed in the eyes. That was where the soul was said to live. However, he really just wanted his mate to look at him. He could feel the other’s soul well enough without eye contact. Ryker was in misery, but he was not guilty. He felt apologetic, but in actuality there was nothing for him to apologize for.

  Turning back to the police officers, Bo said, “Ryker didn’t do anything.”

  The officer stepped back and nodded, seeming more satisfied with the thoughtful pause than he
would have with an outright burst of an answer. Even Susan seemed to have relaxed. “I really just wanted an honest answer from you, Bo. I think you’re a sensible young man who wouldn’t keep secrets from the police. You remind me of my brother in that way. Too sensible for his own good.”

  Not sure whether he’d been complimented or not, Bo just gave an uneasy smile.

  “And just so you know for the future, that killer returning to the scene of the crime thing hardly ever applies in real life. Unless the killer works from home.”

  “I’ll remember,” Bo said drily. “Maybe that’ll be the answer to a game show question someday and I’ll win a million dollars because of you.”

  Susan looked completely serious when she replied. “Then I demand a cut of the winnings. Or you can pay off the rest of my car.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  Shortly after that, yet another police officer drove them to the hospital in the back of a cruiser and dropped them off out front. Bo waved goodbye at him and then turned to Ryker. The alpha hardly looked alive.

  “Maybe I should take you inside?” Bo suggested gently. “There’s no rush to get home. I could get you some sleeping pills.”

  “No,” Ryker growled. And that was all he said all through the walk to Bo’s truck and the subsequent drive back to the apartment. Bo guided him up the stairs, their hands entwined. His stomach churned with that queasy sort of nervousness that he’d been feeling all day. However, he set his mouth in a grim line against the nausea and firmly resolved to get to the bottom of all this tonight. The truth couldn’t wait any longer.

  They undressed and then slid into bed together. Bo curled up against his mate, leaning his head against his shoulder. Strong arms wrapped around his body and they rested together in silence. Ryker was utterly still, without even a tremble to signify that he was still awake. Even so, Bo knew that he was. He felt the alpha’s racing thoughts, the urgent fervor with which he was trying to gather all the words he had to say to be able to put them together in the right order.