“You’re serious, right?” Abel asked sarcastically, not about to go any-fucking-where with this fucking guy.
“Whatever happened that allowed this attack will not happen again,” Gregor assured him, though Abel was far from assured. “But we must get you and the other couples that make The Three to a safe place and do it as soon as possible.”
Before he could reply, including asking what this fucking Three business was, he heard ambulances and turned his head to the door.
“Our physicians,” Gregor murmured, and Abel looked back to him. “You must trust us.”
“And I do that how?” Abel asked. “One of my mate’s family is dead on the fuckin’ floor.”
“Don’t trust him, trust us,” Callum stated from his side, and Abel looked that way to see Callum still holding Sonia close. Lucien was now there and was also holding a freaked-way-the-fuck-out-looking Leah just as close.
“It’s where we need to be,” Lucien added.
Callum leaned toward Abel. “Feel it,” he said quietly. “Abel, you’re fortunate. I know. You have many brothers, as do I. But now, you have two more.”
He’d already felt it, when he knew they knew this day was going to be a dark one.
But he knew it more seeing how they held their women. There were men cut and bleeding, needing assistance, but those women, along with Abel’s, had been under threat, a threat that almost took them all.
So they were not fucking letting go.
Yeah, he had two more brothers.
But he also had the ones he’d always had.
He looked down at the floor to Chen, who Wei was now bending over, putting pressure on his wound with a big square of gauze.
Chen read his gaze and nodded.
His eyes moved to Xun, who was in a squat, working with Poncho on Jabber. Xun felt his eyes, lifted his, and nodded.
“Wei,” Abel called.
Wei looked up. “We go, brother.”
Abel looked to Jian-Li, who was working on Moose’s arm, and saw her already looking to him and nodding.
He finally turned to Hook, who looked uninjured but was still covered with blood and had both his arms wrapped tight around his daughter.
“We get stitched up, they take care of Snake, and we get…the fuck…outta here,” Hook ground out.
Only then did Abel turn his eyes to Gregor and declare, “Right. We go.”
* * * * *
Abel stood at the window watching the waves pound against the rock below the huge-fucking-ass fortress they’d brought them to.
On the journey, he rode his bike with Delilah at his back, wishing it was in better circumstances that he had her there for a long road trip, but liking her there all the same.
The others rode their bikes surrounding them. Chen’s and Jabber’s bikes were ridden by some humans Gregor had assigned to them, seeing as Chen and Jabber had been stabilized on the floor of Jian-Li’s dining room, then transferred to ambulances for what Gregor referred to as their “relocation.”
Gregor assured him that they were having rooms made up with everything needed so the doctors could continue to care for the men when they arrived.
Callum and Sonia, Lucien and Leah went back to the hotel to sort their shit, and his family sorted theirs. While they were doing this, a shitload of wolves descended, led by one who introduced himself to Abel as Ryon, cousin to Callum.
Ryon held his gaze steady and had a scent that was similar to Callum’s, so Abel trusted him and allowed his family to move out while SUVs filled with a cleanup crew of wolves arrived to deal with the bodies.
He’d also left behind his doc, who he’d mind-controlled. The man was on retainer should they need him and part of that retainer paid for his silence. But what he saw when he charged in and helped Gregor’s doctors with Jabber, no way he’d keep quiet.
So Abel had quieted him.
Once they moved out with their protective cavalcade of SUVs led by Ryon, they went to the hotel where they picked up the rest, then headed out to relocate.
After he was certain the wounded were settled, Abel had left Delilah with her father and Jabber (Jian-Li, Wei, and Xun were in with Chen) and he asked the first person he saw where he could find Gregor.
He’d been led to this room and told the vampire would “attend him shortly.”
So he waited at the window, but not patiently.
The one good thing about this shit was that Gregor had not lied. They rode on a massive fucking compound, a building well back from the front gate and surrounded by a tall, brick fence you couldn’t get through unless you spoke to someone at the gatehouse which held three men (all vampires). At either side were structures that Abel could smell were filled with the same.
There was also razor wire lining the upper inside of the fence so you couldn’t see it from the outside looking in, but you sure as fuck would catch it if you tried to scale that wall.
The building itself was mammoth, a long, handsome, three-storied brick front with two wings jutting at wide angles back from its sides.
Each of them was to have their own room and, he reckoned, half an army could be put up there. Which was what was happening. He sensed it being filled with those arriving, mostly vampires, some wolves.
He was now in a room on the bottom floor at the far back of the north wing. It was the library, if the walls covered in shelved books was anything to go by.
Abel sensed Gregor’s approach and turned from the view well before he walked through the door.
Abel watched the vampire close it behind him, but the instant he turned toward Abel, Abel spoke.
“You got a shitload of explaining to do.”