“Cella?” Jai asked.
“Huh?”
“I gave that woman enough pain medication to take out an elephant with a strong constitution. I pretty much put her in a short-term coma so her body could heal.”
“Okay.”
“So, it was a really great idea,” Jai softly pointed out, “bringing a dangerous, unstable species to our home where our daughters live. A species that is apparently impossible to kill. Next time you should just bring in a serial killer. Or an atomic bomb!”
“Drink this.”
Vic looked at the cup Novikov held out to him. “What is it?”
“Tea.”
“What kind of tea?”
“Earl Grey.”
“Just Earl Grey?”
“As opposed to . . . ?”
“Some magic tea for hybrids that will calm me down?”
Novikov looked deep into the cup. “I didn’t know there was a magic tea. That’s kind of cool.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Vic said, deciding he was done with the tea conversation. “What if she—”
“Don’t. Don’t do that to yourself. I almost killed my annoying, asshole cousin because I started what-if-ing about Blayne when she was hurt bad once. But Dr. Davis is really good. Let’s just wait and see what she says.”
“Okay.” Vic lifted his tea. “Thanks for this.”
“No problem. Blayne always says hybrids have to stick together. Maybe she’s right.”
They both looked up at the same time, nodded at Livy, and went back to their conversation.
“My parents are coming tomorrow,” Vic said.
“To visit? Or about this?”
“About this before anyone went after Livy.”
“Have you arranged to have them picked up from the airport?”
“I was going to do it—”
“You can’t go now. Give me their information and I’ll arrange a car to pick them up.”
“Thanks, man, that’s really—”
Vic abruptly stopped talking and jerked around. “Olivia?”
She grinned. “Were you really the one who fucked up Smith’s car?” Livy asked. “Because she’s still in the house snarling about—”
Vic shot off the bench, picked Livy up in his arms, and held her against his chest. He needed to feel her. He needed to feel her skin against his, know that she was warm and safe in his arms.
“Now that we’re dealing with awkward emotions,” Novikov muttered, “I’m going . . . away.”
The back door of the house opened and closed, leaving Vic alone with Livy.
Vic, unable to help himself, held her tighter.
“I’m okay,” she whispered, her legs wrapping around his waist, her arms clinging to his neck. “I really am.”
“I thought I lost you,” he admitted against her neck.
“You know my kind is too mean to go out that easy. We make a man work for it.”
“Olivia—”
“Hey.” She pulled back, and urged his head up with her hands, forcing him to look her in those dark eyes. “They failed. They tried to kill me, and they failed. So I’m not going to sit around and think about what was supposed to happen or what could have happened or anything else. I don’t care about any of that.”
“The problem is, I do care. I care about you, Livy. So, pretending this didn’t happen and just—”
“We can’t pretend this didn’t happen, Vic. We won’t.”
“We?”
Livy glanced over, and Vic saw that the once-empty yard was now filled with Livy’s family. They silently stood there, in the brutal cold, watching and waiting. Waiting for Livy.
“So,” she said, her lips grazing his cheek, “this isn’t about what might have happened. This is about what’s going to happen. What we’re going to make happen.”
“Which is?”
“We knew,” Balt said, stepping away from his relatives, “that a shifter might be involved in luring my brother to his death. But we were willing to settle for this Whitlan. No use starting war when all we wanted was him. But now? Now we want war.”
Vic understood that on many, many levels. And he also knew the shifter code that even the honey badgers abided by . . . you never betray your own for a full-human. The ones who’d shot Livy had done just that. Not just the gunmen, but the one who’d sent them into a shifter-protected space and had them shoot down a fellow shifter. Not over a territorial clash. Or lusting after someone’s mate. Or even just annoyance with their presence on this planet. No. She’d been gunned down merely for the continued protection of Whitlan and because the man behind those gunmen wanted to prove he was not to be fucked with by anyone.
Bad move, though, when dealing with this particular species. Shooting Livy hadn’t made the rest of her family afraid. These were not people who backed off or backed down. These were not people who understood normal, everyday fear.
Instead of making a point, the attack would bring nothing but blood and death and pain.
“We will not stay here,” Balt said, his suspicious gaze studying the entire yard. “But I think our safe houses may not be so safe anymore.”
Vic silently agreed. Livy’s attackers had known exactly where to find her. So it was a safe bet that the Kowalski and Yang safe houses were compromised, as well.
“I can get us a safe place.”
“Vic”—Livy’s hand pressed against his jaw, turning his face toward her—“you don’t have to get into the middle of this.”
That was where Livy was wrong. Vic was already in the middle of this. Deep in the middle. There was no way he would walk away now. He couldn’t even if he wanted to. Because where Livy went, he would always follow.
Of course, this wasn’t the time to tell her all that. She might be up and walking around, but she was still recovering, and he could see the exhaustion on her face. So any talk about what their future together might hold would have to wait.
Unable to say what he really felt, Vic just kissed Livy on the nose and said to Balt, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Smith!” Cella snapped. “My brother said he’d take your car to his body shop and fix it. And one of those badgers already handed over an ungodly-sized wad of cash to pay for everything Barinov’s roar destroyed, including your car. So enough with the dog whining like you got your paw stuck in a gopher hole.”
“I can fix my own car, Malone. It’s just, you don’t mess with a woman’s automobile. Do you have any idea how much work I put into that thing after I won it from Sissy Mae?”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, thank you very much.”
The pair sat on the stone wall that partially surrounded the house Cella had grown up in. The rest of the fence and the gate were chain-link and could hardly handle the combined weight of Cella and Dee-Ann’s collective asses.
“What’s really going on with you?” Cella finally asked the female who’d somehow managed to become a very good friend. Although that still surprised her. Because Dee-Ann was such a canine sometimes.
“What?”
“It’s not just your car that’s bothering you. Is it what happened to Livy?”
“Not really.”
“As always, such a caring person.”
“Look, the whole thing don’t sit right with me. I mean, to outright shoot that girl.”
“You expected more from Whitlan?”
“Darlin’, this is no longer about Whitlan. Those bears tracked Kowalski down at the Sports Center. And they were out-of-town bears, not even from this country, but they found her anyway.” Smith turned a bit so she could look right at Cella, and leaned in a bit. “And don’t it bother you a little bit that our bosses pulled us off the Whitlan case?”