Once we were safely in his room with the door shut, Zed pushed me over to his bed and glared down at me. “Stay here. Don’t move.” He grabbed a gun from his bedside table and disappeared out of the room again, no doubt going to do a sweep of the house and ensure Chase wasn’t still lurking behind a potted plant or something. Not that he knew who he was looking for, but he knew a sweep was warranted.
When he got back, he didn’t look any calmer. Hell, if anything, he looked more stressed out. "Dare, start fucking talking before I have an aneurysm."
"Chase," I muttered, looking up at him with regret. I knew he was about to blast me for not calling out for help. "He broke in. Cuffed me to the bed."
Zed's whole body went rigid, and the air crackled with violence. "What—"
"I'm fine." I cut him off before his imagination could run wild. "He just wanted to prove he could. And he took my fucking gun." That was probably more distressing than him breaking into my room in the first place.
Zed's brows hiked. "He took the Desert Eagle?"
I gave a sour nod. "He's been obsessed with it since he’s been back; I kept catching him eyeing it when we were in person. I knew he'd try for it at some stage, but... I wasn't expecting this."
Zed blew out a long breath and sat down on the edge of the bed beside me. "Why didn't you call out for help? Any one of us could have come to—"
"Come to my rescue?" I snickered, trying to soften the mocking in my voice. "I wasn't in any danger. Not really. And at first I was worried that if I screamed, Seph would come to investigate and get hurt."
Zed scowled, taking my injured hand into his lap to examine further. "And then?"
I hissed when his fingertip pressed a sore part of my wrist. "And then he made it clear he'd already visited Seph, so I made the decision to let him go and make sure she was unharmed. Which, as you saw, she is. Just missing a chunk of hair."
Zed gave me a disgusted look, and I agreed with a hollow laugh.
"Want me to wake Lucas up to clean this up?" Zed offered, arching a brow in question. "He needs practical medical experience."
I bit my lip, another worry running through my head. "Zed... what if Chase found Cass while he was looking for Seph's room?"
He shook his head, unconcerned. "Cass isn't here. He got a lead on one of his projects and headed out disguised as me again."
I wrinkled my nose. "Maybe that's why Chase decided to break in tonight. He thought you were gone, and... shit." I jerked up from the bed. "What if he hurt Lucas?" I was already out of the door before finishing that question. Rushing over to Lucas's bedroom, I shoved the door open.
Yeah, I wasn't a big one for polite knocking when I was worried about my loved one's safety.
"Hayden?" Lucas mumbled, raising his sleepy head to squint at me in the darkness. "What's going on? Is everything okay? No, what? That's such a dumb question; of course it's not or you wouldn't be—"
"Lucas, shut up," Zed cut him off as he rambled in half-asleep panic. "Wake up and come to my room. Dare needs some first aid and a fucking hug, but it's not urgent."
With a firm hand on my back, Zed turned me around and steered me back into his room, giving Lucas a minute to scrub the sleep haze from his eyes.
"He's fine," Zed murmured, confirming what I'd just seen. "You're all kinds of twitchy, though. Understandable, but unnecessary. Everyone is okay. I'm guessing Chase was already nervous about being caught. Knowing his time was limited, he'd have gone straight to Seph and back to you,."
I nodded, knowing he was probably right but still anxious as fuck. It could have ended so much worse. He could have hurt Seph or Lucas. He could have found Cass still alive. He could have...
"Shit," I breathed, dropping back onto the edge of Zed's bed with a heavy sigh. "Zed, he's messing with my head, and it's working."
Zed smiled sadly, nudging me further onto the bed. "I know, baby," he whispered, "but we'll win the war. You know we will."
I clenched my teeth hard but forced myself to nod. I didn't always believe it, though. Some days I really did wonder if Chase would win... and what that would look like.
"I'm here," Lucas announced, entering Zed's room as he tugged a T-shirt over his bare chest. "First aid kit?"
"Under my bathroom sink," Zed told him, nodding that way. "It's just a skin abrasion, should only need antiseptic cream and a bandage."
Lucas nodded, following Zed's directions to grab everything he needed along with a warm, wet washcloth to clean up the blood.
Before he started, though, he placed everything down on the bedside table and leaned down to wrap me in a soul-warming hug that I never wanted to end. The kind of hug that instantly eased my tension.
"What's that for?" I muttered when he pulled away again.
Lucas shrugged. "Dunno. Zeddy Bear said you needed a hug, so I provided. Now show me what the damage is."
I obediently held out my hand to him, shooting an amused look at Zed. "I wonder what else you'll do if Zed tells you." As soon as the words left my lips, I bit my cheek. That had been supposed to stay inside my head, but... oh well.
Zed's gaze flared hot; he was completely on the same page as me.
Lucas flicked a glance up from my wrist, a playful grin on his full lips. "Be a good patient, and you can find out."
Lust and anticipation swept through me, dissolving the fear Chase had left behind. There really was no better therapy. And besides, there was no way in hell I was going back to sleep alone tonight.
"Done deal," I murmured, grinning wickedly at Zed, who simply rolled his eyes and closed his bedroom door. Then locked it. We definitely didn't need Seph interrupting.
39
Seph gave an exaggerated yawn as she made her way into the kitchen for breakfast, her school uniform perfect but her hair a mess. "Dare," she groaned, "can you braid my hair for me? I can't seem to make it sit right this morning."
I exchanged a quick look with Zed over my coffee mug, then gave Seph a warm smile. "Sure thing, brat. Come sit." I hopped off my bar stool and patted it.
She gave me a frown. "What happened to your hand?"
"Um..." I glanced down at my bandaged hand and wrist. The scrape over my thumb joint had been deep, so Lucas had needed to apply a gauze dressing, then secure it all with an elastic bandage around my hand and wrist. "Picked up my curling iron at the wrong end," I lied.
From the corner of my eye, I caught Zed giving an irritated shake of his head, but too damn bad. There was no need to panic Seph by telling her what’d happened last night. We'd tighten up security today, and it'd never happen again.
Seph shrugged, accepting my lie as she sat down and handed me her hairbrush. "Thanks, big sis," she said sweetly as I started dragging the bristles through her mane. I used to braid her hair all the time for school, taking over after our mom had died, so it was an oddly nostalgic task.
I worked carefully, making sure the short strands were well disguised within a tight French braid while Seph helped herself to my coffee—a fact I only noticed when I finished tying off the tail of her braid and picked up my empty mug.