Chapter 6 - Cyrus

I am so focused on trying to get a read on the slimy little excuse for a man in front of me that I don't even register the feeling that hits me. It's like someone has my heart in a vice, and I'm moving for the door before I can even put words to it.

Lena, something is wrong.

My legs carry me as fast as they can without entirely letting on that there's more to me than being strictly human. The interaction with Tom is pushed firmly from my mind. I close the distance of the couple blocks between the diner and Lena's shop in what feels like an eternity of seconds. I slide to a stop as I see someone trying to make it out the back door, her body slung over their shoulder.

Rage consumes me, and I can't contain the roar that slips through as I close the gap in the small shop. I don't think he planned on company, that much is clear by the sheer panic on his face. He's definitely another dragon shifter, easily readable from the thick scent of fear in the room.

Coward.

I watch as he tosses Lena's body against the counter with a sickening crunch of bones. Her shoulder takes the brunt of the fall as I close the last inches between us. My fingers are half-shifted with talons ripping out as my hand closes around his throat. I lift the small male up off the ground by the neck. He hasn't even started to shift before I'm there and trying to squeeze the life out of him.

I slam his slight body hard against the wall full force and watch with satisfaction as his eyes roll with the loss of consciousness. It takes every ounce of self-control to avoid killing him. I know we need answers, which is the only reason I'm resisting. I release him and let his body crumple to the floor as I turn frantically to Lena.

My breathing is erratic. I have to get it slowed down before I lose control and end up completely shifting in the middle of her shop. I force myself to calm down enough to return fully to my human form.

At least I can take solace in the steady beat of her heart. She's not dead, just unconscious. He can live for the moment, at least. I smell blood, and I know it's hers. I anchor myself in reality by focusing on the task of figuring out where it's coming from.

I can't lose control right now. She needs me.

I hear five large bodies land out in the alley and am not surprised to see my team bursting through the back door of Lena's shop as I pull her onto my lap. I am a little surprised it took them this long to arrive since they can feel my moods intensely.

Every one of them would have felt everything together with me today—my panic, the near shift. It's what makes us ruthless and efficient. It also makes for incredibly long, dramatic confrontations when I can't control my emotions or when Evander is convinced that I'm being reckless and not considering the mission.

My hand smooths the wild black curls out of Lena's face, trying to find the source of the warm blood coating my jeans where her head rests. My team fans out in the small shop, which now feels extremely crowded.

"Take that one back to the house. Don't be gentle. I want him questioned," I snap as their eyes assess the scene. I nod with relief as Kai and Rufus gather the body up and head out for the back door. Orion disappears to presumably check for a trail. If anyone can track them, it'll be him.

I pull my hand out from behind her head and feel my heart drop at the sight of so much blood. Milo kneels next to me and starts pulling things out of his bag.

"Where'd that come from?"

I gather her hair forward, trying to help him find the wound, and we see the angry gash that's opened across the back of her scalp. The rage comes back, and I want to go back to killing whoever dared do this to her.

"Only seems like one," Orion confirms as he steps back into the shop, "I have a trail. Evander and I can run it down and see what we can find."

"Do it. I don't really want anyone off by themselves right now."

I am focused on watching Milo's thin fingers work as he cleans the wound. He starts fishing through his bag for something else and pauses. I can feel his heart rate increasing.

"Out with it."

"She needs stitches. I don't have anything that would be safe to use on a human here. I need her back at our house." My eyes snap up to meet his, and he gives me an apologetic shrug.

"I didn't think I'd be treating humans."

"Fine. Let's move her."

"You're going to have to carry her and keep pressure on the wound, like this. I'll be able to help you keep cover. It's not going to be easy. I'm also trying to keep her sedated."

"Less words, more moving, Milo."

Milo is pretty tuned in with my moods, but he seems to be suffering from an intense case of verbal vomit in his nervousness at my anger. I hold the gauze the way he instructed and easily lift Lena up into my arms.

"It looks worse than it is, Cy. Head wounds bleed a lot, but if we can keep pressure on it, I think we'll be able to get her squared away without much trouble."

"Don't forget her stuff. She needs her phone. The kid."

Milo looks at me with a raised eyebrow, but does as I ask, grabbing her purse and keys off the floor.

We are silent as we start to move. Milo picks up the intensity of the rain around us, helping mask us from sight and allowing me to start breaking into a run without worrying about the inhuman speed I'm displaying. We tumble through the door of the house in minutes.

"If you can run up to my room and get that kit in the black box, that'll be what I need. Just lay her here on the table."

He switches positions with me as I lay her down on our dining room table. His hand moves in place to keep pressure on her head, but he frowns and starts digging in his bag. My inaction draws his attention.

"I've got her. Go get me that kit so I can get this stitched up."

He gives me a quiet nod as I step away from the table and force myself to act. I'm moving with a singular focus as I see Rufus and Kaius coming up from the basement.

"He's contained," Rufus responds to my questioning look as I bound up the stairs, "I think he may be out for a little bit longer. His head may have taken a couple more corners."

"Do what you need. I want answers."

Lena is peacefully unconscious when I return. Milo is looking much steadier and more himself now. I try to remind myself she's in good hands with him.

Milo rolls Lena's head to the side and nods at me, indicating that he needs my help.

"Hold right here and use your other hand to help me keep her hair out of the way."

I place my hands where he is pointing, but I make the mistake of looking down at her. Her skin is paler than usual. I can feel my rage surfacing all over again.

He dared to lay a finger on her. I will kill him.My protective instincts are riding far too close to the surface right now.

"Cyrus, please. Focus. I can't keep her sedated if I'm having to feel you raging out, too."

Milo is bent forward, his nimble fingers making short work of the stitches across the gash. I take a slow, steadying breath to try and resist the anger that's just barely beneath the surface. My attention is torn as I feel movement under my hand near her shoulder. Her face is scrunched up and wincing as she starts to come around.

"What, Cy…go away. You can't be here." She makes a lazy move to smack my hand away, but she winces in pain as she raises her arm.

"Hold her still," Milo cautions.

"Who's that?" she mumbles, trying to turn her head again. I hold her head still as gently as I can.

"My brother. Hold still, Lena. He's trying to stitch your wound."

"Brother?" she scoffs, "You have a brother? You're too tall to have a brother."

"You sound drunk."

"You sound stupid."

"I think the mix of what I'm doing along with the head trauma is a little bit much," Milo chuckles quietly as he snips the silk short. "I need to take a look at that arm now."

My brain flashes back to when the dead man walking had dropped her body against the counter. Milo gestures to me to help prop her up to a seated position, which takes more effort than it should as she starts to sag left and right.

"I think it was when he dropped her. She landed on her shoulder, and I heard a crack."

"You're crack," she giggles, and Milo's jaw tenses as he resists the urge to laugh with her.

"Stop enjoying this," I snap at Milo as he works very hard to suppress a grin and moves around the table in front of her. He leans down, flashes a light in each of her eyes, and moves it back and forth in front of her.

"Lena? I'm Milo. We met, remember? I just want to take a look at you and make sure you're okay. Is that alright with you?"

"S'alright by me. Just don't let Bossy Britches over there find out. He's not very nice today. Wow… you have eyes. Eyes. Really pretty eyes."

Mine…

I can't suppress the growl that slips out, even if I want to. My warning registers on his face and he nods, causing his hair to fall in front of at least one eye. It's a familiar trick he does when he tries to make his eyes seem more normal.

"They're just eyes, Ma'am. I need to test out this shoulder of yours. Is that okay?"

Lena nods at him in compliance, but they're slow, lazy nods.

Milo frowns in confusion while trying to finish examining her, but she's flailing about and trying to move from the spot she was propped up in.

"You got this, Milo? Why is she so… alert?"

"I don't know… it's just not working," Milo whispers as he feels her arm and shoulder. He repositions my hands so that I'm bracing her tighter against me. "I'm going to have to do this one way or another."

"Where am I?"

"Our house," I answer, holding her in place for Milo as gently as I can without allowing her to keep squirming, "Try and be still for a minute."

"What?" She asks, leaning her head all the way back and looking straight up at me with a frown on her face. "I don't want to be at your house. I don't want to be here. I need my phone. Let go."

"Hold her still."

Dislocated shoulders suck, no matter how good the person fixing it is.

"I'll let you go as soon as he's done, Lena. Please, stop fighting me on this."

"Fighting you, that's rich. About as useful as telling you not to do something. Jerk face—Ah!" Her slurred insults are lost in the scream that rips out of her as Milo maneuvers her shoulder, expertly popping it back into place.

"Sorry about that. At least I have pretty eyes," Milo consoles her with a wink as he starts tying her arm in place with a sling to help stabilize it. "I promise, I'm the fun one usually."

I clench my jaw in an attempt to contain the irritation that is pouring out of me. I could kill him. He's just my brother…

"Phone, now?" She asks, and Milo nods and saunters off toward her things to bring them to her. The irritation isn't getting any easier to contain, but Lena is leaning heavily against me and has finally stopped trying to fight me now that her shoulder is being taken care of and the phone is being brought to her.

"Stop walking like you're on a runway. Don't give me more reasons to kick your ass right now. Not the fucking day, Milo."

"You should be nicer to your brother. At least he is being helpful. Don't see you fixing my shoulder."

Milo shakes his head in warning as he hands her the phone, knowing that he's flirting with far more than just my short temper as my eyes start to shift to slits.

"Shit, I need to get out of here," Lena mutters as she flicks through her texts, "Rosie's team lost their game. She's a mess."

"We'll go with you."

Her body goes rigid as the effects of Milo's sedative magic seem to wear off slightly more. She angles her head up to look at me again, and the ice is back.

"We? What part of leave me alone, I want nothing to do with you, or fuck off, hasn't been clear enough, Cyrus?"

Milo retreats a few steps, backing into Evander and Orion, who just joined the scene. Rufus and Kaius are bobbing up the stairs just behind them, their eyes lighting up with the chaos they are hearing. I level all of them with a look of warning before turning back to face Lena.

She pushes herself further away from me and tries to maneuver around the table to a standing position, swaying a little on her feet. I catch her with an arm around her waist and she stiffens.

"Stop touching me. Leave me alone."

"You're being ridiculous. You can barely stand."

"Why is that? An explaining… explain… explanation would be really fucking nice right about now, Cy."

"What do you remember? The actual last thing you remember from today."

"I don't know," she whines as she staggers again, leaning more into me this time without argument, "You were a jerk at lunch. Creepy Tom. I just wanted to get out of there. That's the last thing."

I reach down to grab her hand gently, and she flashes me a warning glare. I give her a pleading look and pull her fingers up to the back of her head, placing them against the stitches. Her face scrunches as she starts to recognize the size of the cut on her head.

"The hell?"

"You were attacked."

"Attacked? By who? Here? No one does that here. That's ridiculous."

"That's why we're here. That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"You're really not making sense, and I think I may need to sit."

Milo jumps forward and slides a chair over, placing it opposite me. He helps me ease her down into the chair. I try to sit closer to her and move my chair forward, but she holds up a hand to tell me to stop.

"No, you stay… over there. I can't think around you, Distraction Man. You and drugs are a bad combination."

"Sorry," Milo mutters from behind her with a wince, "I may have gone a little harder on that than I intended."

Lena sags back in the chair in relief, some of the tension leaving her. It apparently has more to do with my proximity than anything. That realization is a knife to my heart.

"Talk, now. What do you mean this is why you're here?"

I look up and meet Evander's eyes. Of everyone, he's the only one who knows the full story of my time before with Lena. He's firmly opposed to me being the one to break this to her and has been pissed since I broke the plan to stick to the mission. He gives me a solemn shake of his head and shrugs one shoulder.

"Clearly, we're failing to keep you away from her. There will be no world where she lets any of us near her enough to keep her safe without some context." Evander sighs, "You owe her that much, at a minimum."

"I like that one, whoever that is."

"That's Evander, he's my second in command."

"Command?" she laughs, "You sound like you're in the military."

"We are. We're here on a mission to investigate some of the old mines around this area. Our concern is that you seem to be a target for the people we are investigating."

Lena scrunches her face in confusion, clearly not buying my half-truth.

"It would be much easier to keep you safe right now if you'd just stay here where we can watch you."

"No, not doing that…"

"You can bring Rose."

"Even more, no? I don't know them, and I clearly don"t know you. I'm not bringing my sixteen-year-old daughter into this. Whatever this is. I'm definitely not putting her in a house with a bunch of men I don't know. And you. I can't be alone with you. Nope."

"We don't have much choice here, Lena. More likely than not, they will drag her into this regardless as a way to get to you. I was almost too late today. If I hadn't…"

Her hand cuts me off, and she lurches hard, looking like she may be sick. I grimace as Evander catches her by her shoulders. It should be me.

"I could stay with you both at your house?"

"Not only no, but hell no. I have dealt with being shamed as a single mom in this town for the last fifteen years, and there is no way I'm going to let the bridge ladies turn me into the town slut for shacking up with a man I'm not married to. No. No, no, no, nope. Not happening, Boss."

"Fine. Easy solution. We're getting married."

Did you really just say that? Bold choice.

The room is utterly silent. Evander looks like he just sucked on a lemon. Every member of my team seems to be holding their breath and is waiting to exhale. Their eyes slide to Lena, to me, and then back to her. Lena is looking at me like she is picturing peeling my skin off now.

Maybe she has more in common with Amelie than I thought. Yikes. Fix it!

"You wouldn't be marrying someone random. There are at least enough people who may remember me from before. It's the only solution I have that saves your reputation but gets me close enough to keep you safe."

There are a million simultaneous reasons this could be a disaster, but it is also the most efficient way to get us a cover. A long-term cover. The longer I sit with the idea, the more convinced I am that it's the only way I can protect what's mine.

"Are you insane? Like, actually certifiable? No. Absolutely not. While you may have enjoyed a little meaningless fling on your job years ago, it was very real to me. You promised me… everything. You made me believe in you, in us, and then you disappeared, Cy. Not even a word. You crushed me. There is no way, job or not, I will marry you. Just do what you need to for work and leave me and my daughter alone."

"Lena…"

"I'd like to go home now, be with my kid, and maybe sleep because a nap sounds like a great idea. I'd like anyone other than him to help me get there, please."

"No, you're staying, and we're doing this."

Five pairs of eyes turn to me in concern, all waiting for me to decide. I can't let her go by herself. I hate that she feels this way about me. I don't know what to do.

"Cyrus," Evander starts cautiously, "I think letting her at least go home and waiting for her to be less sedated and disoriented would be a far better way to broach the subject. You can't just spring this on her."

I hate this. This feeling of helplessness that I can't keep her safe. Even worse, I know there's at least a shred of truth to what Evander is saying.

"Fine. You all go with her. Clear the house and clear the property. Do not leave them alone."

My brother steps forward, loops an arm around her to help support her body, and offers her a wide smile. He catches my eye as he straightens up with her and freezes.

"Milo, I will absolutely kick your ass."

"Milo, tell him to kiss your ass. Let's go, Sweetie."