Chapter 7 - Lena

There's absolutely nothing awkward about being half-carried home by your ex-whatever's brother with an escort of four other male exotic dancer doubles. Nope. Perfectly normal.

Fabulous.

"Thanks again, guys. But really. I've got it from here."

"Are you sure, Ms. Lena?" I frown at the large ginger in the group. The freckles across his face, bizarrely light green eyes, and windswept red waves give him an oversized leprechaun image in my rather medicated mind.

He's going to say something about his Lucky Charms someday, and I will die laughing.

"Just Lena. Stop calling me Ms. Lena. Makes me sound like the bridge ladies. I know I most likely have a concussion and will be very careful. I promise. Rosie's got good instincts for healing. She's almost as good as me. I'm in good hands. I promise."

Five pairs of eyes exchange worried glances, and they all shift their weight awkwardly. They look like a bunch of little boys in trouble with their mother. It would be endearing if it wasn't poking at my very last frayed nerve from a long, bizarre day.

"Go home. Tell Captain Cranky Pants that you did whatever it is he told you that you needed to do to make sure I'm safe, and please, just go home."

The largest of the five, who has the richest brown skin I've ever seen in person, breaks into a deep belly laugh, which slowly catches and spreads to the rest of the group.

"Please, let me be there the first time you call him that? Promise?"

"Kaius, was it?" I ask, and he nods while still chuckling, "You got it. I've called him much worse lately."

I prop myself up on the door frame of my little cabin and turn back to look at them. What a weird collection of men that he's surrounded himself with. I can hear Rosie shifting in the house, drawn by the sound. Even with my dulled senses, I can feel her coming to see what's going on. We've always just had an eerily close bond.

"Milo, thank you. I appreciate you taking care of me. If I can ever return the favor or even just exchange herbs for healing, please don't hesitate to let me know. I don't practice conventional medicine, but my family has done this for hundreds of years."

He steps up on the porch and pulls me into a cautious hug, avoiding my shoulder. The hug is so genuine, almost like he hasn't received one in a long time. The old wooden door creaks behind me.

"Good night, Lena. Please be careful with that shoulder. I'm happy to help take a look at the stitches and the wound later if you need."

"Stitches? What wound? Mom?"

Shit. Busted.

Rosie appears in front of me, her gray eyes blazing with irritation. Without any room for argument, she shuffles me into the house. I wave a small goodbye to the guys as Rosie shoos me into the house like I'm the errant child, not the parent.

"Right, Mom, out with it. Why do you have stitches, and who were they?"

"There's nothing to be out with. I had an accident at the store. I fell and hit my head and messed up my shoulder when I landed. The new guys in town, Cyrus's… um… people. They happened to come across me, and the young one apparently is pre-med."

Her stormy gray eyes narrow as she looks down at me. Disbelief is written in Rosie's eyes, but she just scoffs at me, moves me over to a chair, and starts fussing.

"You have that look you get when you're lying."

"Or it's the look I get when I'm concussed and medicated. They had some really strong drugs…"

Rosie is moving around the kitchen, the familiar sounds of her making tea floating through the house while I feel sleep pulling at me. That's not good.

"Whatcha making there?" I feel the words slurring and the room blurring at the edges.

"Ginger tea."

"Smartest girl…"

The room is fading into darkness, which seems like the perfect solution to a very long and very weird night.

"Hey! Mom, wake up. No sleeping for you right now."

"Mmmm, I'm awake, I promise." I can feel my head lolling to the side. I'm so sleepy. I want nothing more than to just give in to it and let sleep pull me under. Sleep is tugging hard at the edges of my mind when something shatters.

"Rosie?"

I sit forward, my eyes struggling to open just enough to see someone's hand over her mouth, dragging her backward out our back door.

"No!"

My body feels too heavy. I can't move fast enough. Panic grips me tight in my chest. I'm trying and failing to push myself up from the chair as another shadow moves into the frame of our back door, helping drag my daughter's kicking body out of the house.

I force myself to a standing position, leaning heavily against the chair, trying to get some momentum to move forward and do anything to stop it when a flash of light blurs my vision momentarily.

It's got to be the concussion or the drugs, but I swear there are massive forms in my yard. Bigger than anything I've ever seen. It can't be bears, even if they were standing on their back legs. There are wings. Those are definitely wings. My vision blurs as I stumble forward, falling into the door frame for support.

"What the hell?"

The last thing I see as blackness seeps into my brain is Rosie lying on the ground with a dragon-man standing over her.

There is nothing like coming out of a dazed, drug-induced sleep to find your ex looming over you. This is not a habit I want to start.

"I'm going back to sleep. This is a really bad nightmare."

"I actually need you to wake up, Babe."

My brain registers Cyrus's voice, the warm, tingly feeling I get when he touches me, and the familiar nickname. Irritation prickles through my haze. He used to call me that to get a rise out of me.

"I'm not a pig. Don't call me Babe."

He sits me up and uses his two large hands to force my face to focus on his, but my eyes still don't want to open all the way. I hate that his hands make me want to relax into him. I hate that my body just wants to melt into him. Traitor.

"Lena, I need you to be alert right now. Please, focus."

"I'm taking a nap, and then I'm going to wake up and this whole week will just be a nightmare."

I feel the slack comfort of exhaustion pulling at every part of my body as I try to let sleep take back over. I'm pulled out of it by his hand, firm and demanding on my back as he pulls me into a rough kiss.

The conflicting sides of my brain have no idea how to proceed. The deep part of me that is magnetically drawn to him responds first, my hand snaking around his neck and pulling his head closer with a firm grip on his hair. I can't argue that I have been starving for a kiss like that. Then, the rational thoughts start to return. You're kissing Cyrus.

I break away from him with a gasp and push him back.

"Damn it. No, Cy."

I smack his chest in protest, not that it actually does anything to him. He looks at me expectantly and starts to stand, pulling me up with him.

"Good, at least you look less sleepy now."

"Asshole."

"I'm fine with being the asshole right now. I need you to wake up. We need to get you and Rose out of here."

Rosie. My mind flies back through the hazy images that are surfacing, and panic takes a new hold of me. I spin around, regretting it instantly as a wave of nausea hits me, but I try to suppress it as I look for my daughter.

"Milo has her. She's okay, just unconscious."

"What the fuck? Unconsciousness is not okay. What? This doesn't make sense."

He finally gets me into a standing position and pulls me closer despite my squirming protests.

"Would you just hold still? I do not want to hurt your shoulder, but you are making this ridiculous."

"What are you doing? Where are they going?"

"Back home, we're taking you both there tonight until we can figure some things out here and make this place safer."

"No." I try to break free of him again while he tries to pull me along. "Damn it, Cyrus, stop. I already told you that you can't stay here."

"Well, you said I couldn't stay here if we weren't married. That's been solved."

I glare at him. He can't be serious.

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

He lifts my hand up to my face, where a conspicuous silver band that looks like wings holding an obnoxious yellow diamond sits, coupled with another band beneath it. I snatch my hand back like it's been burnt.

"Rings do not equal a marriage."

He inhales slowly, reaching into his back pocket and producing a folded-up paper that he hands to me.

"What about a marriage license signed by the Honorable Judge Perkins from the neighboring county?"

"No, I was drugged. I'd have to be. I'm hallucinating freaking dragons. There's no way I can legally consent to a marriage when I'm stoned out of my mind."

His face takes on a very serious look, and something about his eyes causes me to pause.

"There is so much more going on here than you realize. There aren't any drugs in your system. Happy to go have a test taken if you'd like."

A shiver runs through me as something Gram used to tell me starts to seep into the edges of my consciousness. There's so much more going on in Greyson Ridge than anyone will ever know. We have a responsibility to keep it safe.

The coincidence is enough to make me pause, but the anger keeps building. I turn more slowly and survey the damage to my yard. There are deep gashes all over the garden, and many of my plants are crushed. Rosie is in Milo's arms with a nasty slash down her arm.

Cyrus is looking at me with an intensity that I have never seen in him before. The eyes of the rest of his team are tense, scanning the area. They really do look every bit like a military team right now. They have various wounds that I don't remember from before.

"There's no way I was conscious enough to consent to this. I wouldn't…"

"You were… for a while before you passed out again. I promise, I tried," the short, dark-haired one insists with guilt heavy in his voice. One of the other guys holds up a phone in front of my face, playing a video.

"Cyrus made a really compelling case to the judge, and you were actually conscious for the whole vows and consent. I promise you, Ma'am, this was the only way. Really."

A pit drops in my stomach. No. There's no way I could have married him. My mind is racing, trying to remember. I can remember… Tom at the diner. Something with Milo and Cyrus. Lucky Charms guy. Rosie. Rosie being dragged. Then it gets really fuzzy. Then another argument. Judge Perkins.

I can remember him taking me aside to ask me if I was absolutely sure about this and saying I was. Cyrus, with a ring in his hand, looking at me with that face I had imagined a hundred times. Saying, "I do." What the hell have I done?

"No…I couldn't. This can't be legal."

"It's legal enough that you can't argue with me about logistics now. Don't worry. We can set ground rules. It's a cover. Right now, at this moment, I'd like to get us moving."

My eyes scan the yard again and catch on my door hanging off the hinges. What on earth happened?

"One. Fuck you, so much right now. Two. I will go with you, because this looks like a war zone, and I will have some answers. I also like Milo; he has a knack for stitches from the feel of my head. And… lastly… do not fucking touch me right now if you want to come back with anything other than a bloody nub Cyrus. So help me, I'll cut anything that touches me off."

"Fine. Move." He snaps and starts walking across the yard without any more room for discussion.

"Do not take that tone with me. You're entirely the asshole here. This is beyond ridiculous. Controlling isn't even the word for it now. It's full-blown psychosis, Cyrus. We are not done talking about this."

"Understood, Ma'am. You'll get some answers," the short one says as he steps up to help steady me instead, "Let's move, though. We're too exposed here."

Cyrus starts barking out orders at the other guys. I manage to at least convince him that taking my car instead of carrying me and Rosie is a much more rational approach, even if it's just a couple minutes down the road. Who just carries people everywhere? Psychopaths. That's who.

We descend on the dining room of the Miller mansion in a state of sheer chaos. I do my best to help Milo treat everyone's various cuts as best I can with one hand and a foggy head since my shoulder is still sore, but sleep is still pulling at the edges of my consciousness. Definitely concussed.

Rosie somehow stays asleep through all this chaos, but I'm guessing that it's just her sleeping off the drugs they dosed her with. I reluctantly agree with Milo that there may be some sense in leaving her asleep while we discuss the best path forward. They must have some really good drugs…

Milo is moving toward the quiet fox-looking member of the group, and I turn to Cyrus, finally taking stock of him in the aftermath of whatever chaos led us here. He's sporting a scratch down the side of his face that needs to be cleaned, which I can do one-handed.

I grab the kit that Milo was using on the other members of the team, which he told me was important and is the only one that should be used on them, and I reluctantly make my way over to the chair where Cyrus is brooding.

He's gone quiet. His amber eyes have a torn and weary look to them that I don't think I have ever seen or could have ever imagined. I approach him and hand over the kit so he can hold it for me as I start to silently clean up his face.

"What did this to you?"

"What I've been trying to protect you from all this time. The bad guys. Just leave it at that."

"Yeah, I'm going to need some actual answers now. Start talking."

I sway a bit as I'm dabbing at his cheek with gauze.

"I think you need sleep," he sighs as he reaches out a hand to steady me by the hip.

"Don't touch me."

"Calm down. I'm just trying to prevent more head injuries."

"You aren't funny right now."

"Not trying to be. You'll pass out again if you don't get some rest. I promise I will give you answers and an explanation in the morning. After some sleep."

Milo steps in to finish cleaning up the cut, and the short guy I can't remember steps back and steadies me putting his arm around me. He walks me to the room they put Rosie in. At least with this guy helping, I'm less rage-filled when he tries to help me move.

He seemed to be on my side when it came to giving me time and space. I still can't understand how he went from giving me space being a good idea to going along with a forced marriage.

"What was your name again?"

His bright blue eyes slide over to mine with a sad smile as he hands me an extra blanket.

"Evander."

I nod slowly, trying to let the memory of his name stick this time.

"I'll hopefully remember that better in the morning."

"I'm sorry I couldn't help prevent more of this. There was nothing I could do tonight. I did try. It's just not right."

I search his eyes and I can see the pained look there. He means it. He isn't happy about this forced marriage situation either.

"Thanks for trying."

He leaves me with a sad smile and closes the door behind him.

There's not much time to think between my head hitting the pillow next to Rosie and sleep other than the reeling thought that I'm possibly married and know nothing about who Cyrus really is.