Chapter 15
Walker
I tried to calm Dante down as he came through.
"What have you done?" he screamed again. "Lindsey, you have to leave now. They"re coming for you and it"s all his fault."
He pointed to me as I stumbled back in shock.
"Dante, what did you see?" she asked, starting to sound a little hysterical.
The boy went deathly still and looked up at us with wide eyes.
"It"s too late. They"re already here."
Lindsey exploded in anger as her beast took control, ready to grab me and the kids and make a quick escape.
Suddenly static noise hit my ears and I yelled in pain as my coms came back online.
"Westin Force is here. Hello. Can you hear me? Stand down. She"s not a threat. I repeat. Stand down."
There was nothing but silence.
"Shit! My coms but be damaged. I can stop this. Stay behind me, all of you. They won"t shoot me."
I knew their protocol and it was easy to pick up their locations now that I knew what to look for. But Lindsey was scared and she was angry. All she wanted to do was protect our little family, but how could any of them know that.
"If you have a clear shot, take it," I heard Silas order.
"No!" I yelled, waving my arms in the air.
"I don"t have the shot," Ben said, as I tried to shield as much of my mate as possible. "Walker, get out of the way, man."
I had no way to communicate back to them what a horrible idea that was. I tried to wave them off, but it was clear no one was listening.
"I"ve got a clean shot," Baine said.
Before I could turn in his direction Silas's words rang out, echoing in my head. "Take the shot."
"Noooo!" I screamed, but it was too late.
Time seemed to stand still as the shot sounded and everything seemed to go quiet for a fraction of a second before the bullet pierced her body just above her heart.
She gave an inhuman screech before collapsing backwards.
"Lindsey!" Maya yelled.
I watched in horror as the blood poured from the wound. My body was heavy and felt like I was pushing through quick sand.
"Target has been neutralized," Baine confirmed.
"No, no, no , no!" I cried as a feral roar ripped through me.
I dropped to my knees next to her and lifted her large wolf head into my lap as I tried to put pressure on the wound to slow the blood flow.
"Stay with me Lindsey. It"s going to be okay. It has to be okay." I desperately looked around for help. "Help me!"
No one moved.
I could see the life draining out of her.
I"d never been more terrified in all my life.
The kids stood hugging each other nearby, crying. She would never want them to see her like this.
"Help me," I begged once more. "Goddamn it, someone help me!"
Taylor was the first to my side.
"We have to save her," I said weakly as unshed tears burned my eyes.
Lindsey"s whole body tremored and then she shifted back into my gorgeous mate. Her eyes opened and pierced me straight through the heart. She tried to speak but only a gurgling sound came out.
I grasped her small hand in mine.
"Stay with me, Linds. You cannot leave me like this. I"m so sorry. I swore I"d protect you and I failed you. I"m so sorry. This is all my fault." I looked around to find mostly Bravo and Delta teams but a few from Charlie, Echo, and even Foxtrot all staring at me in confusion. "Michael, please. Help!" I begged him.
He nodded and motioned to Delta. Suddenly I was surrounded by my team. But they tried to take her from me.
"No! Grant. I need Grant. We have to remove the bullet."
"She"s just a beast, an Experiment created by the Raglan. The panthers have been battling them for a while now. They have no feeling, only bloodlust. We were briefed on the way down," Michael tried to explain.
"You're wrong. You don"t know shit. She"s not a monster. She"s my mate."
I could have heard a pin drop at that moment before chaos erupted once more.
"Shit! That"s why she took you?" Taylor asked.
I hadn"t even realized she was so close by, but I nodded.
"Grant!"
He appeared seemingly out of nowhere pushing my team to the side as they gawked at me in shock.
"She"s losing too much blood, Walker. I don"t know if I can save her."
"You have to try, damnit. You have to."
The tears I"d been holding in crested and streaked down my cheeks as I sat there holding her and feeling utterly helpless to stop this nightmare while I sobbed openly.
"Do you have any idea what her blood type is? She"s going to need a transfusion started if I'm to have a chance at removing this bullet."
"O positive," Dante"s small voice said. "We"re the same."
I shook my head. "Not him. He shouldn"t even be here."
"I"m not go anywhere," he said defiantly, then his voice softened as he wiped tears from his face. "Please don"t make me leave, Walker."
"I"m O positive as well. Take my blood. As much as you need. Just save my mate."
Grant nodded as Colin and Linc dropped to their knees to do exactly as Grant instructed to hook a life transfusion line between me and Lindsey.
Once that was established he said a quick prayer and then got to work to remove the bullet.
Logically, I knew what it had looked like to them. I could understand why Silas gave the shoot to kill order. He didn't have all the facts. But I"d tried to wave them off and they hadn"t listened. I didn"t know if I could ever forgive them for that, or trust any of them again.
Time seemed to no longer have any meaning as I sat there cradling her head in my lap while Grant fought to save her.
"Stay with me babe. I love you so much. I don"t want to live without you. Please. You have to fight. Do it for Maya and Dante. Do it for us. Do it for me." I choked on the last word as I gently wiped the hair from her face. "I need you," I whispered, leaning down to plant a kiss on her forehead.
I didn"t know when it had happened, but every word I spoke resonated with truth. I loved her.
The tension around me eased just a little as the bullet was pulled from her body, but it was followed but a sickening silence.
I saw Grant shake his head. "She"s lost too much blood. Even with the transfusion I"m afraid it"s too late." Still, he sewed her back up.
Shaking my head in denial, I screamed, "No! I can"t lost her. She has to live."
"I"m sorry. There"s nothing else anyone can do. It"s all up to her now."
He started to remove the transfusion line, but I shook him off.
"Let her have my blood, as much as she needs. She can have it all if it means she"ll live."
Tucker looked away as our eyes met. He had mated young to a horrible person who had made his life a living hell. She was dead now, and he"d found his true mate. A year ago he wouldn't have understood, but now that he had Abby, he knew the power of a true mate. If anyone could understand my desperation it was him.
No words were said, but no one tried to fight me over it. While others retreated, no doubt trying to discern how things had gone so horribly wrong, my team never left my side. They surrounded me and poured their strength into me with their presence.
Hours passed as everyone waited for her to breathe her final breath, but I kept insisting she"d be okay.
"Walker, you"re losing too much blood," Taylor said softly.
It sounded like she was at the end of long tunnel and her words took a while to reach my brain. By the time I realized what was happening, the transfusion line had been removed.
I cried. "No. Please no. Fight Lindsey. Damn it babe, I need you to fight."
"Carefully move them both into the bedroom," Grant said.
I was numb to everything around me and only vaguely aware of my unit lifting the two of us to relocate. It would be so easy to just close my eyes and drift away into the darkness, but I wasn"t ready to give up on her yet. I wasn"t ready to give up on us.
"Keep them together. If what he said is true he may just be the lifeline she needs to fight through this."
"How did this happen?" Michael asked. "They told us the Experiments didn"t have any signs of humanity, but look, she shifted into her human form."
"She"s just as human as any of us," Maya argued and then I felt her little fists pounding against me. "You should have listened to Dante when he warned us. Now Lindsey"s gone. You can"t die too. You promised, Walker. You promised you"d take care of us if anything happened to her."
My eyes fluttered open and I reached for her hand, a little freaked out by how weak I felt. I knew then that Grant had been right to remove the transfusion line. Then again, I wasn"t kidding when I told them I"d give her every drop of blood in me if it meant saving her.
In that moment I hadn"t thought about the kids.
My kids.
"Someone get these kids out of here. They shouldn"t be in here right now," Silas barked.
"No!" I managed in an almost normal voice.
"Walker? Oh thank God," Michael said as he started to check me over.
"Don"t take my kids away," I told them.
Maya and Dante both smiled through their tears as they pushed the big strong men and woman of Westin Force aside and clung to me.
"It"s going to be okay guys. I"m not going anywhere, at least not without you."
I didn"t care who was standing around watching. The most important people in my life where right here with me. I kissed the top of Maya"s head.
"I"m sorry I yelled at you, Walker," Dante said.
"I"m sorry I didn"t listen to you sooner."
I needed to be strong for them now, so even though my heart was breaking and the only thing keeping me sane was the quiet ragged heartbeat of my mate, I let Lachlan help prop me up with some pillows while the kids settled in beside me.
"So, who do we have here?" Ben asked me.
"This is Maya and Dante. Remember when I told you guys about the triplets and their mom? Well this is Shelby"s mate, Ben."
"Shelby"s mate? That"s what I"ve become? You seriously didn"t tell them about me?"
I managed a sheepish grin.
"Did you know that Walker's best friend is a girl, just like me and Maya," Dante said proudly.
A few of the guys chuckled.
"Best friends? You aren"t siblings?" Michael asked.
"No. We met at our last Collection. Lindsey was there and she took good care of us. She calls us her twins, but we aren"t really twins," he continued.
"Lindsey? Not Mom?" he pressed.
"No, she"s not our mom, well, not our real mom. She"s just sort of like our mom. And now Walker can be like our dad," Maya said as if it were all that simple. Then again, why couldn"t it be? We have no idea where these kids had came from. From what I"d been able to gather they couldn"t ever remember not being in a Collection.
"I guess we"ll sort all of that out later," Linc suggested.
"I can"t believe I"ve been relegated to best friend"s mate status. I thought we were past all that bullshit," Ben muttered as he walked away.
"Dante here is a little seer, just like you, Michael."
The kid sat up quickly. "You"re a seer too?"
"I am."
"Do you ever see things and no one believes you?"
He glared over at me.
Michael chuckled. "It"s definitely happened before."
"I tried to tell him you were coming for him and that he was going to get us all killed."
"No one is dying today," I told him.
But even as I said it, I could only pray it was true.