In the Company of Wolves (SWAT, #3)(59)
Becker ran through the doorway, skidding to a halt to avoid falling through the huge opening where the floor should have been. Thanks to the construction crew, sections of the floor and walls were gone, revealing rebar, plumbing pipes, electrical conduits, and AC vents. That should have made disappearing difficult, but parts of the floor were piled high with junk, toolboxes, and other construction materials, all of which provided excellent places to hide.
Becker was so focused on tracking them by scent, he didn’t see Brandon appear from behind a tool chest with Jayna in front of him as a shield until the omega began shooting at him.
Getting shot didn’t bother Becker, but the sight of Brandon’s claws wrapped around Jayna’s throat so tightly that blood ran down his fingers sent him into a rage like he’d never felt before. He dropped his M4, letting it hang by its strap across his chest, and rushed the omega with a snarl that shook the dust off the walls as he leaped from rebar to rebar. He felt one round, then another smack into his tactical vest. He ignored them, just like he ignored the one that drilled straight through his unprotected right shoulder. The pain didn’t even register. It only pissed him off more.
Becker hadn’t been a werewolf very long, but unlike some of the guys on the team, he’d never really had a problem with controlling his anger or the random shifting that came with it. But at that moment, he gave in to the instinct to let go and become the animal inside. He’d always been fast, but as his body twisted and rippled into a form that was nearly as much wolf as man, he was practically flying across the floor.
Brandon’s eyes flared and he issued a growl of his own as he tossed Jayna aside like a rag doll. Becker’s heart tore apart as the woman he loved bounced off a steel support column to land in a crumpled heap. He wanted to race to her side, but that would have left him open to even more bullets. One fatal shot and there’d be nothing to stop Brandon from shooting Jayna too.
Brandon raised his weapon for a head shot as Becker hurtled a tool bin and slammed into the omega like a two-hundred-and-twenty-five-pound truck. Bone crunched—both his and Brandon’s—as his momentum drove the omega backward through the air and into the concrete wall. But as violent as the impact had been, Brandon shook it off and came at Becker, eyes like that of a berserker and fangs ready to rip and tear anything they could.
Becker bared his teeth with a deep, menacing growl, more than ready to fight.
*
Jayna wanted nothing more than to lie there on the floor and hide in the comforting darkness enveloping her, offering a respite from the pain emanating from every part of her body. But the growls and snarls somewhere on the edge of her consciousness wouldn’t let her drift off. Eric was fighting Brandon to protect her, and it sounded like he was fighting for his life. She wouldn’t let him do that alone.
Gritting her teeth against the pain, she rolled over and pushed to her knees, fighting the darkness threatening to pull her down again. But even when her vision cleared, it was hard to understand what she was seeing because Eric and Brandon were little more than blurs of ripping claws and flashing fangs.
She flinched and looked away as Brandon shredded Eric’s tactical vest with his vicious claws, drawing more blood. That was when she saw the handgun on a section of the floor that was still intact. She lunged for it, but Brandon must have seen the move because he gave Eric a shove and headed her way with a snarl.
She rolled onto her hip, ready to defend herself when Eric slammed into Brandon and sent him flying. The omega’s claws missed her throat by inches.
Jayna whirled around, expecting them to hit the ground rolling and keep right on fighting, but they both just lay there. Her heart thudded so loudly it echoed in her ears. Why weren’t they moving?
After what seemed like forever, Eric finally rolled away from Brandon, onto his back. Jayna cringed at the rusted piece of rebar poking out of Brandon’s chest. It must have been sticking up from the floor and impaled the omega.
Eric pressed a hand to his ragged tactical vest, his fangs and claws retracting. Blood seeped between his fingers, running down his hand.
Oh God. The rebar that had pierced Brandon’s heart had stabbed Eric too.
Jayna didn’t remember moving, but the next thing she knew, she was kneeling by Eric’s side, gently pulling his hand away to see how bad the wound was. She ignored the bloody slashes that crisscrossed his face and arms, barely even looking at the bullet wound in his shoulder, more concerned about the ragged laceration caused by the rebar.
Her hands shook so badly, she could barely see what she was doing, and she couldn’t understand why. She’d seen him injured before, when she’d dug a bullet out of his chest. But right now, her heart was pounding like nothing she’d ever experienced. She was on the edge of losing it.
She was still trying to control her trembling hands when Eric gently took both of them in his much larger, calloused ones.
“I’m okay, Jayna. It will heal.” He released one hand to tenderly run his fingers over her neck. “That bastard scratched you.”
The careful way he touched her neck, his fingers tracing Brandon’s claw marks as he said the words, it was like they pained him more than the wound in his chest. She was going to cry—she knew it.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to you in time to stop this,” he said brokenly.
While his voice was just as soft, there was fire in his eyes, and she pressed a shaking finger to his lips. The thought that he blamed himself for the minor scratches on her neck was ridiculous and precious at the same time. No one outside her pack had ever cared about her until now. But his concern for her went beyond that of a pack mate. As her heartbeat slowly began to return to normal now that his arms were around her, Jayna admitted that maybe her feelings for him went further than she’d thought.