Echoes of Fire (The Mercury Pack #4)(56)

Makenna spoke then. “Ally probably would have hidden the vision from Jaime and made her excuses to leave if the Beta hadn’t noticed Ally having a vision. Dante was able to convince Jaime to stay behind, which is something.” She sighed. “I guess we shouldn’t be so surprised that something bad happened today. I mean, it is the thirteenth day of the month.”

Ryan’s default frown deepened. “But not Friday the thirteenth,” he pointed out.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Makenna. “The number thirteen is an unlucky number and a bad omen. Everyone knows that.” When her mate glared at her, she went on, “Hello, there were thirteen steps to the gallows. Thirteen people at the last supper. Women menstruate, like, thirteen times a year. And is it a coincidence that Charles Manson, Theodore Bundy, Jack the Ripper, and Albert DeSalvo all have thirteen letters in their names? I think not.”

Ryan grunted, shaking his head.

Makenna gasped and then jutted out her chin. “Fine, I will.” Yeah, the she-wolf insisted she could translate his grunts. Turning back to Bracken, she smiled. “Your mate has great luck.”

“He doesn’t believe in luck,” Madisyn told her.

Makenna’s brow lifted. “Whoa, Mads, how weird is it that we’re best friends, and neither of our mates believes in luck?”

Ryan scowled at the she-wolf. “It’s not weird. It’s fucking normal.”

Makenna just sniffed at him.

Ally appeared then. Taking stock of Bracken’s injuries, she gave him a sympathetic look. “Damn, they made a mess of you.” She put her hand on his shoulder, and a soothing energy slowly traveled through his body, alleviating his pain and closing his wounds. They faded right before his eyes, and the break in his arm healed.

Giving her a nod of thanks, Bracken straightened his arm and flexed his hand. There was no pain or even a hint of discomfort. “That bear me and Eli tackled was a strong bastard. He broke this just by squeezing my wolf’s foreleg.”

“There were six of us, and three of them,” said Eli, holding a bag of frozen peas to his side. “But it wasn’t easy to kill them, and they weren’t even in their bear forms.”

Jesse nodded and then looked at Madisyn. “Which makes it all the more amazing that you defeated three sows by yourself.” He ground his teeth a little as Ally laid a hand over the bad laceration on his chest. “I realize now that I didn’t give you enough credit for that.”

Madisyn shrugged. “Having the element of surprise helps. Bears are strong, but pallas cats are—pound for pound—one of the strongest breeds. The sows weren’t expecting me to have the strength to take them on. Also, bears are fast, but they run out of steam pretty quickly. Don’t have a lot of stamina. And their reflexes aren’t as good as those of a cat.”

Yeah, Bracken had noticed that. “You’ve fought sows before, haven’t you?”

“When we lived at the shelter, me and Makenna would sneak out to the secret local hangout for teenage shifters,” said Madisyn. “It was an abandoned salvage yard. At first, people used to start shit with us because we were loners. We’d beat the crap out of the fuckers, obviously.”

“Obviously,” said Taryn, mouth twitching.

Makenna chuckled. “They couldn’t complain to their Alphas because they’d have had to admit they’d been sneaking out. People stopped bothering us after a while. Although that was mostly because Madisyn set a fire that leveled the entire salvage yard, plus two of the neighboring warehouses.”

“Which were empty, by the way,” said Madisyn. “They had to move the hangout to an old hospital, and for some weird reason, they thought we wouldn’t find it. So yeah, they gave us a wide berth after that.”

“Can’t imagine why.” Bracken kissed his mate’s temple and draped his arm around her.

“You need help getting rid of the bears’ bodies?” Trey asked Nick.

Holding Shaya’s hand, Nick shook his head. “They’re currently in the back of their van. Derren and Eli will drive it to a spot near the quarry and leave it there. Archer will find it using the GPS tracker. He’ll get the message that sending people to our territory is a mistake.”

As the others discussed what Archer’s next move might be, Bracken turned to Madisyn. “I need to take a shower and wash all this blood off me before we head to your place.”

Tilting her head, she sensed . . . “But you don’t want to take the shower here. You don’t want to linger, do you?”

“No. I want to be away from here for a little while.” Maybe if he wasn’t on his territory, he could stop speculating on what Archer would have done with Hayden’s body. Could just shake it all off until he was in a better state of mind to process it.

“You have spare clothes in the SUV you usually use, right?”

“Yeah.” He always kept a bag there in case he tore his clothes during a shift or something.

“So clean the blood off your face in the bathroom here, stick those other clothes on, and then shower at my place. You have clothes there too, so you’ll have fresh things to wear after your shower. No doubt you left the stuff there on purpose, marking your territory.”

That was exactly why he’d done it. “All right. Just give me ten minutes to change.”