Shattered (The Protectors 11)

“Do you want to go?” I asked as I watched Aleks check our surroundings for what had to be the hundredth time. We were sitting on a small grassy area near Pike Place Market. It was a weekday and still relatively early in the morning, but it wasn’t quiet by any means.

Aleks shook his head. He was plucking at a leather bracelet he wore on his left wrist. He forced in a deep breath, then turned his attention to Willa. I’d already offered to let him hold her, but he’d declined, saying he would in a minute.

That’d been ten minutes ago.

I suspected he was worried he’d somehow upset the baby with his anxiety.

“I’ll be okay,” Aleks said softly. “Just keep talking, okay?”

So I did. Mostly about nothing at all.

Life with Jace had fallen into this blissful state that I couldn’t put a name to. To outsiders, it would have seemed routine, mundane even, but to me, it was perfection. With Eli and Mav still on their honeymoon, Jace and I had the house to ourselves, and while that brought about a certain amount of freedom, sexually speaking, the presence of a baby definitely kept things interesting. Like this very morning when I’d had Jace’s cock down my throat and he’d been on the verge of coming when Willa had made her displeasure about the state of her diaper known. Even though it had been the fastest diaper change and bottle feeding in the history of the world, Jace’s passion had cooled by the time I’d gotten back to our room.

Of course, that had presented a new opportunity in itself, and neither of us had been complaining when he’d come deep inside of me as I’d ridden him to completion.

Another fifteen minutes passed before Aleks seemed to relax a bit more. He was still fingering the bracelet, though. “Can I ask what the words mean?” I asked. Aleks looked at me and I pointed at the small oblong piece of metal that had some words I didn’t recognize stamped into it. The rest of the bracelet was made of thin, braided leather.

“Oh, um, meu melhor… it means ‘my best.’ It’s this saying my brother and I have.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Did Dante give it to you?”

Aleks nodded. “I, um… I’m not used to carrying a phone yet. I know I should be after two years, but I was never allowed to own anything, so carrying something around with me is sometimes hard to remember. I often forget my phone at home. Sometimes my wallet and keys too. I’ve had to start keeping cash in all my pants pockets just in case.”

I felt a shard of pity go through me at his words. He hadn’t told me about his past, but I didn’t need the details to know it had been horrific.

Hell, that word probably didn’t even adequately describe it.

“Anyway, I still have this fear that… that someone is going to take me like when I was a kid. It’s stupid, I know—”

“It’s not,” I cut in. “It’s absolutely not.”

Aleks held my gaze for a moment, then nodded. “I keep thinking someone will take me and if I don’t have my phone or they take it from me, Dante won’t be able to find me again and they’ll take me away… so Dante had this bracelet made for me so I could always wear it. He says it has something in it that makes it so he can always find me, but no one will be able to tell by looking at it.”

I nodded in understanding. He was talking about a tracking device. It was what Jace had used to find me at Mr. Jennings’ house.

“Hopefully someday I won’t need it,” Aleks said with a shrug of his shoulders.

“There’s no shame in it even if you do,” I said. I’d told Aleks about my cutting when he’d asked about the scars on my arm. Like the others in my family who knew, he hadn’t judged. And while my therapist had given me some alternative ways to cope with stress, I still found myself sometimes wishing I could have the security back that came with making myself bleed. My therapist had said the urge would fade, but probably never fully go away. There was always the potential that the strangest thing could trigger the behavior, so I understood where Aleks was coming from.

I gladly agreed to the topic change when Aleks asked about Mav and Eli and how their honeymoon was going. My brother and his husband had elected to spend a month on Mav’s Harley. They hadn’t had any particular destination in mind. They’d just gotten on the bike and started driving. As of that morning, they were somewhere in New Mexico.

While I was talking, I felt a prickle of unease go through me. I tried to pass it off as a momentary thing, but when the hair on the back of my neck stood up, I began searching our surroundings. Nothing stood out at first as I scanned the dozens and dozens of faces. But as soon as I widened my search, I felt my stomach drop out.