“Already onto it,” Paw says, jogging up behind us with Venom, Merrick, and Ghoul not far behind.
“Are you okay?” he asks me, his eyes frantic as they search my face.
I nod.
“Are you sure?” He sounds panicked.
“Yes. Yes. Please, just help her,” I say, terrified for Bronte.
Hearing an agonized roar, I look up to see Jack tearing across the parking lot as fast as he can. His eyes are wide, and his face is twisted with terror as he races to reach his bride. His cry is like a wild animal and fills the space around us as he falls to his knees beside her.
“She’s alive,” I tell him.
Panting, he reaches for her, but I stop him, and our eyes lock, and for the first time since I’ve met Jack, I see fear in them.
“She’s survived the explosion, Jack.” My voice is the same calm and assertive voice I use in the ER, but it totally hides how I feel. I’m so full of adrenaline, I am surprised I am not shaking like a leaf. “But she needs help, and right now, you’re not the person to do that for her. We’ll get her to the hospital, so she can get the treatment she needs. What you have to do is stay calm, let the dust settle, and let us do this.”
For a moment, he says nothing. His nostrils flare. I can see the tears in his eyes, and I’m sure he’s going to fling my arm away. Instead, he climbs to his feet and yells into the weird silence, his rage and fear roaring out of him.
Knowing he needs the support, I go to him. “Listen to me… what you do in the next few minutes is very important.” I look over at Dolly, who’s trying to pacify Rhett in her arms. “I need you to go to your son, and I want you to hold him. He needs you.”
It’s not a lie. His son does need him. But at this moment, his son might also be the only elixir that stops Jack from losing his mind and erupting into untold mayhem as his wife lies unconscious on the asphalt.
“Go to your son,” I say to Jack calmly. “Let Doc do what he’s got to do to help Bronte.”
His face is fierce, but beneath the façade, his emotions shimmer. He’s terrified he’ll lose his wife. I glance at her lying unconscious and feel my heart shatter.
Losing her is a real possibility.
And if he does, I know it will unleash an animal in him like no one has ever seen.
DOC
“I’m going to find Max, and I am going to crush every damn bone in his body with my bare hands,” Jack seethes. “I’m going to peel back his skin and gut him from the inside out.”
We’re outside Bronte’s hospital room, and Jack is stiff with rage. He isn’t one to lose his cool. I’ve seen him make the kind of decisions that would make lesser men tremble at the knees, yet he never breaks out in a sweat.
But when it comes to Bronte, all bets are off.
She is his queen.
And no one fucks with a King and his queen.
“But first, I’m going to find everything that means anything to him and then destroy it in front of him.” He paces, his jaw tense, his nostrils flared.
Thankfully, Bronte is going to recover from her injuries. She was far enough away from the blast. It didn’t give her any significant issues, just a mild concussion and a few lacerations. But as a safety protocol, the doctors want to keep her in for observation.
Ten seconds earlier, and it would’ve been an entirely different story. If she’d still been looking for the pacifier in the back of the car when the bomb went off, she would’ve been killed.
The delivery driver wasn’t so lucky. Sheriff Pinkwater and his men are still scraping his remains off the asphalt.
Rhett is fine, a little shaken, but by the grace of God, he was safe in Lily’s arms when it happened. Still, the hospital staff insisted he was checked over by one of the doctors who gave him the all-clear.
Ares and Shooter arrive and join us outside of Bronte’s room. Because Shooter is VP and Ares is our sergeant-at-arms, since the bombing, they’ve been scrambling to find out what happened.
“How is she?” Shooter asks.
“A mild concussion, but she’ll be okay.” I look through the glass window and see her lying on the hospital bed and feel my chest tighten. It could’ve ended up so much worse. “They’re keeping her overnight as a precaution.”
“What the fuck happened?” Jack’s eyes are wild with rage as they focus on Shooter. “I thought we had every single precaution in place so something like this couldn’t happen. How the fuck did a van carrying a fucking bomb get inside our compound?”