Page 46 of Bad Blood Wolf

Chapter 16

Jasmin had seen Flynn and Tank go out, but she hadn’t paid much attention. Her ears were pricked for the sound of Brody’s car.

He should be here any minute.

She checked her phone again, but he still hadn’t replied. All those messages, and now, nothing.

She’d tidied up the shed and brushed her hair, and even put on real clothes. One of the few pretty things she had. She almost lit a candle, but stopped herself just in time.

She didn’t do that shit.

Dressing up was bad enough. If he didn’t come, she was going to find him and rip his abdomen apart and play with his guts.

The minutes ticked by. If he’d still been at the fight barn like he said, he should be here by now.

Fear trickled into her belly. Something must have gone wrong.

Or maybe he was off somewhere, shooting up.

Or maybe he didn’t really care at all.

When she heard Tank and Flynn coming back, she went to the door of her shed. Not looking for Brody. Just looking out, and if he happened to drive in…

Then she saw what Flynn and Tank were carrying.

Limp and misshapen, looking like nothing she’d ever seen before. But it was him. Every cell in her body knew it was Brody.

She dashed out of the shed and met them in the compound. They’d laid him on the ground, and Tank was opening the door of the stout wooden building they called the crazy shed.

It was where they locked up any member of the crew whose animal went so crazy they were likely to hurt themselves.

Jasmin slid to her knees at Brody’s side. He was breathing. Thank God he was still breathing.

“What did you do?” She looked up at Flynn. “What happened to him?”

“Fuck if I know,” Flynn said. “I felt him when he crossed the boundary magic. He felt… wrong.”

No shit. He barely even looked like a wolf. He was bigger than usual, with patches of white amid the cream and silver-gray. His body was deformed, bulging strangely, as if he’d been frozen in the middle of a shift into… something.

“I was just texting with him. Hardly any time ago. I don’t understand…”

Flynn just gave her another hands-up ‘don’t know’ gesture. “We found him in the woods, barely conscious. We had to trank him.” He shook his head. “He looked pretty beaten up, but that wouldn’t cause… this.”

He gestured toward the malformed body.

“Would the drugs?”

“Why do you keep asking me questions?” Flynn snapped, running his fingers through his dreads in frustration. “Fairies didn’t sprinkle the answers on me while I was walking through the woods. I don’t fucking know, okay?”

Jasmin ignored his anger. He was worried, and he was afraid.

Afraid he was going to have to put Brody down. Afraid of what it would do to her. Afraid of what it would do to him, killing another shifter he’d started to care about.

Tank scuffed the straw on the floor of the shed into a nice soft pile, and then he and Flynn moved Brody inside.

“I’m staying with him,” Jasmin announced.

“The fuck you are,” Flynn said. “We don’t know what he’s going to be like if he wakes up. We need to lock him in.”