Page 25 of Cardinal House
“No! No,” he shoves off of me. “We’re not letting the same thing happen to you.” He sniffs hard, wiping his arm across his nose, he pushes his hair back, sniffing again. “We’re going to get Luna, don’t fuck up by walking away, Wolf. It feels like the right thing to do because you’re a good man. But you’re also a fucking Blackwell, and we don’t give up. Don’t lose your girl before you’ve even got her.” He’s panting, his chest heaving, shoulders rising and falling, rising and falling. “Don’t end up like me,” he whispers, his cheeks shiny with smeared tears, eyes red and bloodshot. “Let’s go and get Thorne.”
Chapter 11
Wolf
Archer howls out of the rolled down window like an animal. Despite the rain lashing down, drenching his face, he doesn’t seem to care.
“Yes!” he shouts, dropping back down into the front passenger seat with a thud.
He howls again, using his hands over his mouth to project the sound, and then he leans across the centre console, shaking his soaked hair over Thorne. Our eldest brother tuts, using the control on his driver’s side door to roll Archer’s window up.
“I love boys’ night!” he whoops, his legs spread wide, head lolled back on the headrest of his leather seat, water running down the sharp bone structure of his face. “Why don’t we do this more often?”
“You mean sneak into girls’ bedrooms in the middle of the night and snatch them from their beds to sate your brother’s wolfish appetite?” Hunter drawls from beside me in the backseat of Thorne’s car, his face pulled into his usual stern scowl.
“Yeah, that!” Archer chuckles, this loud, raucous sound that is the polar opposite from his sobs less than an hour ago.
“Gee, I wonder,” Hunter huffs, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “I don’t want to be here,” he grunts with a sigh. His dark eyes coming to mine, “I’ll do this for you, but you know, I’d obviously rather be in-”
“Your wife,” Archer interrupts. “We all know that, but, Hunt, man, I don’t know if you know how this shit works, but it doesn’t matter how many more times you nut in her, she’s already knocked up, all the spunk in the world isn’t gunna make it twins,” Archer slaps his thigh, mouth open wide, head thrown back, laughing like a hyena.
“Archer,” Thorne warns lowly, trying to stop the impending collision.
But Hunter’s face draws into something dark, his eyes narrowing on the back of Archer’s head, who’s now humming a tune under his breath and tapping his fingers on his thigh.
“Watch what you say about my fucking wife,” Hunter warns lowly, his brow pulled low, eyes shadowed. “I know you’ve got shit going on, but that’s your sister. Show some fucking respect,” he hisses the last word before leaning forward and punching Archer in the bicep.
Archer, seemingly unaware how close our brother is to ripping his throat out, peers out the window, rolling his shoulder, like he hardly even felt it, “Sorry.”
Hunter exhales, a short, sharp breath, but he lets it go.
For now.
“She is on the move,” Thorne says calmly, each of us leaning forward in our seats to stare at the screen in the centre of the dash, the little blue dot, representing the business card with the tracking chip he gave Luna, moving fast.
“Where the fuck would she be racing to at four in the morning, isn't it her night off?” Archer mumbles, less like an actual question and more like he’s speaking all of our thoughts out loud.
I’ve had a bad feeling since Archer decided to drag Thorne and Hunter out of bed and get us all in the car. It feels wrong, somehow, what we’re doing, but I don’t think that’s the source of my dread. It’s as though, as soon as Archer told me to get my girl, everything moved at a million miles an hour and it suddenly became urgent.
The thuds of my heart banging around inside my chest are loud in my ears as Thorne takes an unexpected left turn. The blue dot is moving so fast, racing its way across the map, Thorne accelerates harder, effortlessly following the marker.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” I say out loud, but nobody comments.
My insides churn, my gut twisting into knots as we keep driving.
“Maybe she dumped the card,” Thorne offers up, “we know the location of the card, not the girl.”
“Yeah, plus, she wasn’t at a house anyway, was she? Where did you say it was originally, Thorne? A pub?” Archer asks, peering up, his black hair falling into his eyes.
“Yes,” Thorne replies, cold and quiet, his tone has goosebumps raze across my flesh.
“So, maybe the card fell out of her pocket or her hand when she was get-”
“Getting dragged out of a car.” I don’t know why I say that, but it feels like truth. “Thorne,” I say my brother’s name like he’s my lifeline, and in this moment, that’s how it feels, my anchor. “Drive faster.”
Every fucking twist and turn makes sickness swirl inside my gut. I’ve never felt both so hot and so cold all at the same time before. There’s a pressure inside my skull so intense it feels like the bone is going to crack.
The streets get darker, street lamps busted, bulbs blown. The buildings grow bleaker, boarded up windows and steel barricades replacing doors. It’s silent inside the car, bar the hammering rain assaulting the roof and our collective breathing, mine much harsher than everyone else's.