Chasing a Wolf: Moonbound Series, Book Four by Krystal Shannan, Camryn Rhys Page A

never considered was they would have to get away. How would they ever get past the security guards without alerting the police?
    “She’s healing,” Alex said. He had his hands on Maggie’s coat. “It’s taking time, but I can see the blood stopping.”
    “Will she make it?” Tomás couldn’t bring himself to meet his teammate’s eyes, and he buried his face in Lani’s neck when Alex answered ‘ yes .’
    This had been such a disaster. Running into an uncontrollable situation. He wasn’t typically this impulsive. They’d let themselves get carried away.
    “We will find your mother,” he whispered into Lani’s ear, through the thick curtain of her hair. He just wanted to bury himself in her and never let go. Every part of his body hurt or bled, but he could imagine the bliss of Lani’s body comforting him in a heartbroken way—the way other men sought solace in the bottom of a bottle. He would seek solace in Lani. And she in him.
    She sighed against him and shook her head. “We must get you to a healer. And your friend.” Lani sniffed. “I know where he is taking my mother. We will find her.”
    Tomás levered himself to his feet, pulling her up with him. “The island?”
    “This island your mother spoke of,” Alex said from the opposite corner of the room. “She insinuated… I mean, she said…”
    “I heard it, too.” He stretched his back and leaned against the wall next to the elevator. His body was exhausted. He needed a shower. He needed sleep.
    Tomás needed Lani.
    “Does that mean…Is he taking her?”
    “We might as well say it out loud,” Lani’s voice cut through the room, strong, stark and loud. “This brothel you say he started in Guadalajara. He has one in Choaca, on this island, and that’s where he’s taking my mother.”
    “Given how wounded he was, and given the fact that we are waiting in his home with guns, I’d say that’s a fair bet.” Alex stroked Maggie’s fur with a sad droop to his eyes. “Even if only two of us left can fight.”
    “I don’t feel him trying to choke you,” Tomás said, pulling Lani back so he could look into her eyes. “Do you feel him?”
    “I don’t know what I feel anymore.” She closed her eyes. “Too much feeling, and I’m numb.”
    He pushed off the wall. “At least, for now, you’re safe.”
    “Come and help me,” Alex said. “We really should get her to a bed and let her shift. This wound is pretty bad.”
    Tomás and Lani stepped away from the elevator just as an electric whirring noise came from it. The doors slid open and everyone’s breath caught. But the silence that had become so precious was cut when Lani’s yelp rent the air.
    The bloodied, scarred, lifeless body of her mother slid out of the elevator and lodged itself in the open door, preventing it from closing. The entire inside of the elevator was covered in splattered blood and pieces of flesh, and on the mirror in the back was a giant, bloody handprint, right in the middle.
    The handprint of a sadistic murderer, and the only family Lani had left in the world.

Chapter Eleven
    T omás let the nurse wrap his arm for the second time, but he kept Lani in his hospital bed, curled up against his side.
    She’d been almost catatonic since they’d found her mother in the elevator, and he kept trying to minimize his own pain so she wouldn’t be bombarded with every hard thing in the world at one time.
    When they’d all had to climb into that elevator, with Zolin’s body and her mother’s body, and ride down to the midnight-dark parking garage, Lani had almost crawled inside herself to get away from the emotion and Tomás had resolved to just hold her and keep her close. Not ask more than she could handle.
    He just wanted to take back the last two days.
    If Tomás could rewind time, to before she’d come to him in the sex tent, he could’ve convinced her to stay in the village with Zolin and to stay the hell away from him. He’d brought nothing but pain to