“I love her.” Three tiny words, yet they sounded rusty leaving his mouth. Foreign. He cleared his throat, testing them out again. “I love her.”
Goddamn it, he did. So much that it hurt to think it, feel it. He hadn’t thought he’d ever love another woman after Maggie. He hadn’t wanted to. But Hudson had snuck past his defenses with her stubborn gray eyes, her eager sensuality, and that remarkable combination of strength and compassion that never failed to amaze him. The things he loved about her were different from what he’d loved about his wife. He’d been drawn to Maggie’s sweet innocence and sunny smiles, and her softness had soothed him, at least at the beginning. But Hudson…
“She stands up to me,” he told the silent creature at his side. “Which you should be fucking grateful for, beast. Otherwise you wouldn’t even be here.” A chuckle slid out, as hoarse as his voice. Shit, he really needed to stop using smoking as a stress reliever. Damn habit was going to kill him.
Yeah, he really did like her bossiness, though. The way she ordered him and his men around as if she’d known them for years. And he fucking loved how protective she was. Of Pike, when she came to his defense each time the men mocked him about being a grumpy bastard. Of Kade, whom she never once pushed to talk about his life in the city. Xander and his tech gadgets. Rylan, every time he pulled a stupid stunt and got hurt. And… hell, she was even protective of her brother, monster that he was.
She’d lied about being Dominik’s sister, but Rylan had been right – Connor needed only to stop and think about it, and he got it. He would’ve done the same thing if it meant ensuring his survival.
Christ, he was such a bastard. He’d exiled the woman he loved. If he was lucky enough to earn her forgiveness, he knew he was going to spend the rest of his life making it up to her.
Hope whimpered suddenly, and Connor ran an awkward hand through her fur. Surprisingly, she let him. “It’s just thunder,” he assured the pup.
But clearly her hearing was more fine-tuned than his, because she shot up to all fours and darted toward the end of the mattress, gazing intently at the door. Since she’d yet to master the act of jumping on and off the bed, Connor scooped her into his arms and marched to the door, throwing it open just as headlights appeared in the driveway.
His heart soared with joy and sank with dread simultaneously. Unconcerned about the rain pouring down on him, he ran toward the approaching vehicles.
Too many of them.
Connor shifted the wolf to one arm and withdrew his nine mil, relaxing only when he recognized the pickup truck that pulled in behind the Jeep. Lennox’s. And the black SUV that tailed it was the one Beckett had procured for Jamie.
His body hummed with unease. Shit. Something had happened. Something really fucking bad, because there was no other reason why Lennox and Jamie would be here – and Layla and Piper, he realized, as the two women climbed out of the SUV. It wasn’t until everyone had gathered on the driveway that he understood how bad the situation was.
Because Hudson wasn’t with them.
“Where is she?” he blurted out, his gaze traveling from one solemn face to the next.
The silence was worse than anything they could have said. It flooded his brain with grisly images that quickened his pulse and brought bile to his throat, and he stood there frozen in place as the rain fell over him.
Pike was the first one to speak. “She’s gone.”
“What do you mean, she’s gone?” The outraged demand sounded familiar. He realized it was the same one Xander had shouted at him this morning after he’d confessed to sending Hudson away.
Rylan spoke up next, his grim voice muffled by the relentless downpour.
“Knox took her.”
21
The rest of the story came out faster than Connor’s panic-ridden brain could keep up with. Jamie’s sobs mingled with the slaps of the rain hitting the dirt as Lennox described the attack on their house. The gunshots. The shouts. The bullet that had ripped into Nell’s abdomen when she’d stumbled out of her room to find Enforcers swarming the corridor.
“Nell?” Connor’s head snapped up, and he gazed past Lennox’s shoulders at the SUV behind him. “Is she…?”
“She’s dead.” Grief swam in Lennox’s eyes. “The rest of us would be dead too if it weren’t for Hudson. The Enforcers stopped firing when they realized she was in the house. The lieutenant…” Lennox hesitated. “He called her his wife.”
Acid rose in Connor’s throat. Swallowing it down only succeeded in ripping his stomach to pieces.
“They were in the area looking for her, Con. And she…” Lennox trailed off.
“She made a deal with him,” Jamie filled in with a sniffle. “She said she’d go with him if he promised not to hurt the rest of us.”
His stomach clenched. Of course she had. Hudson would never let people she cared about get hurt, even if it meant sacrificing herself.