"Oh yeah. I forgot. But if I did, they'd be aching right now."
And still the manticores came closer.
"How do we defeat these things?" The words had barely left Fang's mouth before the ground rumbled again.
With one clean, powerful yank, Scorpio pulled the arrow out of Dev's shoulder and used his powers to heal the wound. "I'm growing bored with this ground trying to swallow us every few minutes."
The ground must have heard him. Because this time, it didn't open below their feet. It rose up like mountains, trying to spear them.
"Head north." Fang returned to his wolf form.
They ran forward, but it was hard. The earth acted like a dirt geyser, spraying them with rocks and soil. Fang yelped as one foul spewage threw him into the air. He landed a few feet away on his side. Panting, he made no move to get back up.
Dev ran to him. The ground started rising. Tucking Fang under his arm, he pulled him to a safe area.
"Thanks, Scorp." Ethon curled his lip. "Next time, could you wish for us to be attacked by cotton puffs or something?"
The ground heaved one more time, throwing all of them into the air before it calmed again.
After slamming down hard, Dev lay on his back, panting. Fang was a few feet away. Groaning with a pain they all felt, Scorpio pushed himself up and went to Fang to examine his left leg, which had been injured.
Sam was ill over everything that had happened.
Because of her.
She walked slowly to Dev and sank down beside him. "I'm so sorry I got you into this."
"Oh please." He sat up with a light groan. "It's risk my life here or pick my nose at the door, waiting for some dumbass human to think he can punch Remi or pinch Aimee on the ass. Don't apologize. I haven't had this much fun in centuries."
Sam laughed even though she thought he was insane. "You are so not right."
Dev smiled at her, wishing he could brush the curls back from her beautiful face. "True, very true." Only an idiot would fall in love with an Amazon Dark-Hunter.
Dev was startled by that random thought. At first it terrified him until he realized just how true it was.
He loved her.
It defied all logic. It made no sense. And yet it was absolutely true. All he wanted was to protect her. To keep her from harm and make sure nothing in the world ever hurt her again.
No wonder Remi's insane.
For the first time in his life, he fully understood his brother and why Remi was so angry at the world. Only Remi had it worse. While Dev would have to be man enough to watch Sam go her own way and leave him, he wouldn't have to see her mated to his own identical brother. See her every day of his life and know that but for a freak accident of mistaken identity she would have been his.
The worst part?
Quinn didn't love Becca. They were friends and mates, and they took care of each other and their children, but nothing more. There was no passion between them. None of what Dev felt for Sam whenever he looked at her.
What a sick twist of fate that had been.
Too young to know the differences between them, Becca had waylaid Quinn, thinking he was Remi. In Quinn's defense, he had no idea Remi loved her--Remi never shared things like that. All Quinn had seen was a warm body pawing at him and he'd done what most men would do when a woman showed up naked in their bed. He'd slept with her. Within the hour and just after Becca had realized her mistake, their mating marks had come in and Remi had been forced to step back and watch his brother claim the woman he'd fallen in love with first. The woman who loved him with everything she had, who'd been trying to mate with him and not his identical brother.
Remi had never emotionally recovered from that tragedy.
And while Dev had thought he understood Remi's pain, it was only now he really got it. The strength of Remi's character was unfathomable. To have stayed with the family and witnessed their relationship all these years. To have never once cheated on his brother with the woman he loved...
That was what real love was. The ability to put someone else's happiness above your own no matter how much it killed you to do so.
It was the sacrifice his mother had made. She'd died to keep Aimee from losing her mate.
Remi made that sacrifice every day. While a Were-Hunter male could never cheat on his mate, women could. It would have taken nothing for Remi to cuckold Quinn. And Dev knew for a fact Remi never had. As big of a bastard as his brother could be, Remi had honor and he loved his family even though he still wanted to break Quinn into pieces.
How do you do it? How could Remi have walked away and not killed Quinn? Because right now the thought of not having Sam was more than he could bear.
All he wanted to do was kiss her, even though they were one step away from death.
"Incoming!"
Dev looked up as a pack of manticores launched out of nowhere to land all around them.
The men pushed themselves up, then put their backs to each other as the manticores circled them while barking and hissing.