Austin had hot wired a car for us to borrow and shoved me into the passenger seat while he drove. Caleb, meanwhile, sat in the back, pressed almost hard against the door—possibly as far from me as he could be without riding on the roof—while he stared out of the window for the entire drive.
The front of the mansion had been chaos as we’d left with people flocking around like fucking lemmings, like something exciting or disastrous had happened. It was too soon for them to have found the destroyed, burned out room, so it had to have been something else. Something, I suspected, that had to do with what had kept the guys detained while I was tortured.
“All right, one of you start talking,” I demanded, sweeping into our hotel suite in a flurry of red chiffon and tulle. My other four boyfriends sat around the living room looking very somber and more than a bit pissed off. Evidently I’d just walked into the middle of an argument.
“Where are the girls?” I frowned, looking around and not seeing Lucy or Elena.
“Lucy fell asleep on her computer about ten minutes ago, so Elena took her to their room. Your friend wouldn’t budge until she knew you were okay and on your way back, but be prepared for a whole lot of Lucy in the morning.” Wesley grimaced and I fought back a smile. I knew my bestie too well; she wasn’t asleep, she was giving me time to sort out whatever had happened tonight.
“Well?” I prompted, folding my arms underneath my breasts and glaring River down. Despite the fact that there were two badass, lethal as fuck dragon shifters in the room, there was no question who was Alpha, so yeah, he was copping the brunt of my frustration.
“Princess, go and shower. You need to get the rest of that blood off your skin.” Austin spoke the words quietly in my ear as his hand stroked down my back. “Please.”
Glancing between his serious face and Caleb’s tightened jaw, I decided not to argue. Nodding, I shot a warning glare at River so he knew full well this wasn’t over with before heading through into the bathroom adjoining the master bedroom.
To my surprise, I found the jet tub already full with hot water and almost overflowing with jasmine scented bubbles.
“I figured you’d need it,” Wesley said, appearing in the doorway and leaning against the frame. “I hope that wasn’t too presumptuous of me?”
“Wes,” I breathed, a lump forming in my throat at the incredibly thoughtful gesture. “Thank you. Will you?” I gestured to my zipper and presented my back to him. Being able to zip and unzip one’s own dresses was a skill I never had mastered, so thank god for six handy guardians to always help me.
Wesley’s fingers brushed my skin as he slid my zipper down, and I let the dress pool at my feet, stepping out of it totally naked, caked in blood and bodily fluids.
“Sweetheart,” Wesley whispered, his voice cracking with emotion as I turned to face him. His eyes raked down my body, taking in the dried stains of my own blood, and his brow furrowed.
“I’m fine, Wes,” I assured him. “Are you joining me? You have some explaining to do of your own.”
“Ah, yeah, I guess I do.” He ran a hand through his hair and blushed.
“Come on then.” I stepped into the huge tub and sank under the bubbles. “Strip down, get in, and start talking.”
He sighed but tugged his shirt over his head and slipped out of his loose jeans, giving me an eye opening sight of totally naked Wesley before he, too, disappeared under the bubbles down the opposite end from me.
Picking up a neatly folded washcloth from the little ledge, I coated it in soap and began washing away the evidence of my own torture while I waited for Wesley to speak.
“Okay, so I really don’t know much,” he began, and I narrowed my eyes at him. “Yeah okay, I still know more than you, so here goes. Nothing really happened immediately after the accident, so it didn’t really click as to what was happening straight away. I mean, nothing obvious, like Cole and Vali turning into freaking dragons.”
“Uh-huh yeah, those were pretty obvious signs. So what did happen?” I tried to keep my voice light, but I wanted to fucking shake him. Why were my guys keeping secrets all of a sudden? Since when did we do that?
“Well, to be totally honest, it actually started a while ago, like before we even met. I used to have these... crazy vivid dreams about a beautiful redheaded girl. When the guys brought you back to the house that first night, after the first failed kidnapping, it was like I’d seen a ghost. You’d been haunting my dreams for months, and then there you were...” He ran a wet hand through his hair, causing it to spike up in all different directions. “The next time was when we shared that dream when you were at Vali’s compound in Nevada. After that, nothing. So I just chalked it up to a bleed of your magic or something.”
“I can see how you’d come to that conclusion.” I pondered. “But then what?”
“Ah, well, a few days after the car crash, I started having visions. Seeing things or eavesdropping on conversations that there should have been no possible way for me to witness.” He skimmed a hand through the bubbles, piling them up on his hand and inspecting them.
“Like... how? Give me an example,” I prompted, throwing my pink-stained washcloth out of the bath and sinking down deeper, rinsing my hair out in the sweet-smelling water. Head propped on the bath ledge, my legs extended and tangled with Wesley’s in the hot water.
“Um, like nothing super specific; at first when it happened, I didn’t really know what was happening. One second I’m looking at my laptop, and the next I’m sort of like... following you.” His cheeks flushed, and he ran his wet hand through his hair again.
“Me?” I repeated. “How so?”
“Uh, just like when you’d be walking across the lawn or out for a run with Cole or something. It took me a couple of tries to figure out how to direct the vision where I wanted it, and even then I was limited to locations.” He scooped up another handful of bubbles and blew them at me. “I’m embarrassed how long it took me to work out that I wasn’t seeing visions, but rather I was borrowing the eyes and ears of birds.”
“Birds?” I squawked, much like a parrot myself, and Wesley grinned.
“Yeah. Crows.” He met my stunned gaze and nodded.
“Oh come on,” I whispered. “That can’t be a coincidence.”
“You don’t believe in coincidences, remember?” he pointed out. “Anyway, my best guess is that somewhere in my family line there was a supernatural of whatever flavor I’m meant to be that wasn’t as affected by the plague.”
I nodded slowly. “Explains why you started having those dreams before we met... And then when I healed you, it just...?”
“Undiluted me? Uh, yeah. Something like that. I don’t know; it’s still a working theory.” He shrugged his muscled shoulders.