Home > His to Shelter (The Guard #1)(8)

His to Shelter (The Guard #1)(8)
Author: Em Petrova

“Hold still and I’ll get you out of this.”

She fell still, but tension came off her in waves. He could smell her sweat and fear.

He carefully slit the tape and yanked the hood over her head. Her eyes popped open and fixed on him.

He didn’t give her time to recognize him—he tossed her over his shoulder and took off through the maze of crates and cargo on the dock.

Fuck. Gilly. He had to get his brother. First and foremost, The Guard bible stated they must defend each other at all costs. But he’d abandoned Gilly after he fell. He wouldn’t have just tripped and fallen from that height—no man on Earth had surer feet than Gilly.

He’d been attacked, and judging by his stillness, his attacker took his life.

He locked his arm around Rose’s hips where they rose on his shoulder, keeping her in place as he sprinted back to the rallying point.

Gilly—fuck, man.

Gilly would say get her out first and come back for him. He knew that with a bone-deep conviction. On the way here, Oz confided to Gilly that he had known Rose a very long time ago. He hadn’t confessed how he felt about her at one time—hell, maybe still felt about her—but the big, hardened guard seemed to get it.

He detoured away from the rally point and the armored vehicle waiting to carry Rose, himself and Gilly out of here. He needed to see.

Rose didn’t make a peep, and for that he couldn’t be more grateful. The last thing he needed was a woman screaming her head off while he tried to rescue her. But Rose had never been witless, even at an inexperienced eighteen years old.

The lights of the dock didn’t reach to this point, which had been the reason Gilly chose it. Oz picked out the body lying motionless on the dock. Footsteps sounded from his right, and Oz made another snap decision.

I’ll be back for you, man.

He might be lost to us.

He turned away. For the good of the mission, Oz must get out of here before he and Rose both were killed. Otherwise, the mission became a bust and The Guard double fucked after losing two integral members.

Gilly’s not dead. I’ll get him out.

You saw his eyes and the angle of his neck. He’s dead.

Oz shoved down the roar of rage rising up.

What had his man said in his final moments before the comms broke up? He needed to stop and listen to it again once they reached safety.

Huffing with more exertion now under Rose’s added weight, he drew to a stop near one of the bulky cranes. A glance around assured him nobody hid, ready to attack. Yards away, their getaway car waited.

He ran toward it, Rose bouncing on his shoulder. When he stopped, he said, “Can you stand?”

“Yes.”

He let her slide down his body to her feet. She wobbled a bit but remained upright, staring at him as if she saw a monster.

No fucking doubt in his mind she was looking at exactly that.

“Don’t move.” He didn’t wait for her agreement before he circled the vehicle, running the chip in his wrist over the sides, front and back. If a bomb were detected, his comms unit would explode with warnings from the people back at home base watching his every fucking move.

Did they know what happened to Gilly? And that Oz had abandoned him?

Pain like a knife’s edge in his chest, he ripped open the passenger door and waved to Rose to get inside. Without a word, she did. He slid behind the wheel.

* * * * *

A cold breeze washed across the beach, and despite a warm blanket around her shoulders, the tremors trying to shake Rose apart from the inside out didn’t ease up. She twisted her arms around herself and curled her shoulders inward to hold the pieces together. She might be full of cracks, but she would not shatter.

Just keep telling yourself that, Rose.

She’d endured the terror of being kidnapped, and from what she gathered, nearly become cargo sold to the highest bidder. But discovering her savior happened to be a man from her past left her shaken. Oz saved her.

Oz—her Oz.

Not my Oz. He never belonged to me.

She looked at the man seated on the dark beach. He had one knee drawn upward and the other long leg extended along the sand. He cradled his head in his palm and hadn’t raised it in a long time.

In the set of his broad shoulders, she read his torment. In the dip of his head, she witnessed his pain and turned her gaze from it. The man deserved to suffer in peace.

Yet…maybe she could comfort him somehow.

He tipped his head back to the sky, and she studied his profile. The same chiseled features that had haunted her for nearly two decades hadn’t changed. In fact, she knew them even better from seeing her sons grow into them.

Our sons.

No, her sons. Oz made it clear he didn’t want a family, and no way would she share such news now. He might have saved her life, but he’d still walked away from her back then. He hadn’t been concerned about any child born from their interlude in the garden. She had been on the pill, so the pregnancy came as more of a shock. Still, he’d told her to take care of any product of their union.

She had. By carrying twins to term and laboring for fifteen hours before they took both babies by emergency cesarean.

The wind blew her dirty hair around her face. She smelled herself and wished for nothing more than cleansing—and maybe healing—water. She eyed the ocean. Would it be cold? She didn’t even know where the hell she was, except the weather was warmer than DC. From the private cove of beach, she couldn’t make out any city lights to get her bearings either.

Oz shook his head and then pushed to his feet. She jumped up too. Across the sand they faced each other.

“Thank you for rescuing me.” Her soft words were snatched on the wind. He might not have heard.

“It’s my job,” he responded.

It’d come down to this—she was only a job to him.

Did it matter? She could return to her sons alive. They might not even know she’d been missing.

But someone did, and Oz had risen to the challenge of finding her. Oz and that man who she’d seen lying on the dock, sprawled out in such an unnatural position.

“The man on the dock—” she began.

His sharp movement silenced her. She folded her arms around her middle and battled another round of shakes. It would be a long time before they fully stopped.

“I’m not talking about that.” Oz’s tone came out gritty. He waved a hand. “Let’s go.”

Whatever decompression he’d been going through over the last hour, he’d clearly recovered. He turned to cross the beach, his footsteps stitching across the sand. She stared at him a moment, knowing he expected her to follow. Could she go the other direction, maybe make her way back to safety on her own and leave all this behind her?

In the end, she followed the dark footprints in the sand and got into the car once again. He drove her away from the beach, but she hardly took note of her surroundings until they reached a suburb. Gathering clues from the road signs, she guessed herself in Charleston, one of the latest hotbeds of human trafficking right now. And she’d nearly become another on that long missing/suspected trafficked list in Homeland’s database.

She drew in a deep, quivering breath. Oz cut a glance her way but didn’t speak. She wondered if she should try, but she’d seen the set of his square jaw in Alex and Nick, and knew enough that he wasn’t ready to talk about it.

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