The women nodded one by one.
“Okay, I’ll make the calls. Monroe has upped security around our property for tonight but be wary. Shayna slipped past them easy enough.”
“Shayna?” Rory asked in a horrified voice. “I thought she was in the wind.”
Now, she was probably in a shallow grave somewhere, but Dade wasn’t going to say that little gem out loud. Quinn had enough to deal with without Shayna’s demise on her mind. Damon Daye had called him earlier, and all he’d said was, “It is done.”
“You don’t have to worry about Shayna coming after you anymore, Rory. She won’t be hurting you or Quinn or anyone else.” Dade leveled Cody’s mate with a serious gaze and hoped she understood what he was really saying when he murmured, “She’s not a threat anymore.”
“Okay,” Rory whispered, shrinking back against Cody.
“Everyone get some rest tonight,” Cody said, authority in his words cracking against the quiet house. “Tomorrow, we take our lives back.”
Chapter Twelve
“Are you okay?” Dade asked as he rubbed her leg and leveled her with a worried look.
Quinn swallowed her heaving breath and looked around the busy entrance to town hall. It seemed like the entire state of Colorado was outside, picketing or cheering, though she couldn’t figure out who was winning.
“Hey,” he said softly, turning down the country song that was playing on the radio. “You don’t even have to talk today. Cody just wants the entire crew there for moral support. Me and my brothers will handle all the questions, and you can just sit with Rory, Ma, and Leah.”
“And the cubs.” That was the part that worried her. The cubs would be subject to all of this chaos, and her bear got riled up just thinking about those little kiddos being in danger.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding slightly. “And the cubs. Quinn.”
“Hmm?” She arced her gaze away from the crowd that was ten seconds away from rocking the truck.
“I love you.”
The world melted away as she drowned in his slow smile. “I love you, too.”
“We’re going to be okay.”
A tremendous crash sounded, and window glass shattered inward. Quinn screamed as Dade shielded her with his body.
Quinn looked past Dade’s shoulder in shock as a man carrying a large rock was pushed back from the pickup by police.
“Go, go, go!” Monroe yelled, and Dade eased onto the gas and maneuvered through the crowd behind Mason’s SUV that was carrying the rest of the crew.
They were packed in there so tightly there hadn’t been room for her and Dade.
He drove through a security barricade that was opened for them and put the truck in park.
“Will it be safe here?” she asked. Dade loved his ride.
“It’ll be fine as long as the police are able to hold the protestors back. Come on. Let’s get inside so it can settle down out here.”
“I don’t understand,” she said as he helped her from the truck. “Why is everyone so angry? We haven’t done anything to them.”
“Because they don’t understand us. People fear what they don’t understand, and for humans, fear manifests as anger.” He jerked his head toward the protestors behind them. “The pack mentality here isn’t helping either.”
News crews were lined up along the steps, tossing out questions left and right. Quinn couldn’t begin to answer one before another one was asked, and she became overwhelmed under the blinding flashes of the cameras. Her instincts to flee buzzed constantly, and it was all she could do not to give into her inner animal, turn tail, and run back for the truck.
When she looked up, Dade’s eyes were a bright gold, his attention only for the door as he guided her past the throng of photographers. He looked so sure of himself, so stoic and immoveable. If she didn’t know what the inhuman color of his eyes meant, she would’ve thought him completely unaffected by the chaos around them.
One step through the door brought relief as her eyes landed on the rest of the Breck Crew who were waiting in the hallway for them. Rory’s wide green eyes made her look as overwhelmed as Quinn felt.
“What happened?” Boone asked, brushing her hair away from a stinging gash on the side of her face.
“They broke our window,” she uttered on a breath. “They just broke it…with a big rock.”
Ma pulled a package of tissues from her purse and began to dab her face, but Dade had been the one to take the brunt of the shattering glass. His neck was cut in several different places, and red swelled in little droplets against his cheek. “Ma, can you clean Dade up? I’m just going to fix myself up in the bathroom.”