The material fell away, revealing a bruise covering most of her calf. Her swollen ankle was almost double the size of the other. To top it off, three blisters bulged from the side of her leg where the fire had reached her tender flesh.
“Fuck.” He took her in his arms and laid her down on the cushion. “Don’t move.” He hardly recognized his voice with the vibrating tone the dragon was emitting. If the assholes who had done this to her were still alive, he’d have hunted them and killed them for injuring her like that. He looked up at her, seeing the dark bruise on her chin where the coward had hit her. He took a breath, then another. His hands shook as fury rushed through him.
“I’ll be okay. I just need rest,” she assured him. She was attempting to soothe him.
Unable to contain it, Jace threw his head back and roared. Running footsteps came from the other side of the house, then hushed voices outside the great hall. Luke poked his head around the door. “Everything okay in here?” he asked without stepping foot in the room.
Jace tried to get his mouth to work, but his teeth had pointed, and his jaw ached with the partial transformation.
“We’re fine. Thanks for checking,” Charlotte said, her voice stronger than he would have expected it to be considering the injuries she’d sustained.
Luke nodded, then ducked out, pulling the door closed behind him.
It took him a few minutes and a whole lot of deep breaths before he could finally speak. “Stay here and rest. I’ll be right back.”
Charlotte tensed on the cushion in front of him. “Where are you going?”
She was tough. He’d give her that, but those big beautiful eyes of hers didn’t lie, she was scared. At least a little. “Not far,” he assured her. “I missed supper earlier, and I’m getting hungry. I thought I’d go into the kitchen and grab some food. Once we’ve filled our bellies, we can shift and get some shut eye.”
“Thank you for coming for me tonight. I don’t know what I would have done…”
He looked at her. Of course, he’d gone after her. What kind of mate would he be if he allowed her to be taken by the enemy and harmed? Shame flooded him. Fuck. They had hurt her. He hadn’t protected her when she needed him to.
Standing on feet that were shakier than when he faced an entire group of hunters, he strode over to the side where they kept blankets stacked. He grabbed the softest, fluffiest one he could find and brought it back to her. “Go ahead and finish getting undressed while I’m gone. You can use this to cover up. We’ll find you something new to wear tomorrow.” No way in hell would he allow her to put the same clothes back on. For one, the pants were ruined, and for another, he could still smell the putrid scent of the bastard dragon that had attacked her on her shirt.
Without waiting for her reply, he headed out of the room.
When he entered the kitchen, Austin sat at the table with an enormous sandwich in front of him.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“You should see what they did to her.” Jace slammed his fist against the cupboard door, splintering the wood. “I should have been there to stop it.”
Austin’s eyebrows rose. “Fuck, man, you were there. You got to her as fast as you could. We all did. And you might want to rein it in, buddy. Stella and Maddie are going to be mad if you wreck the kitchen.”
Jace looked down at his knuckles where blood trickled to the tip of one finger. “Shit.” He rinsed his hand under cold water as the cut closed and healed. Austin was right. Besides, his mate needed him sane, not enraged.
He riffled through the fridge grabbing a couple of raw steaks, some fresh fruit, some cheese, and a loaf of bread, placing it all on a platter before grabbing a pitcher of water.
When he had loaded his tray with as much as he could carry, he turned back to his friend. “Those guys, the assholes that hurt her, they were lackeys. The threat to her isn’t gone.”
“Agreed, but by who?” Austin said around a mouthful of sandwich.
“I don’t know, but mentioning her family almost had her hyperventilating a while ago,” he said. “Her name is Charlotte Rivers. I’d start looking there.”
Austin swallowed before answering. “I’ll start looking. If she’s up for it tomorrow, we can get more info and put the team together.”
Jace couldn’t be bothered with computers, and trying to find any information on the web was like finding a particular grain of sand on the ocean floor for him, but not for Austin. If information was out there, he would find it. Austin could, and had, hacked into such high-security systems that had he been caught, he would have done life in prison for treason, if not had a price put on his head. Thankfully, he slipped in and out without anyone being the wiser.