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brushed one kiss on her forehead and looked into those big
eyes that were fighting to stay open. She blinked at him slowly, easier breaths
ghosting his face, and Mac’s arm tightened as her head lowered. Yes.
    In that small, cautious, trusting movement, Mac heard his
bear roar protectively as his arms tightened around her. No one would ever hurt
a hair on her head again. While he still had breath left in his body, she would
be safe, she would be cared for, and she would be loved .

 
     
     
    Chapter Two
     
     
    Mac got out of the car carefully when the driver opened the
door for him. He said not one word to a startled Zack. With Lisa clutched
tightly to him, he bent and ran for the helicopter. He shouted for Zack to
lower the rear seat that would take a stretcher and to get the helicopter ready
to go.
    Mac quickly got her strapped on and made a call to Riley as
they took off. He needed Riley’s skills as a healer, and he didn’t mean the
soppy, let’s mix a few herbs together kind,
but a magical put his hands on and mend
this bullet hole kind. He’d grown up watching him set broken bones and mend
torn skin, and just hoped he could cope with this.
    That’s why Brett hadn’t suggested getting any immediate
medical help for Lisa. Brett knew Riley’s skills, and they all needed a
breather first. Get her home, get her cared for, and then they’d see.
    Mac screwed his eyes shut as he relived the scene with the
two apes trying to restrain Lisa. He wondered why they’d never questioned her
strength, even drugged. He also knew they would have had to give her very large
doses to sedate her, as shifter’s metabolism burned quickly through drugs. He
wouldn’t even think about the possibility that those long-term drugs had
damaged her. Nah, not
going there.
    Mac gazed at his mate. After all the ragging he’d always
given Riley, it had happened to him. Riley was born to be a mate. He’d always
wanted to settle down. Have cubs. Mac leaned his head back slowly. It’s not
that he’d never wanted this exactly. Just he wasn’t expecting it anytime in the
next decade or so.
    Mac gazed at Lisa properly for the first time. Her short
brown hair looked like it had been cut with a cleaver, and it was impossible to
make out most of her features through the grime and bruising. She wasn’t little
though. As they’d taken a step together before she collapsed, she’d nearly
reached his jaw and at six feet four, his jaw was a long way up. He looked down
at her body encased in the filthy sweats and his sweatshirt. Not what he
normally went for. He smiled wryly, thinking of the stick thin models he
usually had hanging on his arms. But that was okay. Suddenly the thought of
something a bit more to take hold of was looking very appealing.
    By the end of the ride, Mac’s mouth was set in a grim line.
His eyes had catalogued every bruise, every cut, every nick, and those were
just the ones he could see. God knows what the rest of her was like. As they
landed in the secure clearing near their cabins, he promised himself when Lisa
was well and taken care of, he would make another
visit to the zoo he’d just left.
    Leaving Zack to sort out the helicopter, Mac gently lifted a
barely conscious Lisa into the back of the SUV that Riley had pulled up in.
    “Thanks.”
    Riley looked once, and his mouth straightened as he saw the
state that Lisa was in. He pulled up at the large, fourteen-bedroom home their
dad had built with the help of a local contractor who just happened to be a
jaguar shifter. Raleigh Point was the center piece for their two hundred-acre
community that over the years had expanded to about twelve different families,
all shifters, some bears like his family, but wolves also. Their mom and dad
tended to attract waifs and strays that weren’t always welcome in a traditional
pack, and for whatever reason, it worked out okay.
    Mac barely registered the faster heartbeats from his sister
as he walked in. He knew her worried glance