I had to bite my lip to keep from saying something sarcastic like "Now that was helpful" or "Trying to keep the local carpenters in work?" When I get scared, my tongue gets sharp - which is not an asset around werewolves. Especially werewolves who are mad enough to take out doorways.
Jesse and I both waited, frozen, then he screamed, a sound more howl than human, and he hit the door frame again, and this time he took out the whole wall, his fist pushing through the remnants of the frame, the next two wall studs, and all the drywall between.
I risked a glance behind me. Jesse was so scared I could see the whites all the way around her eyes. I suspect she could have seen mine if she were looking at me instead of her father.
"Talk about overprotective fathers," I said in a suitably amused tone. The lack of fear in my voice surprised me as much as anyone. Who'd have thought I was such a good actor?
Adam straightened and stared at me. I knew he wasn't as large as he looked - he wasn't that much taller than me - but in that hallway he was plenty big.
I met his gaze. "Could you get me a washcloth, please?" I asked as pleasantly as I could manage.
He turned on his heel and stalked silently toward his bedroom. Once he was out of sight, I realized that Darryl had followed us up the stairs. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, letting out two long breaths. I tucked my cold hands in my jeans.
"That was too damn close," he said, maybe to me, maybe to himself. But he didn't look at me as he pushed himself upright with a shrug of his shoulders and headed back down the stairs, taking them two at a time in a manner more common among high school boys than doctors of physics.
When I turned back to Jesse, she held a gray washcloth to me with a shaking hand.
"Hide that," I said. "Or he'll think I sent him away just to get rid of him."
She laughed, as I'd meant her to. It was wobbly, and stopped abruptly when a cut broke open on her lip. But it was a laugh. She'd be all right.
Because I didn't really care if he knew I'd sent him on a useless errand, I took the washcloth and used it to thoroughly clean the scrape on her shoulder. There was another road rash on her back just above the waistline of her jeans.
"You want to tell me what happened?" I asked, rinsing the washcloth to get rid of the gravel on it.
"It was dumb."
I raised an eyebrow. "What? You thought you'd add some more color to your complexion so you punched yourself a couple of times and then skidded on the pavement?"
She rolled her eyes, so I guess I wasn't as funny as all that. "No. I was at Tumbleweed with some friends. Dad brought me over and dropped me off. I was supposed to get a ride back, but there were too many kids to fit in Kayla's car when we got to the parking lot. I'd forgotten my cell phone at home, so I started walking back to find a place to call."
She stopped talking. I handed her the washcloth so she could do her own face. "I've been running cold water over it; it should feel okay on your bruises. I think your dad will feel better if you get cleaned up a bit. You'll look pretty bad tomorrow, but most of the bruising won't show for a couple hours yet."
She looked in the mirror and gave a gasp of dismay that reassured me that most of the damage was surface. She hopped off the toilet and opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out makeup remover.
"I can't believe Gabriel saw me looking like this," she muttered, dismayed, as she scrubbed at the mascara on her cheeks. "I look like a freak."
"Yep," I agreed.
She looked at me, started to laugh, and then her face crumpled again. "Tuesday, I have to go to school with them," she said.
"They were Finley kids?" I asked.
She nodded and went back to cleaning her face. "They said that they didn't want a freak in their school. I've known - "
I cleared my throat rather loudly, interrupting her - and she gave me a little smile. Her father could hear us, so it was better not to give him too many hints about her attackers. If they'd done more to her, I wouldn't be so concerned for them. But the incident wasn't worth people dying over it. What was needed was an education, not a murder. However, those boys needed to understand just how dumb attacking the Alpha's daughter was.
"I didn't expect it at all. Not from them," she said. "I don't know what they'd have done if Gabriel hadn't seen what was happening." She gave me a smile then, a real smile that didn't stop when she pressed the cold cloth against her lip, which was beginning to swell up pretty well. "You should have seen him. We were in that little parking lot behind the art gallery, you know, the one with the giant paintbrushes out front?"
I nodded.
"I guess Gabriel was walking on the little road below us and heard me cry out. He was up the hill and over the fence as fast as my father could have done it."
I doubted that - werewolves are fast. What I didn't doubt was that the effect of being rescued by someone like Gabriel, who, with his velvety brown skin, his black eyes, and his fair share of muscle, was not exactly hard on the eyes at any time.
"You know," I told her with a conspiratorial smile, "it's probably a good thing that he didn't know who they were, either."
"I'll find out," said Gabriel behind my right shoulder.
I'd heard him coming. Maybe I should have warned her, but he deserved to hear the hero worship in her voice. He wasn't the only one in the hall, but the wolves, who'd all followed him up, were keeping out of Jesse's sight.