Every Night Forever by R.E. Butler

figures you’ll be too much on your guard to get drugged again, so he thought we could provide a little extra motivation by taking the girl with us.  If you hadn’t come back and interrupted us, you would have gotten a call from Grady later on tonight explaining how you’re going to tank the fight in three weeks.”
     
    Dante shook his head in disgust.
     
    Cairo’s smile shifted slightly.  “You like how our girl looks?”
     
    He snorted.  “Yeah, Grady saw her at the fight, said she was a real piece of ass and that he’d let all the guys at the gym have her until your match, and then he’d give her back to you if you lost.  If she survived, anyway.”  He laughed in a loud and mocking way, completely forgetting that Dante had called her his mate, and Cairo had said she was their girl.  Humans were certainly stupid sometimes.
     
    The laughter choked off suddenly as Cairo’s large hand squeezed his windpipe.  They hadn’t asked his name, because in the end it didn’t matter.  Cairo leaned into the man’s ear but Dante heard the harshly whispered words anyway.  “She belongs to us, you miserable fuck.  Did you really think we would let you live?”
     
    The sound of his windpipe being crushed was followed by the thud of his body as it fell, lifeless, to the floor.  Wiping his hands off on his jeans, Cairo stood.  “You go get the wood for the doors; I’ll wrap him up and get him in the trunk.  We’ll burn them in our fire pit and close the gym for a few days to take care of Alyssa.”
     
    “And if she protests?” he asked.
     
    Cairo cracked his neck.  “I don’t give a fuck what she wants right now.  Until we figure out what’s going on with Grady, she’s under house arrest.  Our house.”
     
    Nodding at his logic, and appreciating the ferocious protectiveness seeping from his brother, Dante took the keys to Cairo’s truck and headed out.  An hour later, armed with a Skilsaw, Liquid Nails, and sheets of thick plywood, he and Cairo secured the front doors.  While he was getting the supplies, Cairo had cleaned up the glass and mirror and poured bleach everywhere that blood lay, sopping the mess up with gym towels.
     
    He helped him finish the first cursory cleaning, loading the towels into the industrial washers in the back and then securing the night deposit and computers in the wall safe in his office.
     
    “She’s so quiet; when will she wake up?”  Mason looked incredibly young suddenly, perched exactly as he’d left him, worry creasing his face.
     
    “When her body’s healed.  Let’s get her in the truck and get home.  It’ll be light in a few hours.  We want those bodies turning to ash as fast as possible.”  There was no question of getting the human authorities involved.  This was clan business.  He and Mason lifted her still form onto the towels and carried her out into the truck, laying her across the bench seat.  “You drive her home, D,” Cairo said, touching one of her paws tenderly before shutting the door.  “Mase and I will follow in your car.”
     
    A can of spray paint was used to write across the plywood that they were closed for renovations until Monday.  Padlocking a chain to the outer doors, he climbed into Cairo’s truck, Alyssa’s pretty wolf form stretched out on the seat next to him, and headed home.  This was definitely not the way that he’d planned to bring her home the first time.  He drove quickly, but Dante and Mason took their time driving his car so they wouldn’t risk getting pulled over.  He could explain a wolf.  They could not explain bodies in the trunk.
     
    When they were home and she was on his bed, with Mason keeping vigil again, he and Cairo dumped the two bodies into their fire pit, a hundred yards back from the house in a clearing in the woods.  He wrote down the information found on their licenses in their wallets before tossing them in the fire, too.  Hyenas were not tied to the full moon like wolves,