Free Redeeming Rue AP4 by R. E. Butler

getting distracted by James and John.  If she’d just left, she would have been back before she was discovered.
    “I shouldn’t have come here,” she thought.
    “What, sweetheart?” James asked.
    She hadn’t realized she’d spoken the words out loud.  Shaking her head, she folded her arms and began to pray in earnest that Dom would be safe.
    James pulled into the hotel parking lot, and she directed him toward the room that she had rented.  Dread filled her as she got out of the car and headed toward the open door.
    “Hold on, Rue,” James said, stepping in front of her.
    John slid against the wall of the hotel and peered around the corner into the room.  Then he disappeared inside.  For what seemed like an eternity, Rue stood with James while John checked out the room.
    “It’s clear,” John called.
    She and James walked into the room.  She rushed into the bathroom and saw that it was as empty as the main room.  The TV was still on, their belongings lay on the dresser, and Dom’s phone lay on the floor, broken.
    “I smell that male and his clan, but I don’t smell blood,” John said.
    A folded piece of paper sat on the pillow; the piece had been torn from the notepad on the nightstand.  Her hands trembled as she opened it and read, “Banished one, come to the field at dawn and surrender yourself.  If you involve human authorities, your son will die painfully.”
    Too stunned to cry, she sank to her knees next to the bed and stared at the words on the page.  She didn’t protest when James took the paper from her hands and read it out loud.
    “What do they mean by banished?”
    She blinked slowly, her eyes losing focus, and then she looked up at them.  For the first time, she realized she could see them.  She’d been so intent on what might have happened to Dom that she hadn’t even really looked at them since her binoculars had found them at the ceremony.  Now, she could see how handsome they were.  They shared facial features, but James had dark hair and brown eyes and John had dark blond hair and blue eyes.
    Shaking away her interest in them, she stood and sat down on the bed.
    John sat down next to her and slipped his arm around her shoulders in a comforting hug.  “Rue, it’s obvious that you need help, and we’re not going to let you face this alone.”
    She looked at John, with his blue eyes filled with worry, and James, with his chocolate brown eyes filled with concern.  “How did you find me in the woods?  I was hiding in the shadows, and I had covered my scent.”
    “I felt like someone was watching me.  When the ceremony was over, John said he was feeling the same thing so we followed an…instinct, I guess you’d call it, from our cats that led us to you.  The artificial floral scent you used was part of what we were following, too.”
    John tipped her face until she was looking at him.  “You’re our mate, Rue.  We followed you because you’re meant to be ours.  Whatever you’re facing, it’s our burden to share with you.  Let us help.”
    Tears burned in her eyes.  “I wish you could, but I have to turn myself in.  I might be able to spare Dom a slow death, but I don’t think mine will be pretty.  I’m such a fool.  I’ve killed us both.”
     
     

 
     
     
     
    Chapter 8
     
    James snarled angrily.  “What do you mean?  We’re not going to let you be killed, or your son.  John and I are both cops.  They can’t kill you.  It’s against the law.”
    Rue pulled her chin free of John’s grasp and looked at James with a snort.  “If they think for a moment that I’ve ratted them out to the police, they’ll take off faster than you can blink, and Dom will be tortured.”
    James looked at John, who in turn looked at him helplessly.  James didn’t like feeling impotent.
    He asked John for his cell phone and John handed it over.  Scrolling through the contact list, James found Dag and dialed the number.  “Hi Dag, it’s James.  Can you