Free Darkest Before Dawn (A Guardian's Diary Book 1) by Amelia Hutchins

yes, myself too.
    “Easy, lass,” he said as he moved to kneel beside me. The wind was rustling through the leaves as the sun began to slowly dip into the sunset. It was also blowing the stench of death to us from the open window, and blowing it out the front door, too. “What the—”
    “The couple in there, or at least I think it was only one couple. Can’t be sure, Lach, they are in bloody pieces. Looks like rogue wolves tore them apart,” the pale man said in a similar brogue to the leaders, his teeth chattering from the pain.
    “That’s nae good,” Lach said as he manhandled the trap and held it open. I looked at his hands, and up at his face. He wasn’t straining in the least, and this trap was exerting at least a hundred pounds of pressure.
    “A little further,” I said as I continued to watch his face. He was lighter skinned than my mystery man was, and his eyes were a deep shade of emerald. His muscles, which should have been straining, were the same sleek, muscular build. He had a tribal tattoo that went down his left flank, and dipped lower into his pants.
    “You gonna eye-fuck me lass, or help my brother?” he asked and watched me as I did just as he’d said.
    “I wasn’t eye-fucking you,” I retorted haughtily.
    “Ye were and I dinnae mind ye ken,” he argued.
    “I was sizing you up, and weighing my options.” I pulled the mangled ankle out of the trap, noting a few things.
    One: The man with the mangled ankle was regaining color, and hadn’t made a sound of discomfort since regaining consciousness.
    Two: His brother either had experience with traps, or deep inner strength…or both.
    Three: Someone had either replaced my eyeballs with permanent beer goggles, and it was making all of the men around here look like Greek Gods.
    Four: Or, my ovaries were on overdrive, making me hallucinate.
    “I think he passed oot again, lass,” he said with an annoyed look on his face.
    “It’s probably for the better,” I mumbled as I took in the damage. I placed the material around the injured flesh, which had somehow managed to already stop bleeding. My fingers trailed up the bone to see if there was a break in it, but if there was, it wasn’t palpable. “Are you seeing this?” I asked as the wound started to scab at the edges. Impossible! It took hours for wounds to dry enough to scab.
    “Lass,” he said and I lifted my eyes to his from where I’d been fascinated by the rapid healing. I met his eyes, and then rough hands grabbed my arms, and I was pulled up.
    “She’s only a baby! If you do anything to her, I will kill you!” I growled.
    “Hold her still Declan, Ian, careful nae to harm the bairn,” he said softly. “Let’s have a look beneath the mask.”
    “No!” I shouted, but the men behind me laughed. It wasn’t until a familiar voice rose over the laughter that I felt my anxiety escalate.
    “And what do we have here?”
    “Jaeden,” Lachlan said, as he looked from the mystery man and back at me. “Thought we’d find ye close tae here, smelled the stench of death all the way from my mountains in Montana.”
    “Lachlan, good to see you again, sort of hard not to smell death these days; seems to be about everywhere. And Montana, was it...really? Seems a little far from your homeland,” Jaeden snorted disbelievingly. For some reason, I wanted to test his name on my tongue as he had mine. “Now let poor Emma go. She doesn’t like to take off her mask,” he said as he winked one of his turquoise eyes at me.
    “Nae further than yours, Jaeden,” Lachlan growled. “She was in this house of death,” he said as his eyes landed on me and then my exposed arm where I’d ripped off the sleeve instead of undoing the makeshift baby sling to get the materials in my bag. “We followed the stench, which led us here. This was done by a rogue pack which seems tae be sticking around this area.”
    “We met a few of them yesterday in the hospital in Newport, didn’t we, sweet