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“Get the fuck out of my way, bitch!” bellowed an angry male voice, the words slurring drunkenly. “I know you’ve got my boy hidden away in here, and I’m taking him back where he belongs right thefucknow!”
On the far side of the dining room table, Tony blanched, swaying in place as all the blood drained from his face in terror.
SIXTY-SIX
Zalen
“NAT! GET LUCA AND TONYinto the basement and lock the door!” I snapped, already in motion. Emiel and Byron were practically treading on my heels as all three of us skidded into the hallway and charged toward the front entryway.
Ahead of us, Mia let out an angry shriek, and red closed around the edges of my vision. Emiel let out a snarl and somehow managed to shoulder past me, moving faster than anyone that size should be able to move.
Let this asshole set one single foot past my threshold,I thought, all of my pent-up rage over Tony’s abuse rising in a hot wave.Let him have made it one single step inside the house.
Missouri employed the castle doctrine, allowing any means of defense necessary to resist an intruder inside a private residence—up to and including deadly force. For many years, the law hadn’t applied to properties owned by alphas, but as of 2008,it did.
“Get out of our house!” Mia was yelling. “Get out!”
She was standing with her back to the entryway wall, hands outstretched for balance as though she’d been hurled there with force. David Scalise stood two steps inside the wide-open door. Four parallel scratch marks from Mia’s nails decorated his left cheek, and those sluggishly bleeding lines were almostas satisfying as the startled grunt he made when Emiel grabbed him by the throat and slammed him backward against the small table where we kept our keys, shattering its spindly legs into matchwood.
I grasped Mia’s hand and tugged her to safety, handing her off to Byron.
“You,” Emiel growled, one meaty hand pinning Tony’s tormenter to the wall by his neck.
“I’ll go call nine-one-one!” Mia said shakily, heading deeper into the house.
Toward safety, I thought, some of the hard tension in my shoulders easing. But then she met Luca coming the other way at a fast jog, his green eyes wide with alarm.
Byron grabbed Luca’s arm, pulling him to a stop. “No—stay back!”
My tension returned full force. “Luca! I thought I told you to get in the basement!”
Luca tugged his arm free, his mouth set in a grim line. “You did,” he said past clenched teeth. “But Emiel’s gonna kill this shithead unless someone stops him.”
On cue, rough choking noises penetrated my awareness.
Let him do it, whispered a little voice in my hindbrain—the one that craved some kind of justice for all the atrocities I hadn’t been able to prevent over the years. Luca slipped past me. He made a beeline for the huge alpha, who was crackling with anger as he strangled the life out of a pedophile in my front entryway.
“Emiel,” Luca murmured, wrapping his fingers fearlessly around his mate’s bulging bicep. “Enough. This won’t make it better... and you’re scaring me.”
Emiel instantly jerked his hand away, as though David Scalise’s skin had become red hot. He gasped as he took several stumbling steps back, with Luca still firmly attached to his side.
“Damn,” Byron said. “Just when I was starting to enjoy the show.”
Scalise staggered upright, coughing, with murder in his bloodshot eyes. The smell of whiskey surrounded him in a stale cloud. He took one threatening step forward, and I blocked him, feeling my molars grinding together so hard that I was going to need to schedule a dentist visit when this was done.