Page 12

“Stay close,” I say gently, opening the door and checking the hall. I feel her small hands grip the back of my shirt, and without hesitation, I reach down and hold her hand firmly. Together, we hurry towards the stairs leading to the ground floor.

However, the moment we step onto the staircase, the piercing sound of gunfire shatters the air. Instinctively, I push Tandi back behind a wall, pain sears through my shoulder as a bullet strikes me.

“Stay down and stay hidden,” I growl, my voice filled with urgency. My clothes tear as I shift, my body transforming into that of my Lycan. I launch myself down the steps, attacking with ferocity as the mindlink opens up.

“We heard shots,” Dustin’s voice echoes in my mind.

“Get Liam in here,” I command, slashing my claws across the throat of one of our assailants.

Blood sprays across the walls as another gunshot finds its mark, hitting me in the hip.

With the adrenaline pumping through my veins, I barely feel it and rush through the closest door, as gunshots suddenly ring out.

‘Liam!’ I scream desperately through the mindlink, knowing that I can’t take on all of them when they are armed and I can’t see them all. Panic surges within me as I duck behind a bed, bullets whistling above my head as they tear through the walls. And then I hear him.

“Yoo-hoo, Ladies,” Liam’s voice calls out from the hallway, his tone oddly playful. I lift my head slightly, peering through the half-blown-out wall. From the gaps, I can see around four or five men in the hall holding guns.

“Get out of here, you’ll be refunded,” one of the security guards says.

“But I’m not here for the girls,” Liam responds, his voice filled with mischief.

It almost sounds as if he is pouting. The guards point their guns in his direction, ready to aim.

Sensing an opportunity, I get onto my hands and knees, waiting for the guard closest to the door to turn fully towards Liam. What the fuck is Liam up to?

“State your business! Why are you here?” a gruff voice demands.

“For you, of course,” Liam chuckles, his voice carrying a devilish undertone.

Suddenly, the guard nearest to the door drops to the ground, a knife lodged in his throat and he gurgles a breath.

Chaos erupts, and in the midst of it all, Liam’s laughter echoes through the air.

Seizing the moment, I lunge at the guards, crashing through the wall and tackling one.

“She’s upstairs, Dustin!” I call out urgently, my fists connecting with another guard’s face as Dustin blurs past me, effortlessly leaping over my hulking form.

Gripping the man’s head between my hands, I twist with a swift motion, snapping his neck before pouncing on another.

“Find them!” Liam yells over the noise as I take down the man.

With Liam keeping them busy, I hunt for Dustin and my mate, only to find them upstairs trying to find another way down.

“Clear,” Dustin yells, storming into the room, his gun at the ready and I duck just as he fires at me, not hearing me come through the side door of the room they’re in. He lets out a breath. “Warning next time, I nearly fuck shot you,” Dustin growls.

“We need to go, now!” I growl, shifting back to my human form. Bullets riddled Lycan form, but none had penetrated my organs thankfully, though I can feel some in me, my body healing before I can remove them.

‘Lamby, we got company!’ Liam warns through the mindlink.

‘Don’t call me Lamby!’ I growl, hating that nickname, I had a stuffed lamb plushie as a kid that I still have, and Liam likes to taunt me for it, like I don’t know if he still has Dustin’s stuffed teddy from when he found Dustin as a kid. I grab Tandi’s hand.

“Move!” I yell at her, not bothering with niceties as I limp down the staircase from the bullet still lodged in my hip grinding against bone.

“You good?” Liam asks, wiping the blood from his knife as he peers up the stairs where I can hear footsteps rushing toward us from some higher up levels.

“They’re from next door, there is a bridge that links the two buildings,” Tandi says, peering up at the roof.

“Fuck, let’s go,” I grunt.

Liam’s eyes drop to us and his eyes widen at the sight of us as he takes us in but wisely says nothing as he jerks his head towards the door. But I see the worry on his face as he glances at the kid in Tandi’s arms.

“Go, I’ll distract them,” Liam announces, racing past us and down the stairs.

“Liam!” I roar after him but he merely waves a hand over his shoulder before disappearing.

“We need to go,” Dustin urges, shoving me out the door first before ushering Tandi and her son out next. Damian hesitates, and I know he wants to help Liam.

“Now Damian, Liam will kill me if I let you run in after him, he can handle himself,” I remind him, and he nods rushing out too.

Bullets whiz past us, as we rush across the parking lot, only to hear someone hit the ground, causing us to glance up at the shooters on the roof.

Liam has their attention as he tosses one off the roof.

Dustin and I don’t break stride, reaching the car while simultaneously using our bodies to shield Tandi and her son.

“Black one,” Dustin tells her, hitting the key fob.

I open the rear door, shoving her in, and Dustin jumps in the front.

He revs the engine to life as I climb before peeling away from the brothel.

“What about Liam?” Tandi asks, and I growl when I catch her staring out the rear window.

“He’ll be fine, the prick has nine lives, stay down!” I tell her before digging my claws into my shoulder, trying to remove the bullet lodged there.

“Yeah I swear that man was supposed to be a cat,” Dustin chuckles when Tandi shrieks, seeing blood spurt from my shoulder as I remove it. Then, I twist, looking for the one buried in my ribs making them throb.

“You’re bleeding!” she panics.

“Stay down,” I growl, shoving her body back down. “I’ll heal, keep him covered,” I mutter.

“But!”

I glare at her over my shoulder. “Not the time,” I growl as the bullet finally gives way between my fingers, it pops, making me gasp. Before I can say anything else, my vision blurs, and the world tilts and then goes black.

I wake up Goddess only knows how long later with Liam peering over the top of me, his knife digging the bullets out of me. I hear a clink of metal on metal. “Fuck, another,” Liam says to someone.

“Try not to break it,” Dustin says, as my eyes open to see him peering over Liam’s shoulder.

“Fuck, you took some metal,” Liam laughs, and Dustin lets out a breath. Sitting up, I peer around trying to remember what happened, when I’m suddenly on my feet looking for my mate. Dustin wanders to the couch, falling on it.

“Where is she?” I panic.

“Tandi’s in the shower,” Dustin says, pointing to the bathroom door.

“Where are we?” I ask, clutching my head, not recognizing the room.

“Not far from home, we drove through most of the night, only stopping for gas and now to get the rest of those bullets out of you,” Dustin explains.

“You aren’t as bulletproof as you thought. Your Lycan took a lot, but you healed too quickly, leaving half these fuckers in ya.” Liam holds up a bullet and then shows me another. I realize they are wolfsbane pellets. Fuck.

Leaning back against the headboard, my eyes move to Dustin.

“We can’t stay long, we need to get back home,” I tell him, and he nods when Hunter stirs. He cries out, making us all jump. Dustin peers over his shoulder, and I notice the boy sitting up on the bed, rubbing his eyes.

Hunter peers around at us, all staring at him before opening his mouth and screaming for his mother.

I force myself up and grab him only for him to let out an ear-piercing scream just as I hear the water cut off.

“Shh, she’ll be back, I won’t hurt you,” I tell the kid, sitting him on my hip as I hunt for his bottle in the blankets.

Liam finds and snatches it, rushing off.

“See, Uncle Liam will make you another one,” I tell him, and he calms down just as Tandi comes bursting through the bathroom door in a panic.

“What did you do to him!?” she shrieks, rushing over to take him.

Maybe it’s the fact that I took several bullets, or perhaps it’s because I’ve had a long day but I don’t like her tone or her implication that I was hurting her son.

She snatches him from me, and I am about to protest when she suddenly slaps my face.

Blood fills my mouth as my head whips to the side, and I hear Dustin gasp at what she did just. Just then, I see Liam stop at the door in shock with a bottle in his hand.

“You don’t touch my son,” Tandi sneers at me before turning her attention to her son and checking him over like she seriously thought I hurt him. I grit my teeth.

“Liam!” I force out between my teeth, and he rushes forward with Hunter’s bottle.

“How about Uncle Liam take the brat,” Liam says, not giving her a choice when he plucks him out of her arms.

“Hey, what do you…” her words cut off, and Liam rushes out of the room with him as I grab her.

“You dare fucking hit! What the fuck,” I growl in her face. “I was trying to comfort him, what is your freaking problem?”

“He’s not yours to comfort!” she snaps, yanking out of my grip, but my arm wraps around her waist, crushing her against me. She thrashes.

“Damian?” Dustin asks, and I cut a glare at him. He lifts his hand, backing out of the room as I start walking her backward toward the bed.

He knows I won’t hurt her but I also won’t tolerate her hitting me. I slam her down on the bed as she tries to cover herself. She whimpers as I tower over her.

“You can’t just…ouch,” she whimpers as I push her wrists above her head with one hand and squeeze her thigh to keep her in place.

“You better fucking apologize for that,” I growl in her face as she cowers back as my grip on her wrists tightens.

“Ow, you’re hurting me,” she whines and I squeeze a little harder before growling.

“Apologize!”

She whimpers but meets my glare with her own. “I’ll apologize when you stop manhandling me,” she snaps back and I let go of her wrists, grabbing her chin instead between my fingers.

“I said apologize!”

“How was I supposed to know you weren’t hurting him, he was crying, and I came out to find you holding him!”

“That is not an apology!”

“Fine, fuck you! Now get off me!” she spits in my face.

I clench my teeth. Suddenly, my senses are filled with the taste of her saliva as it mixes with my blood.

I feel the warm fluid of her spit on my face and growl, earning a wide-eyed and petrified stare from her.

Yet, that doesn’t stop the fact that I somehow feel turned on by her defiance.

I wipe my face with my hand and she uses that slight movement to try to escape and scramble out from under me, but I’m faster.

I grab her ankle, only she kicks at me, making me grunt.

I reach out, only managing to grab and tear the towel from her body.

“Fine, you want to play it this way!” I snarl, reaching for her, dragging her closer, and pressing my weight down on her. She thrashes beneath me, trying to toss me off before exhausting herself when she realizes it is pointless fighting me.

Yet the feel of her naked skin touching my bare chest makes me look down, taking in the way her breasts heave with every breath she takes, the flush on her cheeks from both arousal and anger as sparks course all over where her skin touches mine.

She looks away from me, biting her lower lip as she tries to hide how affected she is by this situation.

But I can see it all over her body language - the quickened breathing, the dilated pupils, the way she’s attempting to hide from me, she may hate me but she feels the bond as strongly as I do.

She squirms under my gaze, and I can almost taste her desperation to escape in the air.

My teeth elongate as a snarl tears from me. I notice the tears pricking her eyes before she clenches them shut with a whimper.

Her body tenses underneath mine, bracing for something she doesn’t want but believes is inevitable.

“You can fight it all you want, but that won’t change the fact that we are destined to be together, I can smell your arousal just as clearly as I can smell your fear. So, shall we stop fighting or do I really have to make you submit?”

“If you are going to mate me, do it. Stop playing around and get it over with!” she hisses, causing me to growl again, this time in frustration. I lean close to her ear and whisper.

“I am not a mindless beast to mate you for the sake of the bond, you may think it but I won’t force myself on you.”

She turns her gaze to meet mine, and I thrust my hips against her heat, she gasps.

“Not that I couldn’t if I wanted to,” I warn her. Her lip quivers and she nods once averting her gaze. “However, I am not a monster,” I tell her.

But I can’t help myself, lowering my head I lick the blood from her neck where I accidentally scratched her, and she tastes even better than I imagined.

My body comes to life against her thigh and she moans at the feel of my tongue on her body.

Pulling back, I watch her neck heal, her eyes glazed over in lust from the endorphins in my saliva healing her.

“Never slap me again, or I won’t be held responsible for my actions. Understood?”

“Y-yes,” she stutters, her voice breathy from the lust coursing through her veins. I could have taken her right then and there, but I don’t want it like this.

“If you ever question my intentions again, I won’t be so nice,” I growl, her breathing heavy as she pants.

“Fine, I apologize for accusing you of hurting him…” she stammers out, and I can tell she doesn’t mean it, but a small part of me still accepts it, knowing she probably knows nothing but cruelty.

Pulling back, I stare at her for a second, then let her go.

She scurries off the bed, grabbing her discarded towel and wrapping it around her naked figure.

“Get dressed, we are leaving soon,” I tell her, and she storms off to the bathroom, slamming the door.