Page 14 of Rejected By the Shifter King

Chapter Three

AT FIRST, EVERYTHINGwas black and white. There were Halloween decorations adorning the lightposts and the store fronts, but the jack-o'-lanterns only appeared in various shades of grey, and their candlelight glares were nothing but bright blazes of white.

The strangeness of it agitated him, and the sound of honking horns and screeching wheels began to fill the night as he thundered down the road in all fours, and drivers desperately swerved to avoid him.

The ground shook underneath him as he clawed to a stop, nails digging into the soil while his bestial gaze devoured his surroundings.

Steel gates hanging precariously from its last unbroken hinges. Flowers lining the hotel driveway. And an armored truck, with its doors flung open.

But no matter where he looked, she was not there, and he raised his horned head to better recapture her scent.

Ah.

Because she was and would always be his only mate in this lifetime, she possessed a fragrance that no one else would ever be able to duplicate. And this scent of hers, it was getting stronger.

Closer then.

He waited and prowled with anger-laced impatience, and just when he was ready to tear the house down with his bare hands, that was when they started leaping out. Men who reeked of evil but were too weak for the likes of him. Their hearts, which beat loudly against their chest, were like noisy targets that he could so easily skewer with a single claw.

Weak. Too damn weak.They interested him none at all, but just as he turned away, his mate's scent desperately swirled around him and her loud, erratic heartbeat sounded in his ears like a wordless, unconscious plea for help.

He swung back with a roar, and that was when he saw her, kicking and screaming as more of the masked men tried to force her into the armored truck.

Rage blazed from within.

And the beast inside him took over.

****

AT FIRST, TERROR ANDpain was all he could hear. Men he was hell-bent on killing for daring to hurt what was most precious to him. Their screams drowned everything else, and that was just fine with both man and beast. They liked hearing such creatures suffer, would've been glad to torture the men for hours until...

Lysander.

The voice was faint but familiar, and both man and beast stirred.

Can you hear me?

The sound beckoned.

Lysander? It's you, isn't it?

But its strength lied foremost in its unwavering, healing sweetness, with the way she spoke to him like he was no different from the man that had first glimpsed her eighteen-year-old self climbing down from a terrace.

Her voice wooed and tamed without meaning to, and the rage burning inside him responded to it, its flames gradually dissipating until the beast inside him had settled into a calmer, albeit watchful state, and his vision began to clear.

Multiple bodies around him littered the ground, bloodied and dismembered, but he felt no remorse. They had dared to harm what was his, and death was the penalty they had to—-

"Lysander?"