Page 71 of The Forsaken Heir

The guy then leaned down, resting an elbow on the open window, a universal douchebag pose.

“Boy, do you know who I am?” Carlisle asked.

Anger flashed in Freddy’s eyes. “I don’t give a shit who you are. I’m Frederique Laurent. You work for me . Can you please move your car out of the way and let me and my companions in the other car continue our business?”

“See, that’s the thing,” Carlisle drawled, wholly unconcerned.

“I actually don’t work for you. I work for Bastien Laurent.

You’re just the little brother who’s never done much but catch himself a cute piece of ass he’s gonna marry in a week or so.

The real power of the family gets to order me around. Not some limp dick little rich boy.”

This is not good . Not good at all .

The other men had moved quietly until they surrounded the car, watching us with a strange combination of malevolence and boredom.

“How dare you talk to me like that? I’ll?—”

“You ain’t gonna do nothing,” Carlisle said lazily.

“My real boss told us to be on the lookout for anything weird. And this right here? Weird as fuck.” He shrugged.

“Listen. Why don’t you and your boy here hop on out and tell your friends to hop on out of their vehicle, and we’ll get this all sorted out. ”

“Mr. Bouchard…uh, Carlisle, can’t we talk about this?” Freddy asked, and that sentence alone let me know we were fucked. He’d given away all his power, had cowed down to the other man. Freddy Laurent was honorable, brave, and kind, but he was not a good liar or actor.

“We will talk about it,” Carlisle said with a shit-eating grin. “When you get out of the car. Let’s go,” he said, and actually opened Freddy’s door. “Hop on out boys.”

Sweat coated my palms as I glanced sideways at Freddy. His eyes were wide with fear.

Men moved forward quickly. I did my best to jerk my hat down low on my forehead to try and cover my face as I stepped out. One of the security guards nudged me toward the front of the car, near the headlights. Freddy stepped out and walked over to join us.

“What you all need to do,” Freddy said, trying to raise his voice to a commanding tone, “is let us go. Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

Ignoring him, Carlisle reached forward and rubbed the patch on Freddy’s coveralls.

“Again, Mr. Laurent, why are you and three randos out here at midnight?”

“I told you,” Freddy said through gritted teeth. “I’m, uh, learning about the family businesses.”

“Sure, sure,” Carlisle said, nodding along as though listening to a boring campfire tale. “How about you tell us the truth? You can do that, can’t you?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Freddy shouted, and now he was actually angry. More pissed than scared. “I am telling the truth.”

“Let’s do this,” Carlisle said and lifted his sunglasses again, eyeing Freddy with cold, gray eyes. “We’ll tell a little tale, and then you can tell me what you think. Cool?”

Freddy shook his head, obviously confused. “What?”

“What would you do if I told you, that about ninety minutes ago, a very high-profile prisoner escaped from the Laurent mansion?”

Nicolas and Julian stiffened beside me, and my heart thundered in my chest. Fuck .

“Not only that,” Carlisle said, “but a certain little brother and a couple of healers also went missing around the same time. Ain’t that weird?”

“Wait,” Freddy managed, his voice dangerously high-pitched with fear. “Are, uh, are you saying Prince Aurelius has escaped?” He let out an off-kilter laugh. “You think I helped him get out? That’s…well, that’s crazy.”

Carlisle nodded, grinning along with Freddy.

“It is. It sure is. Yet”—he threw an arm around Freddy’s shoulders.

“I get a call from the gate guard of this facility telling me Freddy Laurent has just rolled up with two other guys to dump some trash. What’s strange, Mr. Laurent, isn’t that you’re here.

” Carlisle shrugged. “Rich people doing rich people shit isn’t my problem.

Maybe you like to get your hands dirty doing the little people work and then go home to jerk off thinking about what a good, hard worker you are.

I don’t give a fuck about that. What I do give a fuck about, is the fact that when you entered the gates here, there were three of you. Now, there are four.”

Carlisle’s grin stayed glued to his face, but there was no mirth there, only predatory tension. His eyes were cold and locked in, like a falcon eyeballing a rat, swooping in for a kill.

“Who’s this big motherfucker over here?” Carlisle asked, pointing at me. “Of the four of you, he sticks out like a sore thumb, don’t he?”

“You need to listen to me,” Freddy said, his face gleaming in the headlights from the sweat pouring down his cheeks. “I am Frederique Laurent, and I’m commanding you to?—”

Carlisle lunged forward and slapped the hat from my head. A ripple of understanding went through the group of security guards as they all recognized my face.

“Well, well, well,” Carlisle said, smiling so wide it looked like his head might split apart. “Caught us a big fish, didn’t we boys?” He leaned close to me, eyeing me through his sunglasses. “Or should I say a big dragon ?”

Those stupid fucking sunglasses went flying off the man’s face. I slammed my fist into the underside of his jaw. His teeth clacked together, and a single tooth went pinwheeling out of his mouth, along with a thin stream of blood.

He tilted over and hit the ground. There was a single moment of suspended disbelief on everyone’s faces as the security team and my companions stared down at Carlisle’s inert, snoring, and unconscious form, blood oozing from the corner of his mouth.

The moment hung like that, balanced on the precipice of chaos for one second, then we tumbled over, crashing into a tumult of madness.

“ Shit ,” Freddy cried and shifted.

The mechanical clack-clack of cocking machine guns, shouts of the security men, and Freddy’s howl of defiance turned the night into a blistering soundscape.

“Get down, motherfuckers!” one of the security guards shouted as he aimed his gun at us.

Nicolas jumped forward and kicked the gun out of the man’s hand. The two of them tumbled to the ground, shifting to their wolf forms in a storm of snarling mouths, gnashing teeth, and ripping claws.

The pop of gunfire and the growls of wolves erupted in the night. Shifters preferred fighting in their animal forms, but in situations like these, guns were sometimes better. You could rain death down with silver bullets from a safe distance rather than get close and use teeth and claws.

Taking Nicolas’s lead, I kicked the guard who rushed me in the stomach.

He toppled over. Behind me, Julian let out a curse.

When I turned, I found him in a chokehold.

Moving fast, I aimed a fist at the guard’s face, but he saw it coming and turned his head, my fist glancing off his jaw.

He winced and pulled away just enough for Julian to get free.

Before I could do more than blink, a heavy, furry body slammed into my back, sending me sprawling on the ground.

Hot, wolf breath hissed along my back, and teeth grazed my skin, trying to find purchase at the back of my neck.

I screamed out to my dragon, desperate for any help he might be able to give.

There was the familiar ache as my fingers extended into sharp dragon talons that could do serious damage.

My mouth became too full, and it took half a second before I realized my teeth had elongated and sharpened.

I’d half-shifted before, but never anything like this.

I mentally thanked my dragon and spun around, slashing the wolf across its belly and chest. The creature rolled away and yelped in agony as it thrashed around.

A bullet ricocheted off the pavement a few inches from my face, sending dirt and a fine spray of vaporized asphalt into my cheek.

The man who’d fired, swung the gun an inch over, zeroing in on me, but before he could fire again, Nicolas’s wolf slammed into his side, his teeth sinking deep into his neck.

Before the guard had time to react, Nicolas tore his throat out.

Jumping to my feet, I batted aside another wolf who tried to bite into my arm, but as I did, another caught me from behind, sinking its teeth into my calf.

A cry of pain and rage erupted from my throat.

Turning, I reared back to swat at its eyes with my claws, but before I could, the beast’s head burst apart in a spray of blood and bone.

Shocked, I looked up and found Julian holding a smoking pistol in his left hand.

“Where did you get that?” I barked, the words muffled behind the huge fangs protruding from my gums.

Julian shrugged and ducked behind our car. “You shifters always rely on teeth and claws, but silver works pretty well,” he said as he opened fire on a group of wolves rushing us.

I looked around, trying to make sense of the chaos.

I couldn’t see Freddy, but I could hear the cacophonous sound of wolves fighting in the darkness beyond the headlights.

I had to hope he was okay. I assumed they wouldn’t kill him, but the guy Nicolas killed had been seconds away from blowing my brains out, and they needed me as a hostage to garner support, which probably meant anything was on the table.

Carlisle struggled to his feet, the sounds of gunfire and howls tearing him out of unconsciousness.

The man stumbled toward his car. A sudden realization hit me.

He was going for a radio or cell phone to call in reinforcements.

I couldn’t let that happen. We were already outnumbered.

Any chance we had at escape would vanish.

I rushed at him and nearly caught him from behind, but I had to flinch back when bullets hit the ground in front of my feet. The man who’d fired, tumbled to the side, clutching his stomach as Julian sent a round into his gut.

“I’m out of ammo.”