Page 10 of Triumph of the Wolf (Magnetic Magic #6)

“Even if what you say is true, there are other buyers around.” Chad laughed shortly. “If what you say about the translation is true, the people I’m working with now might even buy it.”

Hell, was he legitimately up here on some kind of business? What business would have to do with werewolves? Most people didn’t even know our kind existed.

Chad took another step closer. “Why don’t you go get it, and we’ll sell it together? Even though I’m the one who found it, I admit that my means for retrieving it weren’t that ideal.”

“No shit.”

“Make things easier on me now, and I’ll cut you in. Half of what I make. I remember what you earn working your ass off here, that little pittance. I know you could use the money.”

My fingers curled into fists, the temptation to punch him rearing up again.

The suggestion that I had a problem with money angered me more than anything else he’d said.

He was the only reason I’d ended up in debt in the first place, and he was why the kids hadn’t had money for college when they’d been ready.

All along, I’d been putting some aside, saving it for them, and he’d stolen it before I’d ever spoken the word divorce .

“If you’re going to throw money around,” I said, “Cameron and Austin are the ones who could use it for school.”

Well, Austin had found another route now via the Air Force, but maybe Cameron would still like to go.

Chad glanced toward the parking lot, then focused on me again. “There’d be plenty for that. If you just get the case and bring it here. Don’t be selfish about it.”

“I told you that I gave it to its rightful owners.”

“I don’t believe you. You’ve never been a good liar.”

My knuckles tightened, my face red, and the first tingle of magic swept through my veins.

I swallowed, irritated that he was getting a rise out of me.

The last thing I wanted to do was change into a wolf in front of him.

Less because I cared if I lost myself to the moon magic and my wild instincts and more because I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing it.

“You turned into a wolf in front of Austin,” Chad whispered, as if he knew my thoughts. He could probably see the rage in my eyes, maybe even sense, in his mundane human way, that I was close to changing. “You never did for me.”

“I never needed to save you from kidnappers.” I wondered how much of the story Austin had shared.

Chad smiled tightly, not looking surprised—or concerned at all that Austin had been threatened. “It would have been handy for the debt collectors.”

“Which we wouldn’t have been harassed by if you hadn’t been keeping women on the side and been so infrequent with the money you brought in. If not for the so-called pittance I made here, we wouldn’t have gotten by at all.”

He watched my face as I glared at him, then inhaled, as if our confrontation was invigorating him. Did he have no idea how badly I wanted to punch him? That if he goaded me and I turned into the wolf, I might do much worse than punch him?

“You’re still sexy when you’re angry. You always were, but it’s more magnetic now.” He lifted a hand, as if to reach for my chest.

If he touched me…

“I always wanted this,” he said, his voice husky. Was the bastard aroused ? “Wanted the wolf,” he added.

“I know what you wanted, and you’re not getting it.

Leave now before I do something…” That I would regret?

That was the saying, but I wouldn’t regret it.

I would enjoy lashing out at him. Never in all the years we’d been married had I tried to hit him, but with my magic no longer sublimated, the pull to unleash my temper and my power was stronger than ever. “…that’ll get me arrested,” I finished.

Chad laughed. “You wouldn’t do that. You may be part animal, but you’re a good girl. You always obeyed the law. I just want to hear you howl.” He lifted a hand and touched my breast.

I punched him in the nose so hard that he flew backward. He cried out as he landed on his ass and rolled away.

“Shit, Luna!” he barked, jerking his hands to his face. “You broke my nose!”

I growled, tempted to spring upon him and break a lot more.

But I sensed Duncan running across the lawn toward us. I tried to still my anger, not wanting to lose my equanimity completely, to be an animal in front of him.

Still swearing, and oblivious to Duncan’s approach, Chad staggered to his feet. He gripped his nose with one hand, blood running freely down his face, and reached into his jacket with the other.

In all the years I’d known him, he hadn’t carried a weapon, so I hadn’t expected him to have one. But his fingers wrapped around the hilt of a revolver, and he drew it. He pointed it in the air rather than at me, but his eyes were locked on mine.

Not seeming to notice Duncan running toward us, he said, “Go get the case, Luna, or I’ll?—”

What he would have done, I didn’t find out. Duncan smashed into him like a cannonball. He roared, more like an animal than a man. With a start, I realized he was an animal.

As Duncan had run, he’d turned into the bipedfuris.

He not only took Chad to the ground, but he then snarled, sprang to his feet, grabbed Chad by the shoulder and the crotch, and hurled him over the first row of cars.

Chad bounced off the top of the SUV’s protective bubble, the gun flying from his grip to land halfway across the parking lot, and he came down with a thud on the pavement in the lane between cars.

I rushed toward Duncan, though my instincts made me want to stay back—if he was as wild and possessed by his magic as I sometimes was, he might not recognize me as an ally.

But he was about to spring after Chad, maybe finish him off.

As much as I detested my ex-husband, I couldn’t allow Duncan to murder the father of my children.

I grabbed his arm, sleek salt-and-pepper fur covering the taut powerful muscles there. “Stop, Duncan. Thanks for coming, but you can’t kill him.”

A groan came from the parking lot, and I feared more than Chad’s nose was broken.

Snarling again, Duncan crouched, barely seeming to notice me.

Grip tightening, I whispered, “Duncan, please. Stop. I’m fine.

I appreciate you coming to help, but I can take care of myself, okay?

You know a little handgun doesn’t faze me.

” I doubted Chad would have pointed it at me, not that Duncan had known that.

Chad had brought the weapon in case he needed to threaten me—or maybe he’d even wondered if he might need to defend himself against me if I turned wolf?

He hadn’t come to kill me. I didn’t believe that.

The bipedfuris didn’t spring away from me and toward Chad, but he seethed, radiating fury and power.

In this form, Duncan stood two feet taller than me, his torso and muscled limbs larger and stronger.

When his brown eyes swung toward me, they were wild and savage.

Fear shot through me. It was like when I lost my rational mind to the wolf magic and couldn’t tell friend from foe, could only follow wild, magic-driven instincts to lash out. To kill. Did Duncan even recognize me?

Though it felt like reaching toward a hissing rattlesnake, I lifted my free hand to his torso.

“It’s okay,” I said in my most soothing tone and stroked his furred chest.

Duncan’s muscles quivered with tension, but he didn’t leap away. He didn’t exactly relax either, but I kept stroking him and murmuring that things were fine, that he didn’t need to do anything else. I was safe.

Another groan came from the lane between the automobiles, and Chad peeked between the SUV and a car. Blood smeared his jaw and cheek, and he gripped one of his arms. He stared at Duncan and then at me, shock mixing with the pain in his eyes.

Had he known Duncan was a werewolf? Maybe not. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have known that Duncan could turn into a bipedfuris.

Another growl emanated from Duncan’s chest as his eyes locked onto Chad. Chad who was standing there, gaping like an idiot. What, was he fascinated by the appearance of a werewolf? Or too dumb to realize how much danger he was in?

“Get out of here,” I whispered harshly to Chad.

Duncan crouched, his tail twitching, his clawed fingers curling. The longing to rip Chad to pieces, something he absolutely had the power to do, hung in the air around him.

“He’ll kill you,” I added.

Maybe that realization finally sank into Chad’s thick skull because he nodded jerkily and backed away, moving out of view behind Bolin’s SUV. A curse that was more pain than vitriol came from him, followed by the thump of a car door.

Duncan’s tail twitched again. He didn’t appear as utterly savage now, but he did look like he longed for a release, maybe to go on a hunt.

But the direction of his eyes—pointed toward the sound of that car rather than toward the woods or the distant mountains—promised he wanted to hunt Chad, not an animal to enjoy for dinner.

The engine started, and I let out a sigh of relief as the car drove toward the exit. An unassuming brown Toyota, it had to be a rental vehicle. The passenger-side window was down, and someone unexpected gaped in our direction as Chad departed.

Cameron.