Danika.
width="1em" align="justify">Unlike the others, she wasn't shackled or muzzled. No, the pistol pressed to the back of her head was enough to ensure she didn't fight or flee her captors.
Her long blond hair hung limp over her face as she shuffled ahead of Reiver's thug, little Connor held tight in her arms. Malcolm's heart lurched as her stricken gaze lit on him through the crowd. There was apology in her moist blue eyes, a regretful twist to her pale lips.
Before Malcolm could react-before he could calculate the terrible risks of wheeling on Reiver and his associates and hoping to take them out before the guard with the gun on Danika pulled the trigger-Thane and two other guards pounced on him. Dani screamed, and it nearly undid him to hear the terror and worry in her voice. Worry for him, when it was his personal need for retribution that brought them both to this awful moment.
The cold metal nose of Thane's loaded nine-millimeter jabbed hard and ready to fire into Mal's temple. "Don't do anything stupid, asshole."
Malcolm roared, but it was impotent rage. He couldn't attempt to throw off his captors. He couldn't do anything-not so long as Danika and her baby were at equal risk as he. "Thane, you goddamn bastard. I'll kill you too, before this is over."
The guard seemed unfazed, keeping a steady hand on the weapon poised to blow Malcolm's brain out of his skull. One of the other guards stripped Mal of his Glocks and pocketed them.
While Reiver's associates inched away, he strode forward, slowly shaking his head. "You lied to me. You betrayed my trust." He paused in front of Malcolm, seething with thinly held malice. "You could have risen far in my service. I thought that's what you were aiming for, Brandogge. So, the only question I have is, why would you be so fucking stupid to cross me now?"
Malcolm growled his reply. "I'm not your dog. I've never been your anything, you arrogant son of a bitch." He could see the flicker of confusion in Reiver's dark eyes, and he kept going, glad to finally voice his intentions. "I've been waiting for the chance to kill you and your blood club cronies ever since your pimp in Edinburgh told me your name."
Reiver's confusion deepened, turned to uncertainty and a sick look of surprise. "My pimp?"
"Aye," Mal ground out. "The human rubbish who'd been supplying game for your sick gatherings. The same human offal who grabbed a young woman off the street in Edinburgh seven months ago for the purpose of selling her to you."
Reiver scoffed. "Am I to fret over every ant that gets crushed under a boot heel? Or mourn every beast sent to the abattoir? This is no different, except it's us on the top of the food chain, not mankind."
"She was a Breedmate," Malcolm hissed. "And she was newly pregnant. She put up a fight with your supplier. He killed her. My mate, my unborn child."
Reiver's bark of laughter erup [laumy unbted out of him. "All this for a female, Brandogge? And a dead one besides?" His cruel gaze slid to Danika. "And now this other one too? What does she mean to you?"
"Leave her out of this," Mal snarled. "She has nothing to do with it."
"Oh, but she does." Reiver's eyes turned brutal, sparking with amber. "She matters to you, and that means she and her brat will suffer worse than you now. Pity you won't live to see that." He glanced to Thane. "Kill him."
The icy metal of the gun bit harder into Mal's temple, Thane's finger on the trigger.
Then, in a blur of movement and speed, he pivoted, firing instead on the guard holding Danika.
The guard went down, head blasted apart. Chaos erupted. Reiver's cronies scattered as Thane shot one of the guards on Malcolm and Mal snapped the neck of the other.
"Dani, run!" he shouted, grabbing his weapons from the dead vampire and wheeling around to fire a hell storm of bullets into Reiver.
Too late.
Reiver was already on her.
Malcolm's vision burned amber hot as he raised both loaded Glocks and aimed them in the center of Reiver's sneering face.
Except it wasn't Reiver's face he saw down the barrels of his guns ...
Ah, Christ.
It was Danika's baby boy, wailing and squirming, dangling by the pudgy little arm that Reiver clutched tight in his fist. In his other hand, Reiver held a fistful of Danika's hair. She struggled against his brutal hold, her eyes wild with horror, hands reaching for her squalling child.
Reiver's smile was a deadly baring of his fangs. "You lose, Brandogge."
Chapter Nine
Danika could hardly breathe for the fear that gripped her as she watched Connor flailing in Reiver's cruel grasp. Her own pain meant nothing, her own panic and regret-none of it mattered when her child's life literally hung in the balance.
And Malcolm.