The alpha’s hands slipped from her like they were made of water, and when Lynn was able to focus again, she saw that Ken had him up against a wall, one arm twisted up behind his back. The alpha was swearing a blue streak, but Ken’s voice cut sharply over him when he said, “Don’t touch her again.”
The room seemed to freeze for a moment. Lynn wondered if the others were afraid. Any fear she’d felt had vanished in the moment her mate made his presence known.
Ken kept the alpha in an armlock for a few more beats…and then stepped back and released him.
“Okay,” he said calmly, as though nothing had happened. “You’re going to let these women go now. We’re all going to head out and drive away, and no one’s going to be hurt.”
“Or what?” Todd got himself together enough to whine. He turned to Stella. “You think this is all over just because you brought your sister’s boyfriend to come try and beat me up?”
The alpha was shaking himself out, watching Ken with a bit of a bewildered look on his face, like he couldn’t understand what had just happened. Ken was staying between him and Lynn.
“I’m not her boyfriend,” Ken said. His voice was mild, but somehow it still carried throughout the room. The other men had started muttering to each other—when Lynn looked over, she saw that they’d stood up, no longer staring at the TV—but they fell silent when Ken spoke.
“I’m her mate,” Ken continued. “This is my family that you’re threatening. I don’t appreciate it when people threaten my family. I also don’t appreciate it when a man won’t let go of a woman when she wants to get away.”
“She doesn’t know what she wants,” Todd blustered.
Which was when Stella decided to speak up—with perfect timing, for once in her life. “Let me the hell go,” she snapped.
Todd looked over at her, startled, and his grip must have loosened, because Stella yanked her arm free and took several steps back. She didn’t seem to know what to do, though—she was eyeing Ken with a bit of wariness.
“Baby,” Todd said, “what are you doing? You said you wanted to stay with me. You promised.”
“I changed my mind,” Stella said, her voice shaky. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”
“Why not?” He took a step or two forward, and Stella took a step or two back. Ken was still standing easily, as though he was totally relaxed. But Lynn could—feel the readiness in him somehow.
Todd’s alpha finally seemed to get himself together. “Okay, that’s it,” he said. “Todd, quit whining and do something. Boys, this asshole and this interfering lynx need to get gone.”
The wolves moved.
But Ken moved faster.
Lynn had been prepared to shift. She couldn’t fight in human form, had never been trained like Ken had, but she could do some damage as a lynx. But if she shifted, so would the wolves, and those would be much, much worse odds.
But as it turned out, no one needed to shift. These men didn’t have the kind of deadly, focused attention that Ken brought. Before any of them had raised a hand, he’d knocked two of their heads together, leaving them slumped against the couch, rubbing their foreheads.
He did something complicated to the third one that left him doubled over clutching at one eye, and popped the fourth one in the solar plexus.
It was all quick, neat, and involved no blood or broken bones. Lynn had never seen a fight quite like it.
Stella took advantage of Todd’s distraction and broke for the door, and at a glance from Ken, Lynn followed.
Out in the cool night, Eva was waiting, hesitating by the door. “Come on, let’s get to the car,” Lynn said tersely, and hustled the two of them down the walk.
When she glanced back, Ken had appeared in the doorway, following more slowly. Keeping himself firmly between them and danger, Lynn understood.
Only Todd followed, though. And all he was doing was yelling.
But he yelled, “You can’t just leave like this, Stella! You’re going to regret it!”
Lynn sure hoped that wasn’t true.
She followed Stella and Eva to the car, and Ken must have been moving faster than he’d looked to be, because he arrived just as they were getting in. “We’re clear for the moment,” he told Lynn. “Drive.”
She put the key in the ignition and drove.
The fight was still replaying in her mind. It was so clear to her that Ken could easily have hurt those men very badly. Maybe even killed them—if he’d hit the one man in the throat instead of the solar plexus, for example.