Rigid and... strangely ferocious. She couldn’t put her finger on how, but it was like he suddenly had the narrowed, singular concentration that she had captured in hundreds of photographs—but only on the faces of animals, never on the faces of people. People just didn’t have that kind of primitive focus.
Unless they were Colby, apparently. He looked like a weapon: hard, sharp, and purposeful.
She put her hand on his arm and felt the muscles standing out. It was like his whole body was tensed.
“Colby?”
“You’ll want to take Mattie and your parents and go into the bathroom,” he said. His voice was unbelievably calm. “Take my phone. My boss is saved in it as Martin. Call him.”
Aria felt like she knew Colby by now. And anything that had him this tense meant genuine trouble.
He was right. She had to look out for Mattie and her parents.
But even as she nodded, even as she pocketed her cell phone, even as she herded her family off to safety, she couldn’t help but think about the look that she had seen in his eyes. In the one moment that that perfect, fierce concentration had slipped.
He’d looked like he was worried he’d never see her again.
8
Eli Hebbert didn’t waste any time.
When Colby had gone out to “establish the perimeter,” he had basically done a circuit of the house and yard to familiarize himself with the layout and, more importantly, the smells. He knew the scent of the goldenrod out back and the remains of weed-killer out front. His wolf understood that all of this was now partly their territory. They would fight to the death to protect what belonged to their mate.
And they would sure as hell know the second another wolf stepped onto their turf.
Eli and Weston Hebbert had crossed that line, and his wolf’s ears had pricked forward at once. Colby had felt its snarl.
Strangers, his wolf growled.
And he had thrown it into gear right then and there, getting Aria and her family out of the way. He knew he’d acted quickly.
But Eli was just as quick. Two enormous wolves broke Aria’s front door down within seconds of the Clarkes getting to safety.
Colby fired. The bright muzzle-flashes of his gun went off like fireworks, but none of it even slowed the Hebbert brothers down.
He was instantly buried under nearly two hundred pounds of savage timber wolf.
No wonder the bullets hadn’t even made a dent. Hebbert’s shaggy fur was so thick that it felt like its own kind of Kevlar armor.
To have any chance in this fight at all, he’d have to shift. It was a decision his hindbrain made instantaneously; before he even knew it, the world had turned into a gray and yellow wolf’s-eye landscape, one mapped out almost completely in scent and sound and feel.
And this time, they were equally matched.
Except for him being outnumbered, of course, but who was counting?
He surged against one of the wolves, snapping his jaws around whatever bit of him he could get. He ignored the lightning bolts of pain that seemed to strike him wherever Hebbert was able to bite him back. The pain could be compartmentalized. Nothing mattered as much as winning this fight.
His mate was in danger. Her child was in danger. He couldn’t lose.
He wouldn’t lose.
His opponent growled at him, his lips wrinkling back from his teeth, and Colby growled back, letting loose every primal instinct he’d ever felt, venting it in one furious rush.
He felt a kind of savage, primitive pleasure when the other wolf briefly cringed back, his ears folding slightly against his skull. For at least a second there, he’d recognized Colby as the dominant alpha. Even if he hadn’t meant to—even if he would rather die than do it consciously—he’d conceded, just a little. It was an advantage that Colby intended to press as far as possible.
But he knew immediately that the wolf that had just cowered before him was Weston Hebbert, not Eli. Not the alpha.
Because there was no mistaking the full, savage force of what crashed into him next.