As Alice bent to try to comfort her, alarmed by the woman’s trembling, a large figure materialized from the far side of the bar and charged at her.
“Don’t you touch her!” the man roared, and Alice had only a moment to register the attack before he was driving into her.
Instinct and training drove her body, and without thinking, Alice was twisting and lifting and using all of his own forward momentum to throw him aside. Her beer bottle went flying across the floor, but didn’t break.
He was shifter strong and fast, if not a fighter, and it was only a heartbeat before he had rolled to his feet and was facing her, snarling.
Gizelle’s mate, Alice realized, from his protective defense of her. What was his
name? Connor?
Before Alice could explain that she wasn’t harming the gazelle shifter, another figure joined the fray, and she recognized Graham at once from his scent and his broad shoulders.
He went straight for Gizelle’s mate, an animal challenge rumbling from his chest as he inserted himself between Alice and her perceived threat.
Alice was moving before his fist could land, driving into him shoulder-first, so that his blow passed harmlessly through the air to one side of the other man’s face.
“Would you both stop being idiots?” she roared.
Graham lowered his fists and Gizelle’s mate paused, looking between the two of them, watching their mouths rather than looking at their eyes. Gizelle herself had shifted at some point, and was a tiny, trembling gazelle pressed up against the bar.
“Goddamn alpha morons,” Alice said between clenched teeth, planting her feet. “Take a moment to assess, will you? I’m not hurting Gizelle, and he’s not hurting me. Even if he wanted to, I am perfectly capable of defending myself. I don’t want your help.”
She didn’t want to admit how it felt, seeing Graham streak to her defense. Even as she protested it out loud, it had struck some unexpected nerve in her chest, knowing that someone would do that for her. It struck her that he could protect her, if she let him, and Alice wasn’t sure what to do with that idea.
She only knew that it frightened her, and made something uncomfortable happen beneath her breastbone.
Chapter 10
Graham let his hands fall to his side as Alice berated the two of them. Conall, frowning at her mouth as he lip read her tirade, relaxed. When Gizelle timidly put her muzzle into his hand, he gave a little shudder.
“I... apologize,” he said formally. “She was afraid and I reacted badly.” He knelt beside the gazelle, and she seamlessly shifted into her human form, arms around his neck as she sighed into the comfort of his embrace.
Graham realized he owed an apology as well, but scowling at Alice, he couldn’t find the words.
She didn’t want his protection.
She didn’t want anything from him.
And why should she? He didn’t have anything to offer her.
“S’okay,” Alice told Conall, after giving Graham a return scowl. “I think the earthquake scared her.”
Gizelle looked out from the shelter of Conall’s arms with big, frightened eyes. “They woke it up,” she said anxiously.
“Who, sweetheart?”
“The bad people without voices,” Gizelle said, then she buried her face in his chest and refused to speak.
Alice looked quizzically at them, then shook her head and went to collect her beer bottle, frowning at the wasted beer. “Okay then,” she said dismissively. “It was nice to meet you, I’m going to go find Mary and Amber and take a shower as soon as I’ve figured out what cottage I’m in.”
“Twenty-two,” Graham growled, grabbing a towel from behind the bar.
Alice gave him a hard look.
“You left your key,” he explained shortly as he went to mop up the spilled beer.
“Did you find my bra?” Alice asked, standing in his way with her hand outstretched for the towel.