I couldn’t even shake my head. “No.”
“Deek may have survived this time, but I can have him sent to the front lines again, to a Hive mission where he’ll be captured and turned. Yes, that’s a fate worse than death, isn’t it?” He tossed me onto the floor like a rag doll and I could not defend myself, could not even tuck my head and roll. “But you’ll die first.”
Luckily, my body was mostly numb, but my head hit the hard marble floor and felt like an exploding melon.
A roar sounded from somewhere nearby. Opening my eyes was like shoving hot metal pokers into my mind, the light an explosion of pain. But I knew that roar. I knew that Atlan. That beast. And they were both mine.
***
Deek
Rygor and Westar escorted me to the back entrance of my home and we sneaked inside like burglars. They’d filled me in on the way, covering everything I’d been missing. The more I heard, the more my beast started to take over. I knew Tiffani was confronting Engel, trying to force a confession from him. I knew she was being monitored by both Atlan guards and Warlord Dax.
It wasn’t enough. My beast raged and my eyes remained a constant black as I fought to wrestle him down. Tiffani didn’t need my beast in a blind, killing rage. She needed me to think.
Which was fucking impossible when the only thing my beast could envision was Engel touching her, hurting her.
I rushed up the back stairwell to a room where Warlord Dax and three armed members of the Atlan guard watched my mate and Engel on a system of monitors. I knew they were recording every word, but I couldn’t hear any of it.
I watched as Tiffani smiled and sipped her wine, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Seeing her safe and whole helped calm my beast’s protective rage and I silently nudged Dax, forcing him to hand over his earpiece. I wanted to hear every fucking word.
Logic demanded that I let her finish what she’d started. If I interfered now, Engel would walk away to threaten us again and again. As long as he was alive and free, he was a lethal threat. As much as I hated this, Tiffani was right about that. We had to stop him, and we would need a confession to do it, something he couldn’t cover up. But if that asshole even looked like he was thinking about threatening my mate, I was going to rip him in half with my bare hands.
I scowled, stepping closer to the monitors as I heard Engel’s voice first. He held my great-grandmother’s necklace in his hands. Tiffani must have taken it off and handed it to him.
“No, it is not the same. The clasp is different. My grandmother’s necklace had her initials carved into the clasp.”
“Oh, no!” Tiffani put her hand on her chest and leaned back. “What magical chemical cocktail is in your gloves? Whatever will you do if you can’t destroy the evidence? Now everyone will know that you drugged your own cousin with Rush, that you are manufacturing the most hated drug on Atlan and selling it like candy.”
She set down her wine and my heart began to pound. What the fuck was she doing, taunting a cold-blooded killer like that? The room in which they sat was too far away. It would take me at least ten seconds at full speed to reach her. He could kill her by then.
Her voice poked and prodded him some more, and as much as I wanted to run to her side, I had to admire her courage. She was the bravest, most beautiful mate. And she was doing it all for me. Getting Engel to admit his crimes was the only way for me to be completely and irrevocably exonerated, and for us to live out the rest of our lives in peace.
“Poor big, bad councilor man, outwitted by a stupid, fat Earth girl. How humiliating.”
Tiffani pulled a blaster and I turned to Dax, who nodded and whispered, “Don’t worry, Deek. She knows how to use it.”
“What the fuck were you thinking, giving her a blaster?” I demanded. I didn’t want a weapon anywhere near her, even if it was in her own hands.
“You’d rather have her in there with him unarmed?” Dax shrugged. “She wasn’t supposed to pull it on him. It was supposed to be a last resort.”
“Fuck.”
Engel spoke and I returned my attention to the screen. “What do you think you’re going to do with that, Tiffani?”
“I’m just the stupid Earth girl, right? What am I going to do? Shoot you.”
I watched tears slide down Tiffani’s beautiful face. She was in pain. For me.
And then she threatened to kill him.
My heart froze, stone-cold ice flooding my veins. I didn’t fucking care if she killed him, he deserved to die. But she’d just threatened a warlord, a battle-hardened warrior who’d survived more than a decade in the Hive wars.
If she was going to kill him, she better fucking do it and stop talking.
I rushed for the door but Dax and one of the guards held me back. “Not yet, Deek. He’s about to confess. Don’t take this away from her.”
“He’ll fucking kill her.” My beast growled and I grew taller, my teeth aching as they burst forward, my gums retracting to reveal the razor-sharp edges.