“You have killed my daughter!” she said in horror. “My daughter is dead!”
CHAPTER SIX
Standing over the body of his cousin, Lucan palmed a knife and pointed it toward the other wolven who was hiding in the bushes off the shoulder of the road. In his peripheral vision, he measured the progress of the approaching cars that were no doubt full of guards—but mostly, he noted the shadowy movement around the Monte Carlo. Someone was getting stuffed in the back—Kane. And then Apex slammed the door shut and barked at the window.
Rio better be getting behind that wheel. Belting herself in. Cranking the engine on and hitting the fucking gas.
No engine. Not yet.Fuck.
“You don’t want to do this,” he told the wolven who remained hidden. Then he nodded off into the distance. “There’s company coming. And a fight between you and me is going to guarantee that you meet my friends in uniforms. You’re not going to like them.”
There was a rustling, and then the other male revealed himself in his bare naked, two-legged form.
Oh, great. But he wasn’t surprised: “Callum.”
“Lucan, cousin mine.” The male’s eyes went up and down, not that he hadn’t already done a full inventory of his opponent. With a fighter like him, those kinds of assessments were instantaneous. “You’re just as I remember.”
“Likewise.” Lucan sank down into his thighs and brought the knife to chest level. “You don’t want to do this.”
There was zero chance that fine piece of advice was going to be taken. Callum was the oldest of the three who had framed Lucan, and the male was still powerfully built and, as always, uncompromising, his flexibility that of an anvil. An I-beam. The front grille of a tank. With white hair and glowing ice-blue eyes, he was moonlight made corporeal—and imbued with the aggression of a charging bull.
The good news? He hadn’t brought up a weapon. And given that he was naked, Mother Nature provided only one concealed-carry holster, and there was no reason to think that—
Abruptly, the wolven turned his back on Lucan and focused on the approaching vehicles. Then, without another word, he leaped back into the cover of the bushes, making no sound.
As the shadows consumed the male, Lucan looked down at the dying wolven before him. In his fantasies, he had seen his cousins kicking the bucket in horrible ways—so this should have been a good thing, an outcome that was easy to move on from.
“Fuck.”
He had a mate to protect, friends to save, and a fight that was rolling up on him. He needed to take cover, get a gun back, and pray that somehow they could hold out long enough to do mortal damage to this particular squad of guards.
Before the next group showed up.
Why the fuck wasn’t he moving.“Fuck.”
Against everything that made any sense, he shoved his knife into his waistband, bent over, and picked up the wolven who had betrayed him and framed him for murder. As he marched down the embankmentwith the body, he cursed his DNA. Pack animals found it nearly impossible to leave someone from their clan behind. Even when there were reasons why they should never, ever give a goddamn about that relative.
He didn’t make it to goal.
Before he reached the Monte Carlo, the lineup of blacked-out SUVs arrived and the shooting started, the guards firing off rounds even before the vehicles braked. As bullets whizzed by Lucan’s head, he ducked and weaved as best he could, while his cousin’s loose limbs flopped around and made balance the kind of challenge he didn’t need.
Plus Jesus, the sonofabitch had been a member of the clean plate club. His cousin weighed as much as a piano.
Rio’s voice was loud and welcome: “I’m covering you!”
It was the sweetest thing his mate had ever said to him, and man, she had good aim. The instant she started firing, the high-pitched pings of bullets hitting steel panels were a symphony to his ears, and they were also a game changer: Incoming fire stopped altogether.
Not that that was going to last.
His boots grabbed for traction as he rounded the trunk of the car that he’d stolen a lifetime ago, and as soon as he had cover, he all but tossed his cousin’s body to the ground like it was a log.
A sharp whistle brought his head around, and Apex threw him something. Oh, look. Fucking Christmas.
Lucan caught the gun he’d given the male and didn’t check to see how many bullets were in the magazine. He just popped off rounds as his mate did the same—while Apex jumped in the back of the car and moved those two injured males down in their seats.
“I’m out of bullets,” Rio said.
This was announced just as Lucan squeezed his own trigger and came up with a big, fat nothing. And the guards were no dummies. The instant there was a breather in the ammunition shower coming at them,they got their lead back on, the Monte Carlo now functioning as a bunker, all kinds of metallic drumroll making Lucan wonder how long it was going to take for that gas tank to get hit and light them all up like a Roman candle.