Chapter 22
22
E nforcers lead the way outside the house, down the wide steps and into the backyard.
The pack stands in small clumps, feet from the forest where I saw Nathan minutes before. The grass is freezing under my bare toes, but the cold isn’t why I’m shivering.
It starts raining. A fine drizzle to go along with the heavy dread settling over me.
Adrian stops, which forces me to a sudden halt since he’s currently leading me along with a tight grip on my wrist. As his packmates form a circle around us, he turns to face me.
He’s smiling, pleased. There’s no evidence of the vicious, unpredictable man who lashed out at me so suddenly in the bedroom. “Remove your dress.”
I stare at him like a twit. “What?”
But I heard him. I heard him loud and clear.
There’s a full moon above and a traditional moon-blessing is always conducted under moonlight with bare skin.
He intends for us to fuck under that full moon, and he will bite me and tie us together in a ceremony so traditional, no pack does it anymore. Mine didn’t. Neither did the Dawley-Stones, and I get the impression that the Blackshaws don’t either.
I can’t do this.
Not any of it.
Even if tonight ends with Adrian choking the air from my lungs, I am not doing this.
I yank my arm, breaking Adrian’s grip on me. His pack and his enforcers surround me. I’m going nowhere and Adrian knows it for him to not be even the slightest bit concerned about letting me go. I get the sense I didn’t break his grip so much as he let me go.
Maybe he wants me to fight from the almost wild excitement in his eyes that wasn’t there a second ago.
“Your dress, Clara,” Adrian’s voice is light.
I lift my chin. “No.”
“Clara,” there’s a warning in his tone as he takes a step forward.
“I said no.” Retreating, I bump into someone. One of Adrian’s packmates, I assume, until a familiar mint and cedar scent envelopes me as arms slide around my middle and urge me back.
“Behind me, peach.”
Nathan .
Adrian’s eyes harden as a man clears his throat.
I swing my head to the right, the location of that throat-clearing.
Someone I did not expect to find is standing near the trees. Dayne.
Arms folded, he’s naked as he leans against a tree, relaxed. Seemingly not the least bit concerned that there must be twenty or more shifters who have a good reason for wanting him dead, given he just invaded their territory.
Dayne gives Adrian a cold smile. “It’ll be in your best interest to walk back inside that nice big house you have and forget you know Clara.”
Adrian smiles tightly. “You’re on our land, and I promise you there are more of us than there are of you.”
“I see that.” Dayne nods as he sweeps his ice-blue eyes over the assembled pack. “But I didn’t come alone. We Blackshaws came prepared.”
Someone whispers, “What did he say?”
“He said something about Blackshaw,” another voice answers the first.
“ Blackshaw ?” someone else hisses.
“You don’t mean…” Yet another voice trails off, but I know exactly what they’re thinking. I once thought it when Regan told me whose pack she wanted me to stay with.
Heads turn and eyes are wary as Adrian’s packmates look at Dayne, still smiling faintly, like he’s an invited neighbor who stopped by for a cup of sugar, and not to rescue me.
Because this is a rescue. I know it as surely as I know my name.
“Yes, that’s me,” he cheerfully agrees.
A tense silence stretches out as the people closest to him edge away.
Thank fuck for Dayne’s crazed pack killer reputation. It might just be the thing that saves us.
“Oskar.” Adrian turns to an enforcer on his left. “Deal with him.”
The red-headed man runs at Dayne.
Dayne calmly watches the enforcer running at him, then straightens.
As Oscar slams his fist at Dayne’s face, Dayne knocks his fist away, grips the man’s head between two large hands and twists.
The crunch of his spine breaking makes me shudder.
Oscar’s head is facing the wrong direction when he thumps to the ground.
Dayne lifts a brow. “Any more enforcer’s lives you want to throw away?”
More shifters edge away from Dayne.
It takes a lot to creep me out, but a guy's head on back to front does it. I struggle to put this Dayne together with the alpha who needed Nathan’s help to put his daughter down for her nap.
I try and I try, but I can’t do it.
Adrian’s pack is silent as Nathan squeezes my middle and says, “Behind me.”
I turn my head slightly, but I keep my eyes on Adrian. Just in case. “Nathan?—”
Thump .
I pull a muscle in my neck wrenching it to the left.
An enforcer is flat on his back, blood pouring from his nose. Jeremy flashes me a smile. “Don’t mind me. Just here for the show. As you were.”
“We outnumber you,” Adrian says tightly.
“And so you do,” Dayne agrees. “I have no interest in killing innocents here, but if anyone lifts a hand to me or mine, they will die for it.”
His voice hardens at the tail end of his speech and I swear, if I hadn’t seen how tender he was with his kids, or saw the love in his eyes when he spoke about building a cabin for his mate, I’d be backing away along with the rest of Adrian’s pack.
Nathan tucks me behind him. “When a guy abducts the woman he loves, he has certain feelings he needs to get out.” I’m processing words I did not expect to hear as Nathan steps toward Adrian and says, “Are we doing this as man or wolf?”
I take a step toward him, wanting to stop him.
I don’t want Adrian to hurt or kill him. It’s why I gave myself up in the first place. But after I pushed him down a hill, he accused me of believing he couldn’t protect me. And later, he said he was a joker, but that wasn’t all he was.
That sometimes, he wanted to be more.
So I don’t stop him.
I walk back to stand beside Dayne, who, now that I’m paying attention, brought almost the entire pack with him. He said he came prepared, and he wasn’t wrong. In the forest, just out of sight, I spot Kier, Hallee, Dean, Gavin, and Dean.
I don’t see Jenna, Savannah, or Talis. Given Jenna and Savannah are pregnant and Talis is watching the twins, they’re probably back in Hardin.
I swing back around, chewing my lip as I cross my arms and prepare for this looming fight between Nathan and Adrian.
An enforcer has his eyes glued to Nathan’s back. He takes one subtle step forward. Dayne clears his throat. The enforcer looks at him and stops.
Dayne smiles. “Smart. You might just live through this.”
“Do you honestly think you stand a chance?” Adrian spits out, glaring at Nathan.
Okay, so I said I wouldn’t intervene, and I meant it at the time. But this is Nathan. I can’t just stand by and let someone kill him.
Adrian deserves an ass kicking, especially after he choked me upstairs. I’m willing to let it go if it means Nathan doesn’t get hurt.
“Maybe we should—” Mid-way through trying to convince Nathan to drop this, Nathan drives his fist into Adrian’s jaw.
Adrian hits the ground with bruising force, and it is insanely satisfying to watch.
“Never mind.” I back up.
If this is what Nathan wants to do, then who am I to stop him?
No sooner has Adrian hit the ground than Nathan is on him. If the guy hadn’t choked me upstairs, with all the blood flying, and the crunch of the bones in his face breaking as Nathan unleashes a torrent of punches into him, this would be sickening.
But I cross my arms and take pleasure in the pounding Adrian is getting.
I’d have thought Adrian’s pack—his enforcers, at least—would do more to intervene. Maybe Adrian has already started showing signs of craziness and his pack sees this as an opportunity to get rid of him without having to get their hands dirty.
Whatever the reason, they awkwardly stand around, doing nothing.
Minutes later, Nathan is bruised and bloodied from the few blows Adrian got in, but he looks surprisingly happy after making mincemeat of Adrian’s face.
“You ready to go home, peach?” he asks me.
I nod. “Did you beat him up for me, Nathan Blackshaw?”
“Of course I did.” He kisses me. “And we need to talk about your impulsiveness.”
“My—”
Crunch .
I snap my head to the right. So does Nathan.
Dayne is rising from the ground, and Adrian’s head is bent at an unnatural angle.
That sound… I can hunt rabbits and squirrels like the best of them. I’m not squeamish. But that sound of a neck breaking is one I will never get used to.
“Time to go home,” Dayne tells us and turns to Adrian’s pack, still awkward and silent. “Looks like one of you is getting a promotion.”
To no surprise ever, no one tries to stop us when we leave.