Page 80 of The Dragon's Mate Proposal

“Wakey, wakey, sleeping beauty,” Reed drawled. “You’ve had a long enough nap now.”

I blinked my eyes open.

“H-how long was I out?”

“Two hours,” the thug said. “We started to think perhaps you weren’t coming back. What the hell was that? What did you do to yourself?”

A crash sounded from somewhere else in the building, and an intense wave of satisfaction overcame me.

I smiled at Reed, who was glancing from me to the source of the sound.

“I accepted the truth,” I snarled at him. “And now you’re going to have to deal with it.”

A familiar bellow sounded from close by, and a body sailed through the wall to my left in an explosion of wood that peppered us both.

“SAMANTHA!”

I grinned wide as Reed swallowed uneasily.

Cade was here.

And he was pissed.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Cade

She was there. I could feel her nearby, somewhere in the back of the store in the warehouse. I strode along the racks of products, heading for the doorway to the rear.

My Samantha was there. And I was going to get her.

A shadow darted out from the end of an aisle. I was already leaning back, and my booted foot caught it directly in the chest, sending it hurtling through the flimsy wall.

“SAMANTHA!” I roared.

I wanted her to know I was there. To hear it, even though she should be able to feel my presence.

“Cade!” a voice answered from right on the other side of the wall. “I’m in here, Cade! But so is—”

Her voice caught off abruptly, and I felt a stab of fear through our link.

Someone was covering her mouth, preventing her from speaking.

Reining in my fury, I approached the hole in the wall cautiously. So far, I’d only accounted for the two of Kalann’s goons who’d been posted outside to watch the street and the one who’d just gone through the wall. Reed or Lincoln, if not both, was likely with Samantha.

Kalann almost always had four thugs with him wherever he went. Which meant three were unaccounted for, not to mention the old bastard himself. Not great odds. But what else was I supposed to do? They had Sam. That was enough for me.

I was halfway to the hole in the wall when something hit me from the right side, leaping out from behind a counter.

Grunting, I twisted and slammed my fists down on their back before we’d even crashed through a display, bags of jerky going everywhere. I wrestled with the unknown shifter. They had the upper hand and slowly got around my back, trying to snake an arm under my throat.

Samantha shrieked something unintelligible, and panic burst into my mind.

Fury at her treatment gave me new life. Reaching forward, I grabbed one of the hooks that had been holding the beef jerky and stabbed it backward.

A howl of pain followed, and the arm around my neck immediately let go. I whirled to see the hook sticking out of the goon’s eye.

Snarling with satisfaction, I snapped his head back with a kick, and he fell to the ground. Unconscious or dead, I didn’t care. They’d touched Samantha. Hurt her.

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