Page 9 of The Kill

Unprepared for a massive blitz attack, our warriors scramble to get on top of the fight. Shifting immediately, I race down the stairs and hesitate near the safe room, catching Blake’s eye as he ushers the vulnerable inside.

TYSON: Blake, get in as well.

I don’t think he can pick my voice out of the chatter, it’s deafening, and I can’t get a mind-link through.

He’s too young to be in the middle of a fight like this.

I need him to stay alive so I can go after my mate when this is all over.

But when I step outside, the scale of the attack becomes apparent. There are wolves fighting everywhere and dozens more flood across the lawn from the trees.

I’ve never seen this many rogues working together.

I launch myself into the fray, fighting side-by-side with the man who refuses to acknowledge me as his for the good of the pack, to protect those who can’t protect themselves.

My mind drifts to my mate as I follow the sound of a whimpering pup into the trees. The stench of rogues assaults my senses as they close in all around me. I know it’s a trap, using the pup to lure me away from the rest of the pack, but if I’m going to die, at least it will be doing something she’d be proud of.

And I’ll take as many of them down with me as I can.

6

MANDY

Present Day

Conflicted.

That’s the only word to describe how I’ve been feeling since I confirmed I would go with Tyson. Blake is beside himself at the idea of letting me leave with the man he believes is capable of doing just about anything, to anyone, if the mood so takes him.

Tyson, is not a man who’s afraid of using violence to get what he wants. He killed my mate. He ripped the head off a vampire right in front of my teenage son.

And now, what he wants is me.

An attack on the pack that took me and my son in, made us feel like part of a family, is not something I want hanging over my head.

I told myself I would pay him back one day. Despite living sixteen years without hearing from him, somehow, I always felt I would see him again.

If he was still alive.

What happened that day bound us together; not one day has passed when I didn’t wonder what happened to him.

Sometimes, the temptation to find out was almost irresistible. But my desire to keep my child safe was even stronger. Common sense won out whenever I nearly succumbed to the idea of contacting someone from my past life to see if they could find out how he was. Lee’s pack would track me down if I left even a tiny breadcrumb that could lead him to our location. I’ve had a few close calls over the years, when I stayed somewhere too long or too close to shifters.

My alpha hasn’t given up hunting me. There is too much at stake to risk exposing our location.

Many times, when I was lonely and afraid, his striking eyes or stupidly confident voice entered my head and reminded me to just keep going. In the dead of night, when he came to me in my dreams, giving me strength, reassuring me it will be okay, I feared it was because he was dead. That he had passed on at the hands of my pack.

Turns out that wasn’t the reason I thought about him so often. And this man is way more than I bargained for.

“When did you work out where I was?” I ask, walking as fast as I can, and jogging every now and again, to keep up with Tyson’s long strides.

He turns his head slightly so he can keep me in his sights but doesn’t slow down. What a gent. Blake’s enforcers stopped pursuing us long ago so there’s no need to hurry anymore. He could slow down, he just won’t.

So, now I just follow along behind him, wondering what he plans to do with me.

“When I met Noah. I recognised your scent instantly. He looks very like his dad, but he smells like you.”

Noah’s dad, the man that Tyson murdered. That part is left unsaid but hangs in the silence between us as he meets my gaze, the red rim now circling his eyes catching me off-guard each time I look at them.

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