Page 94 of The Alpha's Protective Mate

Anger churns within me.

I don’t need this.

Turning around, I’m about to leave when I slam into a broad chest. A pair of arms catches me.

“Now, that was just rude,” I hear a familiar voice say smoothly.

I go still, my head slowly tilting up to meet Terrence’s gaze.

“Are you okay?” he asks, concern in his voice.

For a moment, I forget how to speak, raw, visceral fear pounding within me.

“F—Fine,” I breathe. “I was just leaving.”

However, he doesn’t release his grip. “You’re cold, Charlotte.”

“You know her?” The bartender sounds wary.

“She’s my fiancée,” is Terrence’s cool reply as he takes off his trench coat and wraps it around me. “I see all of you were having a good time at her expense.”

His what?!

Terrence is holding me to his chest as he speaks, and he probably feels me jerk at his statement.

“Nah, man. We were just joking around.”

“I see,” Terrence replies coldly. “Come on, Charlotte.”

He guides me outside, and no matter how hard I want to resist, I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place at the moment.

As soon as I exit the bar, an umbrella is covering me.

“There’s a coffee shop nearby. Let’s go there.”

He points a device at a black car parked at the curb, and the lights flash.

“That’s your car.” I’m petrified right now. The gun Robert gave me is in the bag I’m holding. I was worried about it getting wet, so I made the stupid decision to tuck it into my bag, something I regret immensely in this moment.

“Don’t worry.” Terrence gives me a small smile. “I’m not going to make you get in it. I understand you don’t trust me right now. The coffee shop is just around the corner; we can walk.”

His left shoulder is getting wet as he holds the umbrella over me, and despite my wariness, I feel a flash of guilt. He’s keeping space between us, and that’s why the rain is falling on him.

“You should cover your shoulder,” I find myself saying.

Terrence laughs lightly. “That’s just like you, worrying about someone else rather than yourself. A little rain isn’t going to kill me. I would rather you stay dry than me. And besides, you’re not comfortable around me just yet. I don’t want to make you even less so.”

He’s being considerate, just like the mild-mannered Terrence I remember. He’d always have his nose buried in a book, and I was the only one he would put away his reading for. A friendship between a child and a teenager. He was my safe haven till he left, my closest friend and confidant. Whenever Clyde would bully me, Terrence would be there to patch me up and give me a shoulder to cry on.

The child in me is upset that I’m looking at him with such suspicion, but I no longer have room to trust anyone. Terrence cut me off the moment he left, yet he wrote to my father, and later to Arabella. It was just me that he washed his hands of. That scarred the lonely girl who had just watched her only support system walk away from her.

Seeing Terrence treating me so gently, as if the last decade or so never happened, is like twisting the knife inside my heart.

I’m not stupid enough to assume his intentions are well-meaning. But I’m also not going to cause a scene when I know I can’t fight back. Under the trench coat, I reach into my bag. I already loaded three bullets in the gun, just to be safe. I open the small case, hoping the sound of the rain will swallow the clicking sound of me undoing the flip lock. Terrence is guiding me around the corner now, and my heart is racing. I wrap my hand around the gun, slowly drawing it out of the bag.

If there is a car waiting for me, I’m going to start shooting and make a run for it.

Then I see the bright lights of a coffee shop, and feeling relieved, I release my weapon back into its case.

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