Page 62 of Brutal Mate

Then another, darker wolf pounced right over his head, knocking another of his opponents away.

Hanson and Eddie gave Kane just the relief he needed, parting their enemies like a sea of fur to enable Kane to charge his way down the hall and up the staircase.

Miley's scent was faint on the stairs, but it was there, and he took the steps three at a time, pounding up onto the landing.

It didn't take much to know where she was being kept.

The door at the far end of the landing was heavily guarded, four men in total. And, as if they had believed their friends downstairs could hold off whoever was attacking the farm, they had failed to shift.

Fucking idiots, Kane thought, snarling as he darted down the hall towards them.

Cockily, the first two bared their fangs and extended their claws, as if they thought that was all they needed to dispatch him.

Kane, sensing what they were going to do before they even did it, darted out of the way, twisted, and kicked off from the wall, sending the first man in his way flying down the hall with a powerful kick of his hind legs.

Then, he was on the second, knocking him easily to the floor with his powerful wolf muscles.

You should have shifted, Kane thought as he sank his teeth into the man's pale throat.

It seemed the other two had at least a little more sense than the first two, and they were already in the process of shifting when Kane turned his attention on them.

With the metallic taste of blood hot on his tongue and adrenaline coursing through his body, he met his next two opponents in the open hall, making quick work of taking them down.

They really were beginning to make this way too easy on him. If he hadn't known any better, he would have said that all of these guards were newly made werewolves. They seemed to have so little control over their shifts, so little fighting skill, that it was actually pathetic.

He thought little of it as he threw himself hard at the bedroom door. Whether it was locked or not, he did not have the time to shift in order to open it, and he wasn't about to waste any more time trying to flick the doorknob with his nose or even a paw.

For once, brute strength would simply have to suffice.

And luckily for him, it appeared that the bedroom door wasn't as well-made as it appeared to be. In fact, it was quite hollow, crumbling easily beneath the force of his weight.

It burst open to reveal four wolves inside the bedroom, three of which were holding the fourth down.

And though Kane had yet to see her in wolf form, he recognized Miley immediately. There was no mistaking that flaming red pelt of hers for anyone else's. It was the same intense, fiery shade as her human hair, and even surrounded by other wolves as she was, Kane could easily recognize her wonderfully fragrant scent.

Two of the wolves pinning her down came at him almost instantly, giving him little time to react.

Miley's pain and fear was palpable. He could practically taste it, so much so that all he could think about was getting to her, making her safe, ensuring she was okay. It didn't matter what happened to him. All that mattered was her.

And so, he fought on blindly and with practiced ease, remembering all that his time in the army and black ops had taught him.

In less than a minute he killed the first wolf. The second took slightly longer. The third was the most difficult, but in the end, he brought him down, crushing his windpipe.

And the next thing he knew, he was standing in the middle of the bedroom, surrounded by the dead human bodies of his victims.

Miley sat, human once more, against the edge of the bed. The way she stared at him wasn't entirely terrified, as he might have expected, but he hesitated.

She was still new to this. He remembered all too well how he had felt when he had tumbled into the supernatural world, when he had been bitten one night after running away from home for the hundredth time, the last time.

Carefully, he crossed the distance between them and pressed his nose against her cheek, relieved when she didn't pull away or attempt to run.

He closed his eyes and breathed a deep sigh of relief, taking in her scent.

The only blood he smelled was that of the dead behind him. He breathed another sigh and started to shift.

It was only when he crouched before her, human and naked as the day he was born, that he opened his eyes again and pulled back enough to look Miley in the face. “Are you okay?”

Though she was trembling, she appeared otherwise unharmed. Still, Kane needed to hear it from her own lips to be sure.

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