Page 83 of Protecting His Vampire Mate

Bryan was already here. And every dark vision of the future was about to come to pass. And, still trapped by the binding sigil and inside the warding ring, there was nothing at all that I could do to stop any of it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN || BRYAN

The hunters had Tobias in a giant circle made from some sort of powder on the ground. There were pallets and pieces of oversized factory equipment scattered all around the room.

Michael drew his gun on me the moment he saw me.

Fury burned away all traces of reason. I rushed forward, grabbed the hunter by the lapels of his jacket, and threw him into a stack of pallets.

Danny backed away from me, both his hands empty. “We just want to talk.”

I hissed at him, so incoherent with my rage that I couldn’t even form words. It was a trick. They wanted to kill me. And then they would kill Tobias.

They were murderers. Killers. It was what they did.

“Let me out of this chair!” Tobias snapped, seemingly speaking to Danny. “Or at least break the binding circle, so I can cast!”

His words didn’t make any sense.

But Danny responded immediately. He started forward. Moving closer to my mate.

I let out an inhuman snarl and grabbed him by the arm. Not even bothering to moderate the amount of force I was using, I spun him around and shoved him backward into a massive shrink-wrapped pallet of office paper.

He hit it with a loud thud, the back of his head making contact with one of the pallets, and I heard his teeth snap together. He blinked once, then slumped down, falling to the ground.

Probably unconscious.

I would finish dealing with him later.

“Bryan, stop!” Tobias yelled.

But I couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t stop. Not when he was still in danger. Not when we were both in such terrible danger.

I whirled at the sound of movement behind me.

Michael had pushed himself back up to standing. He pointed a gun at me.

His gaze dropped down to the spot behind me, no doubt taking in Danny’s slumped body.

His expression went cold.

Then he aimed his gun at me and fired.

One shot. Two. Then a third.

The bullets hit me in the chest, one after the other. But they were just ordinary bullets. Painful, but not even close to lethal.

In the back of my mind, I noted it was odd that he wouldn’t have used wood or silver. Either one would have dropped me and made me way easier for him to finish off. But that didn’t matter. He had clearly gotten sloppy and reached for the wrong thing.

He didn’t strike me as the methodical one of the two, anyhow.

Michael stared at me, going even paler than before.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a needle-point sharp wooden stake.

Ah, there it was. He had realized his mistake and reached for something that was actually lethal to me. Because he planned to kill me.

And possibly Tobias, too.

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