Page 82 of Broken-Hearted

“I see that.” Dayne nods as he sweeps his ice-blue eyes over the assembled pack. “But I didn’t come alone. We Blackshaws came prepared.”

Someone whispers, “What did he say?”

“He said something about Blackshaw,” another voice answers the first.

“Blackshaw?” someone else hisses.

“You don’t mean…” Yet another voice trails off, but I know exactly what they’re thinking. I once thought it when Regan told me whose pack she wanted me to stay with.

Heads turn and eyes are wary as Adrian’s packmates look at Dayne, still smiling faintly, like he’s an invited neighbor who stopped by for a cup of sugar, and not to rescue me.

Because this is a rescue. I know it as surely as I know my name.

“Yes, that’s me,” he cheerfully agrees.

A tense silence stretches out as the people closest to him edge away.

Thank fuck for Dayne’s crazed pack killer reputation. It might just be the thing that saves us.

“Oskar.” Adrian turns to an enforcer on his left. “Deal with him.”

The red-headed man runs at Dayne.

Dayne calmly watches the enforcer running at him, then straightens.

As Oscar slams his fist at Dayne’s face, Dayne knocks his fist away, grips the man’s head between two large hands and twists.

The crunch of his spine breaking makes me shudder.

Oscar’s head is facing the wrong direction when he thumps to the ground.

Dayne lifts a brow. “Any more enforcer’s lives you want to throw away?”

More shifters edge away from Dayne.

It takes a lot to creep me out, but a guy's head on back to front does it. I struggle to put this Dayne together with the alpha who needed Nathan’s help to put his daughter down for her nap.

I try and I try, but I can’t do it.

Adrian’s pack is silent as Nathan squeezes my middle and says, “Behind me.”

I turn my head slightly, but I keep my eyes on Adrian. Just in case. “Nathan?—”

Thump.

I pull a muscle in my neck wrenching it to the left.

An enforcer is flat on his back, blood pouring from his nose. Jeremy flashes me a smile. “Don’t mind me. Just here for the show. As you were.”

“We outnumber you,” Adrian says tightly.

“And so you do,” Dayne agrees. “I have no interest in killing innocents here, but if anyone lifts a hand to me or mine, theywilldie for it.”

His voice hardens at the tail end of his speech and I swear, if I hadn’t seen how tender he was with his kids, or saw the love in his eyes when he spoke about building a cabin for his mate, I’d be backing away along with the rest of Adrian’s pack.

Nathan tucks me behind him. “When a guy abducts the woman he loves, he has certain feelings he needs to get out.” I’m processing words I did not expect to hear as Nathan steps toward Adrian and says, “Are we doing this as man or wolf?”

I take a step toward him, wanting to stop him.

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