Page 49 of Gavin

“Damn it! I told you to have someone keep an eye on her,” Victor shouted.

“I thought Daryl was watching,” a man said with a pitiful voice.

“No, you didn’t, you ass,” another said.

“I don’t care who fucked up, just fix it. Get her to me,alive, immediately,” Victor said.

As she debated whether she should shift, she peeked around the edge of the pallets and saw first one male and then another climb onto the steel beam and make their way to the flooring.

“I don’t see her,” the first one said.

“There’s no other way down. The stairwell hasn’t been finished yet,” Victor called up. “She’d hiding.”

“What if she jumped?” the other asked.

“Idiots,” Victor said. “Find. Her.”

She squatted down and made herself as small as possible, gripping the rebar. The males split up after a quick discussion, and she could hear one drawing near her. She held her breath and pushed away the panic that clawed at her, and waited for the right moment.

When the male reached the pallet pile and peered around the corner to where she was hiding, she leaped to her feet and cracked him across the face with the rebar. He went down with a grunt and she slammed the rebar into his knee, making him howl in pain.

The second male rushed toward her, and she called for her wolf for strength and shoved the pallets over onto him. He stumbled and went down hard, the pallets covering him.

More males flooded up the ladder as Victor urged them on, reminding them again she wasn’t to be killed.

“Get her however you can, just get her,” Victor called.

Sadie was exposed now with the pallets gone, but she still had her rebar.

The males spotted her easily and she knew she didn’t have time to run.

Letting out her claws and fangs, she braced herself, rebar at the ready.

There was no other choice but to fight. She had to fight her way back to Gavin, and she was going to do it, one asshole human at a time.

Time to let the fur fly!

Chapter

Twenty

Thanks to Ryan's speedy driving, they reached Bluffton in less than twenty minutes. When the sign announcing the small town came into view, Ryan pulled over and Gavin leaped out. He closed his eyes and touched his cat, inhaling deeply and reaching for his connection to Sadie as mates.

He felt a pull to her but couldn’t quite tell where it was coming from, and he didn’t catch her scent. Hopping back in the SUV, he said, “Drive for a bit, then stop again.”

“You got it.”

Gavin put the window down and leaned out, his head on a swivel, looking for the vehicles that had been seen leaving the alley. The town seemed deserted, which made sense that Hawthorne would come to it. Buildings were boarded up, homes were in disrepair, and in the distance, it appeared that a building had been halted before it could be finished, the beams sticking up in the air like the bones of some ancient animal.

“What if she’s not here?” he said, rubbing his stomach where his gut was churning with worry. Someone had taken his mate from him. He didn’t even care that he’d almost died, he cared that she was in danger.

He’d never realized how strongly he felt for her until she’d been torn from him.

Now he knew he couldn’t live without her.

He had to find her.

He felt something grip the back of his neck and fear speared through him.

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