Page 57 of Ranger's Justice

CHAPTER 15

CASSIDY

Isit frozen, my fingers clenched around the laptop, the glow of the screen the only artificial light in the vehicle. The warehouse in the distance is quiet now, the girls bundled in blankets, drinking water, their hollow eyes darting toward me as if they can feel the change in the air.

Blood pounds in my ears as the screen flickers and I watch live feed from a security camera. I see them. Rush, Gideon, and Gage, standing among the wreckage, the bodies, the aftermath of something I shouldn’t be able to explain.

I saw them shift. I saw them hunt. I saw Rush tear into those men, a predator in the purest sense, a force of nature that didn’t hesitate, didn’t flinch.

This is more than just knowing. More than just suspecting or hearing about it secondhand. I witnessed it.

I swallow hard, my pulse hammering against my ribs. The rational part of my brain tries to catch up, tries to catalog what I just saw into something manageable. But there is no managing this. There is no categorizing the sight of a man shifting into something else and taking lives like it was a dance he’s done a thousand times before.

If this footage ever gets out—if the world sees what I just saw—people in cartel circles won’t just whisper about Rush as a nightmare. He would become a legend. And legends? People would hunt and hound him and his men, turning them into lab experiments.

The feed flickers as the camera refocuses, the image sharpening. And then Rush moves. His body twists, his wolf form still massive, still terrifying, his fur matted with blood—not his own. His golden eyes glinting in the light, burning with something too deep, too ancient to be fully human.

He turns directly toward the camera—directly toward me.

I suck in a breath. For a split second, it doesn’t feel like I’m watching him through a screen. It’s as if he sees me.

The predatory intensity, the raw possessiveness in his gaze, sends a shiver through me. He stands there, still half-feral, his breathing ragged, his muscles still coiled like he’s not done hunting. Like if anyone so much as looks at me wrong, he’ll tear them apart next.

The mist unfurls around him in tendrils of blue and gold, wrapping him in a cocoon of energy, lightning crackling along his skin, thunder rumbling through the feed like an echo from another world.

And then Rush is standing there, naked, covered in blood, muscles tight with lingering tension.

His golden eyes lock onto the camera—onto me—his lips parting on a single word.

I don’t hear it, but I know what it is—mine.

I keep reminding myself that I ought to be horrified, but I’m not. All I feel is heat.

My breath comes fast, shallow, my fingers gripping the edge of the laptop like it’s the only thing tethering me to reality. My heart pounds, a wild, erratic beat that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the man I just watched shift into something else. Something deadly.

Something undeniably his.

Rush.

Even now, as I sit here in stunned silence, staring at the frozen frame of his bloodied, half-feral face locked onto the camera, my body betrays me. A slow, aching pulse blooms deep inside me, radiating outward until I feel flushed, overheated. I clench my thighs together, as if that will somehow smother the reaction I have no business having.

Because this changes everything.

I swallow hard, dragging in a shaky breath, trying to calm the riot of emotions clawing through me. The camera feed flickers off, but the image is burned into my mind. Rush, stripped of his humanity, his wolf fully unleashed, tearing through the men who tried to escape like they were nothing more than prey.

And then—those last seconds.

The moment he shifted back. The way his eyes locked onto the camera. On me.

It wasn’t just a look. It was a statement: You see me now. You know what I am.

Because as much as my rational mind screams that I should be terrified, that I should be questioning what the hell I just witnessed, the rest of me—my body, my instincts—react differently.

I press my lips together, squeezing my eyes shut. Damn him. Damn him for doing this to me. Damn him for making me want him even now.

The warehouse still hums with the indistinct murmur of voices—Dalton, Gage, the rescued girls whispering to each other,unsure of what happens next. But I barely register it. I’m still attuned to Rush, even with miles between us.

I can’t shake him.

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