Page 77 of Vicious Wolf Mate

“You’ll die before you hurt McKenna again,” I growl at Rovas. I am holding his gun that he dropped at his head, the barrel two inches at most from his skull.

“Wait! No. Mace, wait!” McKenna snaps at me sharply. “Mace, don’t. Please.”

“Okay. I hear you,” I tell her. I know she’s not mad at me. Something else is creating a sense of urgency in her. “You want to tell me why?” I ask.

I watch McKenna dig in her pocket and pull out folded-up pages of paper and a pen. She is still standing behind the pussy-for-hire Natalie while she does this, not letting her own gun waiver or her hold on Natalie as a hostage loosen the slightest. You bet I got an eye trained on Natalie. Natalie is like a venomous serpent made of oil.

Beautiful McKenna tosses the folded-up paper and the pen at crazy-ass Rovas who is on the floor beneath me grimacing in pain.

“Sign that shit, Daddy Dearest,” McKenna tells Rovas. “Sign Insignys over to me, and I’ll let you live.”

I bark out a quick laugh, one eye on Rovas and one eye on sweet Natalie. I am laughing because McKenna’s chutzpah lights me up. I want so badly to get confirmation that she is my mate. That she is the one. I want this confirmation from the shifter side of me.

“You must be out of your fucking mind,” Rovas tells me. “Let me be very clear. You ruin everything you touch. I would rather die than let you ruin what I’ve built.”

“That’s your final answer?” McKenna asks Rovas.

“You are and always have been an atrocity for me. And now that you are living with these abominations, these shifters, you are an abomination.”

“Ha, ha, ha,” laughs Natalie. “Which is worse, abomination or atrocity? Let me guess, now that she is a hybrid of abomination and atrocity, McKenna has a whole new level of dysfunction all to herself.”

“Sign the papers, Daddy,” McKenna repeats. She has the tone of someone talking to a child who doesn’t want to clean their room.

“You never listen, do you?” Rovas answers. “Your idea is insane. I’d rather die.”

“Then I will be telling PEACE Chief Vance everything,” McKenna tells her father. “I have plenty to show Vance about how you murdered Mom. You’ll be imprisoned for the rest of your life. Those are your options.”

I reach down and grab the folder Rovas had been holding right before McKenna sent lead through his leg. I give the contents of the folder a good once-over. Make no mistake, I keep a sharp eye on Rovas and Natalie as I do this.

“I see,” Rovas tells McKenna. “Listen to you. Two minutes ago, you were going to kill me if I didn’t sign over Insignys.”

“Can’t make up her mind because she’s a goddamn whack-job,” Natalie adds with a cackle.

“And now you are going to turn me into Vance and make sure the law is followed?” Rovas asks. “Your elevator is skipping floors, daughter. You sound as grounded and stable as a flock of pigeons in a tornado. Christ almighty, girl.”

“How about this as an answer?” I tell McKenna, but I am looking right at Rovas. “I’ll air what’s in this folder, make every damn page and what they say public. Every shifter on the planet will be after you, homie. Wanna bet?” I really make sure to hold my eye-contact with Rovas while speaking and after I say this. I want him to feel my sincerity. My periphery vision is locked on Natalie.

At first Rovas doesn’t say anything. Then he grabs up the pen, folds out the papers McKenna tossed at him and signs them.

“Don’t do it,” Natalie tells Rovas. “They are bluffing. They’re floundering idiots. They can’t decide what they’re doing from one moment to the next. I know what I am saying, Rovas. Baby, I know them because I was traveling with them. Don’t sign. These two are pure fuckups.”

“Damn you to hell,” Rovas says, as he finishes signing the papers. I can’t tell if he is talking to me or McKenna or himself. “This means nothing,” Rovas adds. “An hour from now you’ll be bitching and moaning about something else and have a completely different agenda….”

Rovas doesn’t finish his sentence.

He can’t.

Then Natalie screams. A real 1980s slasher flick kind of scream.

Rovas can’t finish his sentence because a bullet went through his skull.

In the periphery of my vision I see Gnash and Drario start to move around a bit. The shot through Rovas’s head or Natalie’s scream brought them back. They’d been knocked out for more than a few minutes, and I was starting to worry.

I look up at McKenna. She is dead silent.

Holy shit!

The smoke-wagon she’s holding has thick tendrils of smoke snaking out of the barrel and into the air. And, of course, its black maw is aimed right at the newly deceased Rovas’s head.

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