Page 82 of Wolf Claimed
“Enough!” Rafe roared from behind him.
“Everyone, lower your guns,” Tiernan warned with a growl of his voice.
“No fucking way,” Gallagher said.
Rafe stepped up to Gallagher until the agent’s gun was pressed squarely in the center of his chest.
“Rafe, no,” Alyssa pleaded. “I don’t want you to get killed over me.”
None of this is right.
Maddox’s mind spun in a thousand directions. Loyalty to Drake. Loyalty to Rafe. He couldn’t answer to two alphas. But Rafe was trying to protect Alyssa, and Maddox had already decided he’d gladly give his life for her.
“She’s innocent,” Rafe said.
“Kevin and Nash—”
“No, Kevin’s innocent too, Artemis,” Rafe said. “The fear I smelled on him was because he has a stash of cocaine in his room.”
“I have to arrest her,” Gallagher said. “She confessed. Nash and Jason heard her.”
“I never confessed.”
Gallagher slapped a pair of cuffs into Nash’s free hand. “Cuff her.”
With a grin, Nash lowered the gun and grabbed Alyssa’s hands to cuff her.
“I did not confess!” she shouted as she twisted his arm up and back and slammed Nash against the wall.
When he started to resist, Maddox stepped up to Nash, breathing heavily on his neck. “If she gets even a scratch, I’ll shred you into so many pieces they won’t be able to identify your body except through DNA. She’s leaving here with Rafe and Tiernan.”
“And you,” Alyssa whispered. “I’m not leaving without you, Maddox,” she said as she cuffed Nash, who no longer fought against her hold. Her hand moved to Maddox’s back, gently caressing him over his shirt. He needed that connection more than she could know.
“She confessed,” Gallagher said as he tossed the keys to his cuffs to Jason and approached Alyssa.
Rafe blocked his path. “Do you really think I’ll let you take her again? I made that mistake once before, and you used illegal drugs on her not to find the truth, but to disclose her identity. You put her at risk for your own needs.”
“She’s the best way we have of drawing out Woodrow Monroe.”
“I won’t let you use her,” Maddox said.
“None of us will,” Tiernan added.
“It’s out of your hands. A roomful of agents heard her confess.”
Maddox reached behind him and laid his hand over hers. He wanted to feel her skin one last time. He curled his fingers over hers, entwining them, bringing him as close to a blood-bond as he’d ever come with her.
Maddox wanted to turn and face her except he didn’t trust the humans here, especially Gallagher. “She didn’t kill Graves,” Maddox said. “I did.”
* * *
ALYSSA
Sleep.Alyssa needed sleep. Or maybe she needed to have her ears checked. Because nothing else explained what she thought she’d just heard.
“You killed Graves?” Gallagher asked with a chuckle. “Nice try, 86, but you can’t save her by taking the blame.”
“I snapped his neck. Between the C5 and C6 vertebrae. It was a clean kill, no blood, no knife. Someone stabbed him after I left, perhaps to frame Artemis. I’m sure an autopsy would back me up on that.”
