Page 6 of Secrets at Dawn
She fought him, struggling against his hold.
They seemed to want to take her somewhere. A secondary location would be detrimental to her.
“Hey! Leave her alone!” Of course, he was too far away for them to hear him. He cursed when the other man grabbed her leg. “Hurry! They’re hurting her!”
When the man holding her used his free hand to tug on her clothing, Toby panicked.
Two things happened at once. First, Toby made the man holding her disappear. He just blinked, and it happened. But that was right after the woman elbowed the man in the gut and he had let go of her.
She fell on her butt but quickly righted herself.
The other man’s eyes were wide with fear, and he kept talking to her. Toby imagined him asking her what she’d done with his friend.
Whatever she said made him turn and run back the way they had come. He and his friend met up midway through the park.
Toby held his breath as he watched the men talk and come to some sort of conclusion.
He ran out of his apartment as quickly as he could. “Hurry. They’re going after her,” he said into his phone before throwing it at the couch.
He ran out the door and down the hall, taking the stairs because that would be faster. His building had a security system on the front door. At the last minute, he remembered his keys were in the dish on the kitchen island where he always kept them. The key fob he needed to get back inside the building was on it, but he couldn’t think about getting locked out. He had to help the woman get away from her attackers before they followed through on their intended purpose.
He was fast. Honing the skill every day helped. But by the time he got to her, they were already trying to assault her again.
She was crying and screaming. She fought them, but they already had her on the ground. The dark-haired one was on top of her, holding her down. She was bleeding from somewhere. Or he assumed it was her. He could only smell it, not see it.
The scent put his wolf on edge, making him growl. The men were wolf shifters, but they weren’t as strong as Toby. Toby shifted into his third form.
“Get off her!” He thought about the creek, which was on the other side of the park, and then thought about the lighter-haired guy being in the middle of the water, getting wet. That was all it took to make the man disappear.
After he was out of the way, Toby punched the dark-haired man on the side of his face before pulling him off the woman. The man had been too distracted to pay attention to anything other than the woman. She fought too hard for him to focus on anything other than her. It gave Toby the advantage.
Once the man was off her, Toby shoved him away even further, so he could put himself between the attacker and the woman.
From a distance, he heard yelling and splashing. And then finally, sirens.
The attacker stood. His dark eyes turned canine, and his hands shifted into long fur-covered fingers with pointy claws, ready to tear at Toby.
The wolf shifter sniffed the air before taking a step closer. His eyes narrowed. “I smell magic on you, wolf. You did something to us.”
Toby didn’t respond to his taunting. “Keep away from her.”
The sirens grew louder. And then the cop cars pulled onto the road behind the woman’s car.
He shifted to his human form when a man in a sheriff’s uniform got out of the first vehicle. He knew the sheriff was his friend’s father, but he’d never met him.
The sheriff’s SUV and the deputy’s car said Fortune Falls County on the doors.
As close as Toby had become to Riley in the last couple of months, Toby hadn’t met anyone in Riley’s family except for his mate, Cass. He recognized Cass right off, so Toby went over to him first.
Cass nodded by way of greeting. “Are you alright, Toby?”
“I’m fine. I called in the crime. These two men assaulted her.” Toby pointed to the guy still standing there, blinking at the sheriff. Toby nodded to his apartment building. “I saw it happen from my balcony and came down to help her.”
The other guy came up the hill, dripping wet from head to toe.
The woman was wide-eyed with fear, her arms wrapped around herself. The sheriff approached her, each step slow and cautious as if he were approaching an injured animal. He kept his hands up so she could see them.
She nodded to Toby. “If it wasn’t for him…” Her chin wobbled.
