Page 83 of The Piece You Stole

Aden strokes the trigger.

Boom.

A blond-brown wolf staggers. He’s missing half his shoulder, but he’s still standing, baring his teeth at Aden. Before he can shoot again, a large white wolf takes him down and damn near rips his fucking head off.

“I know what to do.” Aden turns to me now, his expression determined. “Go get her.”

I nod, and then I jump.

Landing softly, I let my knees absorb the impact from the nearly twelve-foot drop.

An ash-blond wolf lunges toward me, all glinting white teeth, fury glistening in his silver eyes. I wait, claws out, ready to use them.

Boom.

A bullet tears into his head and he drops like a stone.

I glare up at Aden. “Leave some for me,” I grumble.

He mouths two words. “Get her.”

Dariel kills anything that moves. Aden picks off anything else Dariel doesn’t get to. And I get Saige. That’s the plan.

I drop to my knees and call my wolf to me. He explodes out of me, a mass of white fur and fury, already snarling at the scent of Saige’s blood and terror, which leads deep into the forest.

No mercy to anyone who gets between us.

My wolf growls his assent.

Time to fucking hunt.

CHAPTER 20

SAIGE

“You didn’t have to carry me.” I smile, looping my arms around Rylan’s neck as he pauses to nudge the front door closed behind us.

It’s been two months and I still struggle to believe someone like him even cares I exist. Gorgeous. Muscles on muscles. The prettiest blue eyes I’ve ever seen in my life. A dimple in his chin when he grins. So wealthy that I can’t even imagine what it must be like to have that many zeros in my bank account.

But even if he was poor, and even if he was ugly as sin, I would still love him. He looks at me like I’m the most valuable thing in his life. Like he wants nothing in this world but me. And he saved me. Gave me a place to stay and refused to let me hand over a cent of the few dollars I walked away from the Stationers Diner in my pocket.

A guy like Rylan Treveiler isn’t supposed to notice girls like me. They’re supposed to date supermodels or heiresses born with every advantage: a wealthy family, beautiful face and body, a trust fund so big they will never have to work a day in their lives. Not a flat-broke eighteen-year-old girl with a drunk for a dad.

Yet, somehow, not only did he notice me, he took me away from a life I was desperate to escape; he told me he wasn’t just mine, but I was his soul mate.

What did I do to deserve to be that lucky?

Slowly, he sweeps his gaze over my face. I feel his possessiveness, and I revel in it. “They all wanted you.” He stalks across the open-plan living room and to the bedroom, but not to the bed. To the wall of glass. “No man in that restaurant could take his eyes off you. And when they found the strength to do it, it was to glare at me.”

If they looked at me like that, it was only because of the dress he gave me. I look at it now, a blush-pink silk gown that makes me feel beautiful.

At the wall of glass, he sets me on my feet before crowding me. “But you’re mine. Aren’t you? You belong to me.”

His hungry gaze demands me to say it, but he doesn’t need to make demands. I like belonging to him. I like that he looks at me as if I’m his world, so it’s the easiest thing in the world to part my lips and say, “I belong to you.”

A silver flicker in his eyes makes my breath catch. His wolf peers back at me. I doubt I’ll ever get used to it, even if Rylan tells me that he—and his wolf—would never hurt me.

I believe him, but the idea of men turning into wolves is as terrifying to me as it is incredible.

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