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The men realized they’d been discovered, but they didn’t do the smart thing and head back into the forest. If they’d retreated, they might have had the chance of surviving our encounter. But probably not.
We’d never know, though, because they decided to charge forward when they realized they’d lost the advantage of surprise. The one on the right drew a gun from his shoulder holster while the other yanked a wicked-looking knife from a sheath on his thigh.
Unlike my mate, Keane was a morning person. His grizzly liked to roam our territory before the sun came up each day. A habit that I’d teased him about a bunch of times since I’d joined the pack. But I was damn happy for it when he came stomping out of the woods behind the men. I was confident enough in my fighting abilities to know that I could’ve handled their attack on my own but having a six-hundred-pound grizzly as backup meant I didn’t have to kill them both right away and would hopefully be able to get some answers out of one of them.
He attacked the guy with the gun, mauling him from behind, and I rushed forward to wrestle the knife away from the other man. Since I was trying my best not to kill the fucker, it took me longer to finish with him.
“About damn time,” Keane muttered, having shifted to his human form after his prey had taken his last breath. “I thought I was going to have to kill that one for you too.”
“Nah, we don’t want him dead.” I wrenched the man’s arms behind his back and lifted him off the ground. “He can answer some questions for us. Right?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he frantically nodded. His buddy was dead, and he couldn’t break free from my hold, but I still didn’t want him near my mate. When I glanced over my shoulder at my cabin, Keane must’ve picked up on my concern. He hefted the dead body over his shoulder and stalked toward the tree line. “Leyton’s on the front porch. No harm will come to your mate while we question him.”
The bond between the brothers let them communicate while in their animal form. Leyton must have been stomping around in the woods with Keane when the humans trespassed on our land, and he’d let him know what was happening. “Thanks for sending him to guard her.”
The alpha shrugged off my gratitude as he dropped the dead guy on the ground and turned to glare at the one I dragged over. “Now that we’re far enough away so that she can’t hear his screams, it’s time for some answers.
“Who the hell are you? And what the fuck do you want with me?” I growled, my wolf pushing against my skin. He didn’t care about the reasons behind their attack. All he wanted was the taste of his blood in his mouth as he killed the man who tried to get close to my mate.
“I–uh–” he sputtered.
“Out with it, man. Before he loses his hold on his wolf and rips out your throat,” Keane hissed.
“Th–th–that’s what happened to Mark’s friend.” He glanced down at the bloody body on the ground and paled. “He–uh–was killed by a wolf while he was in jail.”
Keane crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. “And you two dumbasses thought it would be a good idea to go looking for his killer?”
“Mark knew about this tracking app his friend had on his computer. He said we should come to the last place it pinged, even though it’d been months since then. But he didn’t say shit about a damn grizzly shifter. There was supposed to be a female falcon here. A wounded one who wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight.”
The spineless bastards were looking for Ramsey and had no fucking clue they’d stumbled upon that bastard’s killer…me. It was the last mistake either of them would ever make. “Does anyone else know you’re here?”
“Ye—” His answer broke off when Keane growled. It scared him enough to switch to the truth. “No. I swear. Nobody else knows about the app, either. And Mark wiped it before we came out here. He thought if we retrieved the falcon, he’d…um…be able to get some respect, you know?”
“Respect from who?” I asked.
He shook his head. “He didn’t say. I just know that he was involved in some dark shit and needed my help. I never would’ve come, except I owed him for giving me an alibi when my ex-girlfriend accused me of knocking her around.”
Keane and I exchanged a glance, and he nodded his head to confirm that he didn’t smell any lies on the coward. Then he shifted back into his grizzly, completely freaking out the guy I was holding.
“You’re going to let me live, right? I told you everything I know,” he whimpered as the scent of his urine filled my nostrils.
He was a woman-beater who’d dared to come on my land and got too damn close to my mate. The only answer I gave him was to shift into my wolf and rip out his throat.
10
THORA
Ihadn’t heard much while I waited for Rome, huddled inside the shower. Since he’d told me to barricade myself in the bathroom, I figured the stall was the safest place to be. Like in a tornado.
About ten minutes had passed—although it felt like hours—when he called out, “It’s me, baby. Everything is okay now.”
I was crawling out of the tub when he came into the bathroom, naked with blood dripping down his chest. I scanned his body for any sign of where the blood was coming from but didn’t spot any injuries. “Holy crap. Are you hurt? What happened?”
“It’s not mine,” he reassured me as he reached over to turn the water on in the shower.
My brows drew together. “Whose is it?”
He scrubbed his palms down his face with a sigh before he met my gaze. There was a hint of vulnerability in his brown eyes as he admitted, “One of the guys who came looking for Ramsey.”
