Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 109705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
“You drugged her?”
“It was only fair, since she tried to drug me.”
He exhaled a long breath, shaking his head. “Marcus is going to lose his shit.”
“I’m fine.”
“It doesn’t matter. He isn’t going to like that someone tried to harm you. Call him, tell him to pass on the story to his Alphas. The Phoenix wolves will want to be here when she wakes up; they should hear what she has to say.”
She walked a little distance away so she could talk to Marcus privately.
“Hey there, pretty baby. How’s my favorite wolf in the world?” Marcus’s smile was obvious in his voice.
“I, um, I’m fine. Good. I, um . . .”
“Roni, what’s wrong?” he asked cautiously.
“Nothing’s wrong. Look, don’t panic, don’t go postal. Everything’s fine, but—”
“Roni, tell me what the fuck’s going on.” So she told him. As Eli predicted, Marcus exploded. “What?”
“Really, Marcus, I’m fine. It’s okay.”
“They tried to drug and kidnap you! No part of that is ‘okay’ to me! Wait there; I’ll be five minutes.”
She refrained from pointing out that he couldn’t possibly complete the journey in five minutes. “Make sure you bring the others with you. I brought one of the jackals home for a chat.” She ended the call before he could lecture her on bringing home strange shifters that had tried to hurt her.
“See, told you he’d lose his shit.” Eli, who’d crept up behind her to eavesdrop, didn’t bother hiding his smirk. So she punched him in the gut.
“Now I have to tell the other overprotective male in my life. Won’t this be fun.” After binding the jackal and dumping her in the tool shed, she and Eli locked the door securely behind them and sought out their brother.
They found Nick sitting with Shaya on the porch swing at the rear of their lodge; he was having a beer while Shaya was drinking a bottle of water. Maybe it was Shaya’s presence, or maybe it was simply that Roni didn’t have a scratch on her, but he seemed to take the whole thing pretty well. He didn’t interrupt her even once. Didn’t say a word. To add to that, his cool expression didn’t alter.
Once she was finished, he leaned forward. “Let me get this straight.” Damn, that dark rumble meant bad things, which was most likely why Shaya winced. Clearly he wasn’t so cool and collected after all. “And tell me if I’ve left anything out. You were almost drugged, abducted, and got into a fight with two jackals—”
“I wouldn’t call it a fight. More like a scuffle.”
“—in full view of any humans who might happen upon you—”
“Only one actually saw something.”
“—and then you decided that, hey, you’d bring home the crazy bitch who tried to stab you with a syringe.”
“We have questions, she has answers; it makes sense.”
Shaya shrugged at her mate. “She’s right, it does.”
“Why didn’t you call me, Roni? I would have come to you!”
“I didn’t need you to,” Roni stated. “I took care of it.”
“What about afterward? You don’t think I’d want to know someone just tried to take you?”
“I’m telling you now.”
Nick gaped at her. “How can you be so fucking calm? It’s obvious why they wanted you, Roni! You were supposed to star in one of their special vids!”
“Well . . . yeah. But it backfired on them, and now we have one of their people. So it’s all worked out quite well for us, don’t you think?”
“Worked out quite well,” he echoed quietly before turning to Eli. “Is she fucking kidding me?”
“She was actually whistling a merry tune when she pulled up outside,” Eli ever so helpfully chipped in, chuckling.
“Sorry about the donuts, Shaya,” said Roni. “I’ll get you some more tomorrow.”
“Donuts?” bellowed Nick. “Who cares about fucking donuts? You were almost taken!”
“I know.”
“Stop being so damn calm!”
“You want me to shout and scream, or something?”
“I want you to be normal! And I want you to contact me from now on whenever there’s a problem! Not come to me afterward with an, ‘Oh, by the way’ story!”
“You know, all this tension can’t be good for the baby—apparently they can hear things from the womb. You should try to calm down.” Roni’s words seemed to actually make him worse.
He pointed his finger hard at her. “You just can’t—”
“There’d better be a damn good reason why you’re roaring at her, Axton.”
That smooth, male voice never failed to send a shiver of excitement through Roni. Turning, she watched as Marcus rounded the lodge and prowled toward her. “Wow, you were fast.”
As Marcus finally saw for himself that she was unharmed, the knot of anxiety in his chest began to unravel. He went straight to her, uncaring of their audience, and brought his mouth down hard on hers as his hands slid into her hair. Her taste and scent flooded his senses, soothing the frays in his control and calming his wolf. “I swear, I’m going to find that pack and destroy every fucking one of them. You should have called me immediately.”