Obsession: A Rejected Mate Shifter Romance (The Mate Games #1)(19)

Thorne was all over her as they stood together at the bar, his hands roaming her body, lips moving as he whispered in her ear and made her blush. I shouldn’t care. I didn’t. But she was, for some reason, my responsibility. If that vampire flashed any hint of fang, I’d take him down and pull those teeth out of his skull myself.

What the fucking hell was wrong with me?

My hands ached from the force of the fists I was making as Thorne abandoned her in favor of conversation with two of his bloodsucking minions. The three of them left the main bar area, likely heading for one of the private meeting rooms downstairs. The bastard couldn't even bother to stay with her once he had her?

I downed my drink and slammed the glass onto the table before standing and slowly weaving my way through the crowd toward her.

Kingston beat me to her. That gods-damned alphahole wolf.

He grabbed her by the elbow, jerking her roughly away from the bar before pushing her up against a table. It was aggressive, and the pain that flashed in her eyes when her back connected with the corner of the table was enough to send me running toward them. I didn’t care that she had a vampire in her corner or that she was a grown woman who said she could take care of herself. This arse was hurting her, and no one hurt what was mine and lived.

I was so consumed by my anger, I didn’t even stop to question the possessive claim I’d just staked. The only thing driving me was the need to draw blood. A whole fucking lot of it.

“Get your fucking hands off her.”

I shoved him hard, but Kingston barely moved, his eyes a dull, lifeless brown. But then everything in him hardened. Rage and hatred boiled behind his irises, and though he snarled, there wasn’t a whiff of wolf on him. Something wasn’t right.

“I’m not done with her,” he said, his voice unusually thin and tight.

He lunged, knocking Sunday to the ground and landing on top of her. Then she screamed and the world stopped. Everything froze around me as I moved with more speed and power than I’d ever known. Kingston’s throat was in my grip, and I had him pinned to the floor, choking and gasping, clawing at my fingers.

“You won’t keep her,” he croaked out. “No matter how hard you try.”

“Yeah, well, neither will you.”

He continued to thrash beneath my grip, a wicked smile twisting his lips despite the fact that he was clearly outpowered and I had no intention of easing my grasp. The wolf was completely fucking unhinged, and it was my job to put him down.

“I don’t want her. She’s already as good as dead.” Then, with one hand, he grabbed hold of the amulet around his neck and crushed it.

Kingston gasped, and his eyes rolled back in his head. He began to convulse, his body morphing and transforming until his features shifted into those of a different person entirely. Instead of the young alpha wolf I’d thought I’d been fighting, there was a man old enough to be my grandfather lifeless in my grasp. His heart still, eyes open and glazed over, and that fucking smile still stretched across his face.

“Alek?” Sunday’s voice was a thready whisper, weak and filled with fear.

I turned to her, relieved she was up and talking. “Sunday. Are you all right?”

Her lower lip trembled. “I don’t think so.”

Then my gaze traveled down her body to the rapidly blooming stain on her abdomen and the jagged, broken blade sticking out of her.





Chapter

Eleven





THORNE





“All right gentlemen, I believe that concludes our business for the evening,” I announced, eager to be done with this conversation and return to Sunday. If I hadn’t promised my father I’d meet with his men tonight, I would have told them to kindly go fuck themselves when they’d dared to interrupt my fervent seduction of the luscious Sunday Fallon.

As it was, my skin crawled at the thought of leaving her out there alone. Unprotected while so many other men circled like vultures. I’d seen the way they looked at her, lusted after her. And while I’d be a hypocrite if I blamed them for it, I’d sure as hell drain them dry if they so much as laid a finger on her.

“And what should we tell your father about the pretty little bird?” The thick cockney accent of his was rough and menacing. A remnant of his human life on the streets of London long ago.

Everything in me stilled. The only part of my body that moved were my eyes as they slid to Alrik’s smirking face. “You will not tell him a bloody thing because there is nothing to tell.”

Alrik’s smile faded, and he exchanged a nervous look with Peter. Smart man.

“Guess I was mistaken.”

“It would seem so. Now if that’s all—”

My words broke off at the sound of a commotion outside. While not unheard of at Iniquity—because any time the Families were thrown together like this, you were asking for trouble—they were rare. Lilith Duval, the dominatrix succubus who owned the club, ensured it. And as a woman who not only encouraged her patrons to indulge in their favorite sins but provided them with the means to do it, no one wanted to risk ending up on her blacklist.

“What was that?” I asked, on high alert.

“Sounds like a fight,” Peter answered with a shrug. “Not our problem.”

Usually, I’d be inclined to agree. But this was no ordinary nightclub, and when tempers flared, people had a habit of dying, so my first thought was for Sunday. I didn’t want her to accidentally get caught up in the scuffle.