Steal Her Heart (Kaid Ranch Shifters #1)(36)

That smell. The smell from outside. He reeked of it.

Danny tossed the rifle on the bed, and a growl ripped through him as she struggled, shoving off him. He was so strong, and he slammed her against the wall in the hallway so hard it pounded the breath from her chest.

“I saw you out there with him,” Danny snarled. “My whole fuckin’ pack did. I can’t put a whore on the throne. They won’t allow it. They’ll unseat me as Alpha if I bring some weak bitch into the ranks.” His eyes and voice softened. “I’ve told them so much about you, Maris. So much. I told them how strong you were, and how you would survive the Turn. How you’re the only one my wolf thought about when he was born into existence because no woman could match your iron will.” He dragged his gaze down to her bra, the only thing she’d managed to put on her top half in their rush to get her to the house.

Stall. “I haven’t seen you in half a lifetime, Danny. We were just kids.”

“Noooooo. I was never a kid. I told you everything. How I grew up. How I got built. About my family, my childhood, all the damage. I wasn’t a kid. I knew what I wanted, and I wanted you. And you picked that prick, Dallas, and all his riches.”

“Riches? His parents had money, not him. I bought this place with my own—”

His hand slipped to her throat. “Shhhhhhh.”

The wolf was right there beside him, growling, its teeth bared and razor sharp. It was so big. In desperation, she slammed her knee into his groin and shoved him back. “Bryson!” she screamed as she bolted for her bedroom. She tried to shove her bedroom door closed on the monsters in the hallway, but she wasn’t fast enough.

The door swung open so hard it blasted her backward and her shoulders hit the dresser. She fell to the ground just as a glass hummingbird her mother had given her fell from the top and shattered onto the floor beside her.

The floors creaked under Danny’s slow bootsteps as he approached. He cupped his dick and shook his head, his cheeks red with fury, his eyes glowing the color of moss. The wolf trotted in behind him.

The rifle was on the bed. If she could just get to the rifle, she could protect herself. She could pull a trigger on a man; she knew she could. Especially an evil one like Danny, and like Justin. They weren’t the boys she remembered. She scooted inches toward the bed, pretending to be trying to get away from Danny.

He knelt in front of her and sniffed the air, his nostrils flaring. “Bryson’s dead. And do you smell that, bitch?”

What? Dead? No, no, no. She was panting under the adrenaline rush, but all she smelled was that pungent chemical scent that clung to every air molecule. Her eyes watered with it, and she scooted a few more inches toward the bed. Maris shook her head. “He’s not dead. He’s with the Kaids.”

“Kaids are dead, too. That griz gotta horse named Smoke.” Danny’s eyes were vacant, like he was staring right through her. “Smoke. Smoke.”

And it clicked. She glanced to the window and could see grey smoke billowing outside. Kerosene had a very unique sent. She hadn’t smelled it since a camping trip with her parents when she was a kid. Dad had an old lantern he’d lit that smelled like it.

They were burning her home. Now she could smell it plain as day. The smoke was reaching the inside. Was reaching the room. Was reaching her.

“Why?” she asked in horror. “Why would you kill my herd? Why would you burn my home? Why did that wolf try to kill me?”

“Not kill you, Maris. Change you. You were supposed to be queen. Don’t you see?” His voice shook with rage. “A man needs to take everything from a woman so she don’t get that need to search for better. He’s gotta make her dependent, and you…you, Maris Thurgood, got that independent streak that just won’t do.” He nodded and lifted his ruddy brows higher. “It’s a man’s job to show his mate how strong he is, and how very, very weak she is. That’s where her happiness will come from. That’s where her loyalty will come from.” He leaned in, within inches of her face. “Her devotion will come from the security he can give her.”

“You’re a fucking psycho.” She spat in his face and scrambled to the bed. He yanked her hair back just as her fingertips brushed the rifle. She screeched as loud as she could, and he hunched, covering his ear with his free hand. Smoke billowed down the hallway now and into the room, coating everything in haze.

“Bryson!” she screamed again, kicking Danny in the shin so hard, pain zinged up her bad ankle. Oh, it hurt, but what choice did she have? She struggled forward, ignoring the ache of his grip in her hair as she stretched her fingers for the rifle. There. She grabbed the barrel and brought it up swinging, praying he hadn’t messed with the safety.

Maris clocked him right in the side of the head and kicked him in the stomach before he was done falling backward. She tossed that rifle in the air, caught the stock, and jammed her thumb against the safety.

“You fucked with the wrong bitch,” she whispered as she aimed at his head and pulled that trigger.

Click.

She pulled it again. Click. Click.

Danny chuckled. And then his chuckle turned into a laugh when she checked the chamber, which had been emptied. The glint of bullets on the floor was barely visible through the smog. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, and a wolf took up the entire doorway.