Chapter 82

I fell to the ground, burying my face in the sand and screaming despite my attempts at being quiet. Several other shots were fired, the rogue wolves managed to startle themselves into action and there was a moment of chaos.

I lifted my head when I heard Ethan calling my name. He was laying beside me in the sand, screaming at me to get up and run away.

“Go!” He screamed over the shouts and threats, “Run as far as you can!”

I nodded and scrambled to my feet, Ethan followed suit. I ran a few feet, my knees wobbly and struggling to keep myself upright in the soft sand.

I turned ,looking back to see if Ethan was following me, but stopped as I watched him lunge for a few of the rogue wolves. He was moving faster than I’d ever seen anyone before. He ripped at their clothes, their hair, whatever he could get his fingers on to keep them from following me down the beach.

His screams were animalistic, fangs formed in his mouth as he bounced back and forth between his wolf and his human form. Ethan was surrounded by five of the rogues. They tried to grab his arms and hold him back, but I watched as he broke the hands that reached for him.

He snapped forearms like twigs, and knocked the men so fast that they didn’t even realize they were on the ground until Ethan was knocking them out with a kick to the face.

He was a monster, a machine. He was deadly.

I stopped to watch him in awe, but that turned out to be a detrimental mistake. As I was mesmerized by Ethan’s combat skills, I felt strong grips wrap themselves tightly around my biceps. I tried to pull away from two rogues that had placed themselves on either side of me, but they had iron fingers.

There was no escaping them. When I tried to pull away, one of them yanked my arm so hard I felt my shoulder pull from the socket for a moment. I screamed in pain, begging to be let go.

“Please!” I screamed, crying and pathetic. “It hurts! Let me go!”

Ethan’s head snapped up as he heard my cries for help.

He had three of the men laying at his feet, blood oozing from broken noses and staining the sand below, and two more of them were still trying their best to subdue him.

When he saw me, his actions became even more aggressive. He thrashed as they tried to claw at him, ripping the sleeves on his shirt. One managed to land a few punches against his jaw while the other wrestled his arms down to his sides.

Ethan kept his eyes on me, though, as the remaining two dragged me up the beach towards a solitary street.

I screamed and begged to be let go. Nothing would work, though. They laughed and teased as their grips only tightened. I felt their fingertips dig into my muscle, crushing veins and creating bruises.

I closed my eyes, terrified what lay ahead for me as I felt them continue to drag me further away. I couldn’t fight them at all, the both of them were far too strong for me to face alone, and I couldn’t even slow their movements with my feet against the ground. There was no friction in the sand.

The pounding of feet and a yelp sounded from my left. Suddenly, my arm was released and I could feel the circulation of blood returning to normal now that his grip wasn’t constricting it.

I gasped and my eyes shot open. Ethan had grabbed the rogue wolf by his curly hair and ripped him away from me. He had a fistful of hair and a snarl on his face as he towered over the wolf on the ground.

“Please, man,” The wolf begged as he crawled away from Ethan, “I was just doing it for money. It’s all money, you don’t know what it’s like.”

Ethan cocked his head to the side, a low grumble in his voice as he replied, “I spent my teenage years with nothing and no one, you don’t have to do this for money.”

The man’s jaw went slack as he regarded Ethan.

Ethan, my sweet, sarcastic, and thoughtful husband, was turned into a wild animal at the threat of his wife and mate. Ethan’s pupils were blown, so much so that his eyes appeared almost completely black instead of blue.

His breathing was ragged, his shoulders squared and hunched over the man on the ground. I thought, for a gruesome second, that Ethan was going to lunge for him and kill him.

I could practically see it all in my head, the way he would rip and tear at him with his teeth, break whatever bones were left, or throw him to the ocean for the sharks to take care of.

Ethan looked crazy with anger. He looked like a man capable of anything.

I flinched as Ethan turned and yanked the man holding my other arm away from me. He was frozen, watching to see what would become of his colleague, and didn’t react as Ethan wrapped his hand around his throat and threw him on the sand next to the other one.

They both stared up at him in horror. Ethan bared his teeth at them and glanced back at me to make sure I was okay.

I nodded my head, rubbing the blossoming bruises on my arms, and blinked as he turned back to the rogue wolves. The other five that Ethan had been up against before had retreated, smartly might I add, and these were the only two left.

“You hurt my wife,” Ethan glared down at them, chest heaving.

“We’re sorry!” One of them put his hands together, begging for his life. “We didn’t mean to.”

The other one, though, stared back up at Ethan, face stoic and unmoving. That one, I could tell, felt neither fear nor remorse for what he had done that night.

“You’re going to leave this beach,” Ethan ordered, voice starting to return to its original cadence, “And you are going to tell whoever you are working for to leave us alone.”

The wolf that was begging before nodded and scrambled to his feet. He was nearly a foot shorter than Ethan, and he bowed his head as he apologized.

“I won’t be back, we won’t be back,” He promised. “I will go I won’t-”

He was rambling. Ethan waved him off with a hand and he scrambled up and over a nearby sand dune to get as far away from Ethan as he possibly could.

Ethan was watching him go, and then turned back to look at the other wolf. That one, though, was no longer lying on the ground at our feet. In the other one’s pleading, we were distracted and didn’t see as the other had gotten up and grabbed a pistol that was knocked from his hand earlier.

He was pointing the gun at Ethan, and I responded instinctually. I wasn’t sure what I was thinking, or if I was really thinking at that moment.

As if in slow motion, I saw as he pulled the trigger, and the bullet was released from the barrel. I threw myself in front of Ethan, but the bullet never hit me.

The shot missed.

The wolf whimpered and scurried after his friend, discouraged by missing his shot and not wanting to try again.

I turned back to Ethan to hold him, thank him for saving me, kiss him until our faces turned blue, but Ethan was staring at me with wide eyes.

The bullet hadn’t missed.

It whizzed past my figure and lodged itself in Ethan’s side. Blood bloomed from the wound, staining the pretty white shirt he had on.

His eyes rolled back into his head and he fell.