Page 183 of Untamed

He’s quiet. More quiet than usual.

His head turns slightly, eyes sweeping over the street behind us, then forward again. Controlled and focused.

I glance up at him. “What’s wrong?”

He doesn’t answer. Just angles his body slightly, slipping a protective arm around my waist and steering me toward the next corner. Not possessive, but tactical.

“Ares?” I press, my voice dipping low. “You’re scaring me.”

“That’s because you should be scared,” he mutters under his breath, his tone razor-sharp. “We’re being followed.”

A cold weight settles in my gut.

We round the corner into a quieter alleyway, the buildings tall and shadowed around us. He stops abruptly, grips my shoulders and looks me in the eye.

“Stay here. Don’t move. Don’t speak. You see anyone but me, you scream.”

I nod, my mouth suddenly dry.

And then he’s gone. A blur of black, slipping back around the corner like a ghost in daylight. My heart hammers in my chest. I lean against the stone wall and listen.

Low voices. A scuffle.

Then, I hear him. “Get the fuck against the wall.”

The sound of metal, a gun being cocked.

My pulse spikes. Oh my God.

I creep forward just enough to peer around the corner. Ares has a man pinned, his forearm pressed against the guy’s throat, a sleek black pistol pressed to the man’s eye socket.

“Talk,” Ares growls. “Now.”

“I, I was just?—”

“You think I don’t notice a shadow on my back?” His voice is lethal. “You think I won’t kill you right fucking here?”

“I’m not armed?—”

“That’s not the question.” He shoves harder, and the man gags. “Who sent you?”

The man chokes out a name. “il Don,”

Ares goes still. Dangerously still.

And then, just as fast, he lets the man go, but not before slamming him once, hard, against the wall.

“Listen to me and listen well,” Ares says. “When you report back to my father, you tell him she was out shoppingalone. If you breathe a fucking word to my father or Enzo about seeing me with her, I’ll deliver your heart to your family in a wine box, and I won’t just stop there. I’ll wipe out your entire lineage. Do you understand me? I’m sure you know of my repute and what I’m capable of.”

The man nods, and stumbles off, disappearing into the crowd as Ares turns back toward me.

His expression is unreadable. His hands still flex with tension, his chest rising and falling with every ireful breath.

But when his eyes meet mine, some of that ice melts, just barely.

“You okay?” he asks, quieter now.

I nod, shaken. “You… you were going to kill him.”

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