Page 22 of To Keep A Wolf
We reach the kitchen, and another figure comes forward from the shadows.
I nearly scream until I see their face.
Frankie Dyer.
Her gray-blonde hair is combed back as usual, and her steel-blue eyes are unwavering. She’s always been a badass since the moment she marched up to me and shut down the haters back at Levi’s compound. But in this moment, that steel is intensified.
She tosses Tripp a set of keys that he snatches effortlessly out of the air.
“Truck’s parked at the end of the drive,” she says then glances at me. “Get your ass healed, Mac. And then give ‘em hell. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I mumble the words, but she’s already gone, slipping back into the house where she’ll continue to pretend loyalty to the man we all want to kill.
But that’s for another day, apparently.
“This way,” Tripp says, motioning for Levi to follow.
We slip out the side door, and I find myself underneath a heavy gray sky full of rain clouds. In the distance, thunder rolls. Or maybe furniture has just broken again, I can’t be sure.
We’re halfway across the stone-paved drive when the door bursts open behind us. A trio of soldiers pours out—all of them wearing the alpha guard uniform. I stiffen, recognition slamming through me as I remember their faces from the leering and catcalls while I bled all over Jadick’s office rug.
“Hey,” one of them shouts. “Stop.”
“What’s our other option?” Tripp calls lazily.
In answer, one of them pulls a gun from a hip holster and aims it at us.
Levi curses and hesitates. I tighten my grip on his shirt, terrified he’s going to abandon me. That maybe I’m not worth the trouble after all.
“Relax, Mac,” he says under his breath. “It’s you and me.” He pauses and then asks, “Do you trust me?”
He doesn’t look at me. His eyes are fixed on the enemy. The target. And something about that focus comforts me. He’s going to kill them with me in his arms, and even with the venom burning its way through my consciousness, I have never loved him more than I do right now.
“I trust you,” I whisper.
He spares me a glance, eyes glinting. “Good girl. Now hang on.”
I do.
He doesn’t wait for the men to react before he takes off. Instead of hauling ass down the long driveway, he darts left and slides behind one of the duty cars. It’s an SUV like the one I rode in on the day we arrived. Tinted windows. Bullet proof armor.
The gun fires anyway, and the three soldiers fan out. An instant later, Tripp is beside us, looking more annoyed than anything.
He catches my eye and winks—and then he’s gone again.
One of the soldiers cries out. A body falls with athunkon the stone drive. Levi spins out from around the hood, using me as a weight to gain momentum. My heel shoves into the guard’s gut, and it drives him back, thanks to the force Levi’s put behind it. I wince, biting back a shriek of pain at the way the impact ignites the poison inside me.
The man is knocked off balance, and Levi wastes no time kicking out against his kneecap. Something snaps, and the man yells as he goes down. Levi kicks the gun from his hand, and it skitters away.
Tripp picks it up and chucks it right back to Levi, who adjusts his grip on me so that he catches the weapon midair with his free hand.
He fires at the third soldier just before the man can barrel into us.
The bullet tears a hole through his chest and drops him immediately.
Then everything is quiet again.
