Page 9 of Bodyguard Wolf's Fated Mate
He couldn't shoot at me but that didn't stop him from producing a very menacing blade. He was breathing faster than normal when he lumbered down the alley. His belly protruded over his waist. He wasn't in the best shape of his life, but he knew the punishment for failure.
That was all projected from his eyes when he climbed onto the fire escape in pursuit of me.
I continued to climb but this time there was a matter of haste. Slowing down for even a second would require stitches. He swung the blade a few times. It sliced my heel but not very deeply and it didn't even bleed.
"You have to pay for what your father did. It's the only way to settle things. I take no pleasure in this. None of us do. You know what the Bible says about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This will hopefully stop him from doing this to anybody else." The man wheezed in protest to something my father did that I wasn't privy to.
"I'm getting tired of being used as some sort of pawn in a deadly game. Keep me out of what my father does. He doesn't consult me. He knows that I wouldn't agree with his methods. Violence only begets violence." I stressed the importance of doing things a different way.
"That doesn't sound like him. We are not the bad guys. We are just trying to rectify an injustice. You can put the blame squarely at your father's feet. This could have been avoided but now we have come too far to go back to the way things were," he answered with his nostrils flaring.
I was halfway to the top when Luke's face came into focus. His eyes widened when he saw me. It wasn't like he could do anything to stop me. That ship had already left port for a destination unknown.
It was a good thing I didn't listen to him. The man pursuing me would've easily cornered me. It was to my advantage to get to higher ground as fast as possible. He was already out of breath and lagging behind. The knife could no longer reach me which made me breathe a sigh of relief, despite getting out of the frying pan and most likely into the fire.
I had pinned all of my hopes on Caitlin. Ironically, being hampered by a cocaine fix would've made it less likely to escape the clutches of those with a grudge against my father.
I was almost to the top when I suddenly had this intense pain. It radiated through my stomach until I could barely hold on with any degree of success.
Luke was once again looking over the side a few feet away from me. "You don't know what you're doing. Nobody has trained you. Nobody has prepared you for this day. It's not something I would want to wish on my worst enemy. You look positively pale which is expected."
"You don't know me. Don't pretend to," I argued, with the pain fueling me into a premature red-faced rage.
"I think I might know you better than you know yourself. Certainly better than your father knows you. Definitely better than the drug connection knows you," he stated when he was pulled away from the edge.
I poked my head up over the ledge. The amazing sight of him fighting somebody three times his size inspired me. He took a blow to the kidneys and then trapped the man's arm and pummeled him repeatedly with the top of his head to the bridge of the man's nose.
A startling blur came toward him while he was in the throes of battle. It was moving so fast that it was hard to slow it down in my mind. It was a gift I thought everybody had until I realized they didn't. It made me special but now I was wondering why I had that particular talent.
The blur separated them in the most extreme way possible.
The man Luke fought tooth and nail flew into the empty space several feet away from the building. It was almost cartoonish the way he flailed madly in the air before coming back down to reality the hard way.
Luke crashed into the metal air conditioning vent. He didn't get back up. He did whimper under his breath something similar to a dog getting hit with a rolled-up newspaper.
The black mass turned with yellow eyes staring right at me.
CHAPTER 5
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LUKE
It felt like a sledgehammer smacked me up against the side of my head. It should've dawned on me that I might've had its scent, but it also had mine. The hunter had become the hunted after I had lowered my guard to protect the innocent life of a fledgling wolf.
My ears rang and I could barely focus with the left side of my head numb. It was so big and overpowering. I didn't even get a chance to get a few licks in myself.
I struggled to release myself from the fog of disorientation. My whole body rebelled against me. The pain convinced me to stay down for the count, but I wasn't about to do that. It went against everything I believed.
She was my charge and nothing was going to happen to her unless it was over my dead body. Forcing myself to move took every ounce of willpower. It hurt so bad that I actually saw spots in front of my eyes.
I groaned and grunted while frantically shedding out of my clothes.
I managed to move my head and got on all fours. That strange balance between beast and human was temporarily lifted. The animal within made no bones about taking over control. There was no consultation to determine the best course of action without alerting people to our presence.
The change was more physical with the pain of my injuries swimming upstream against the familiar cracking of my bones. They formed and shifted in my body to morph into something quite intimidating. My back arched and my spine rippled with dark hair coming out of every part of my body.
My nose became long and regal with my sense of smell enhanced a hundred times over. Pushing myself out of the way to make room for that sweet release of endorphins was easy when I didn't have the energy to resist.
