Page 3 of Hers to Love
Taika turned back to her and frowned when his mate appeared toflickerright before his eyes. He reached out his hand to grab her, to pull her into the safety of his arms, but came away with nothing, his hand simply passing through thin air.What the ever-loving fuck?
“What the hell is happening?” he snarled.
His mate gasped and dropped to a crouch before him, grasping her hand to her arm. Taika was horrified to see blood seep between her fingers. In the distance, almost simultaneously, he heard the sound of a gunshot.
“Fuck! Have you been shot?” Taika stepped forward, and actually moved through his mate, and he roared in frustration. His skin felt too tight for him as his gorilla pressed for release, wanting only to protect what was theirs. “Tell me how to reach you. You’re mine. Mine! I can protect you. That is my right and my fucking job in this life, so tell me where the hell you are!”
“Taika!” He heard Remy, his best friend, calling out his name moments before he came sliding into the small clearing. “What the hell?”
Remy’s gaze was locked on his mate, who was now fading out of sight.Fucking fading!
“Mate! You fucking tell me how to find you. Now!” Taika practically roared, his entire being shaking with the need to get to her. “I am coming for you, do you hear me? You are mine to protect, and God help me that is what I am going to do!”
“Well,” his mate said after a moment’s hesitation. “That’s kinda … unexpected. You sound almost concerned for me … andmate? As in, fated to you? No, the fates would never be so cruel as to make me the mate of the man who killed my grandmother. Not sure about that, ape-man, but it is strange that you show concern, and … that you care. I didn’t think someone like you would be like that.”
Taika frowned. “Someone like me?”
Her eyes hardened, and a sweep of color graced her cheeks. “You said it yourself. A monster.”
Then she just … disappeared. Gone, as if she had never been. Before Taika could react, he heard more shots coming from the south, and from a great distance. Had he not been a shifter, he might not have heard them at all.
Taika threw back his head and screamed out in rage. A sound that morphed into the roaring challenge of a silverback hellbent on protecting his mate as he shifted in the space between one heart beat and the next. Not looking back, Taika took off into the forest, moving in the direction of the gunshots, determined to find his mate, and hellbent on bathing in the blood of the fucker who dared threaten what belonged to him.
