How dare someone come onto the ranch, scare Sy, and hurt Ajag. This was our home. I might have told Ze'ev that I didn't intend to stick around for long, but for now, this was my home, too.
And that length of time I intended to stick around might be a little longer than I'd originally planned. The ranch had suddenly become a much more interesting.
I squeezed the door handle and slowly turned it before pushing the door open. The voices grew louder, but they didn'tgrow closer. I stepped inside and then pulled the door closed just as slowly as I had opened it.
Once the door was closed, I quickly moved over to the wall next to the fridge and the exit out of the kitchen. I angled my head just a little so I could better hear what the intruders were saying, and when I did, rage blew through me like a wildfire.
"How much longer is he going to be?" one man asked. "I want my turn."
"Just hold your horses," a different man said. "Bill will be done when he's done."
"He's taking fucking forever."
Someone laughed.
"Yeah, I bet the little bitch is a fighter."
I clenched my hands, wanting to wrap them around the necks of both men.
When they stopped talking, I peeked around the corner to see what they were doing. I frowned when I saw both men standing in front of Ze'ev and Jackson's bedroom door, their ears pressed to the hard wood door.
"Why isn't he making any noise? Do you think Bill knocked him out?"
"Naw, Bill likes them to fight."
I knew as soon as I started across the living room, they would see me. I also knew that Ze'ev and Lu were coming in from different directions. I just didn't think I had time to wait. Whatever was going on with Ajag in that bedroom, it wasn't good.
And I had a pretty good idea what it was.
It only enraged me more.
I took a deep breath and then raced around the corner and across the living room as fast as I could go, and that was pretty damn fast. I was a dire wolf after all.
I reached the two men just as I heard a loud crash from the other side of the door. They didn't even have time to bring up their fists to defend themselves before I was on them.
I punched the first guy. He hadn't even hit the floor before I punched the other guy and watched him fall. They weren't out, but they were feeling it.
I didn't have time to make sure they were unconscious. I had to get through that door and get to Ajag.
I turned and rammed my shoulder and the side of my body into the hard wooden door. If it wasn't for the lock breaking and the door flying open, I probably would have broken something.
When I stepped inside, it took a mere second to take in the horrendous scene before me. Ajag was pressed up against the headboard, clutching his torn shirt to his bruised and beaten body.
And he had bruises all over. His face, his chest, his arms.
They were everywhere.
I thought he had looked bad when we had originally found him, and he had been on death's door, but this was even worse. It came with a vivid flash of fear in his dull blue eyes.
I growled as I turned to the only one that could have been responsible for that fear, the man pinned to the floor under Ze'ev's knee. My hands clenched again as I took a step forward.
I didn't care if he was human and I was a wolf.
I was going to kill him.
"Rad, see to Ajag," Ze'ev ordered.
I'd only been his beta for like a second, and yet everything within me compelled me to follow that order, and not just simply because my alpha had given it.
