“I’m coming, mate.”
He had just about reached the door when someone came at him from his left. He turned to look only to get slammed from the right. Zhuang grunted as he went tumbling into the bottom of the grand staircase.
He shook his head and then climbed to his feet. He flattened his ears back against his head and bared his teeth, growling. It was a threat, plain and simple. He would rip these two yahoos apart if they didn’t back off.
They weren’t alphas, but there were two of them. Zhuang was stronger and faster. He just wasn’t sure he could beat two of them. He did know he had to try because they stood between him and his mate.
Zhuang growled again, wanting to give them one last chance. It wasn’t their fault their alpha was batshit crazy. They didn’t have to die for him, and they would die. Zhuang didn’t plan on leaving any prisoners.
When they took a step toward him, Zhuang sprang into action, going for the throat of the closest man. Why they didn’t shift to fight him, he would never know. He jumped on the guy, taking him to the hard marble floor.
He bit at the man’s throat, but as he started to sink his teeth in, he felt the man tremble. Zhuang froze and instead of listening with his anger, he listened with his other senses. He smelled fear, but he also smelled determination.
What he didn’t smell was anger. Well, except his own.
He also didn’t feel an attack from the other man. The guy should have rushed him the second his attention was somewhere else. So, why hadn’t he?
Zhuang extracted his teeth and climbed off of the man he’d pinned to the floor. He took a couple of steps back, his gaze snapping between the guy on the floor and the one standing by the bottom of the stairs. Neither man moved.
Zhuang shifted in one fluid motion. He stood tall and looked down at the man on the floor, then to the man by the stairs. “Why are you here?”
Neither man moved or spoke, but the scent of fear increased, saturating the room.
“Answer me!”
The guy on the floor swallowed so hard it looked painful. “We were ordered to slow you down.”
“Me specifically or…”
“You, sir,” the one by the stairs said. “We were ordered to slow you down.”
Fuck a duck.
“Did Osamu give you that order?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Zhuang started for the door. He doubted he’d have any more trouble from these two. He had a bigger target.
“Sir?”
Zhuang stopped at the front door and turned back to look at the man on the floor.
“He’s not taking the omega back to the clan.”
Zhuang frowned. “Why not?”
“I think he’s washed his hands of the whole clan. He had some of the enforcers round up the other cubs, anyone underage. They’re supposed to be meeting Alpha Osamu at a town a couple of hours south of here, but they’re bringing the kids here instead.”
“Why would they do that?”
“We want no part of taking cubs from their parents, sir. We’ve tried to get help, but the elder we spoke to admonished us for telling tales and then sent us home to our alpha. Our families paid for our betrayal, sir.”
Zhuang didn’t have to imagine how they had paid for it. He had heard too many stories from Xias. But something the man said stuck with Zhuang. “What elder did you speak to?”
“Elder Yang, sir.”
Zhuang growled. It would seem in killing Elder Yang, Osamu had been cleaning up his mess. That actually kind of made sense. It also made the video of Xias talking with Elder Yang and Osamu make sense. Zhuang could never figure out why the elder had sent the enforcers out of the room or why he was so ready to buy Osamu’s story about Xias.
