Tessa smiled.“You’re always starving.”
He opened his mouth, probably to argue even though it was true, but his gaze snagged on something behind her.His expression shuttered, light dimming instantly.
Tessa stiffened.“What?”
He swallowed hard, eyes fixed over her shoulder.“Don’t turn around,” the kid blurted.He sounded downright scared.
Her pulse blipped.Ice slid down her spine.This couldn’t be good.
“Dillon,” she said quietly, “what’s happening?”
But she already knew.She’d felt something off the moment she stepped onto the school grounds.A pressure, a prickle at the base of her skull, the sensation of eyes where eyes shouldn’t be.She tried to pass it off as paranoid, that she was overthinking things.
Brick would’ve noticed.Brick always noticed, but she hadn’t seen him.He’d sent her a text an hour ago saying he was “handling something for the club.”
She had tried to believe that she would be safe on her own, even for a few hours.
Dillon’s breath stuttered.“Tessa, he’s coming,” he whispered.
Tessa turned.A man leaned against the row of lockers across the hall.He was wearing a leather cut with the Iron Serpents’ patch.He had his greasy blond hair shoved under a backwards cap.
Threatening tattoos crawled up one side of his neck like a vine of thorns.He wasn’t huge, but he had the lazy, predatory look of amusement most members of the Iron Serpents wore like a second skin.
He grinned when their eyes met.Well, shit.
“Afternoon, sweetheart,” he drawled, pushing off the lockers.His boots echoed sharply as he came closer, weaving effortlessly through the thinning pack of kids.“Been looking for you.”
Dillon moved to stand in front of her like he could shield her, but she gently pushed him behind her.Dillon was sweet to protect her, but she was the adult here.She should be the one protecting him.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said.Her voice came out steadier than she felt.“This is a school.”
“Yeah, well, lucky for me I don’t give a fuck.”His grin widened.“Boss wants a word.”
Her stomach dropped.“Tell your boss to grow a spine and talk to me himself.”
The man’s face twitched.It was just a flicker of temper, but Tessa caught it, smoothing it over with something uglier.
“Cute.But he said bring you back one way or another.”His gaze slipped down her body, slow and deliberate.“Don’t really gotta make it pleasant.”
Dillon sucked in a sharp breath.Tessa’s heart hammered.The hallway was almost empty now, only a few stragglers and a teacher locking a classroom door near the far end.Too far, and there were too many walls.
Too few witnesses who would actually step in when a man with a biker patch started getting handsy.She forced her chin up.
“You get one warning.Walk away,” Tessa told him.
“Ooh.”He took another step.“Or what?You gonna—”
A shadow tore into her peripheral vision.
A force hit the Iron Serpent member so fast she barely registered movement, just a thundering impact as the man was slammed against the lockers hard enough to rattle the entire row.His head bounced off the metal, his breath knocked out of him in one ugly grunt.
Brick.He had one massive hand fisted in the guy’s collar, holding him pinned like he weighed nothing.The hallway seemed to shrink around him, the air vibrating with the violence barely leashed in his shoulders.
Tessa had never been so relieved and so terrified at once.
“I swear to God,” Brick growled, his voice low and lethal, “if you touch her again, I will end you.”
The Serpent gasped, clawing at Brick’s wrist.“I didn’t.We’re just talking”
