“What plan?”she prompted cautiously.
He gave a grin.“That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”
“How old are you, ten?”she scoffed.
His lips remained curled in a smirk.“My age isn’t relevant to this situation when I’m clearly the one in control.”
Sephie wasn’t so sure about that.In fact, she was pretty sure that Ranulf, who, in her opinion, had capitulated far too easily to Wallis’s demand, was now and would always be the one in charge of any situation that involved him.
CHAPTERFIVE
A low growl began reverberating in Ranulf’s chest later that evening the moment he saw Sephie’s face as she stumbled into the church ahead of Wallis.
Ranulf was able to see, from his heightened dragon sight and the light of the half-dozen candles he had used his dragon senses to ignite strategically about the nave, that there were purple bruises on Sephie’s cheek, and her lips looked swollen as they pressed against the tape covering her mouth.
Had this bastarddaredto strike his mate?
Kill, came his dragon’s battle cry, clamoring to be set free so that he could rip apart the man who had hurt their mate.
All in good time.Ranulf calmed the need to shift.
Not because he wasn’t as furious as his dragon at seeing the evidence of Wallis’s brutality on Sephie’s face.
He was probably more so.
But, no matter what the provocation, a warrior who had lived for well over a thousand years had learned the art of patience and also the exact moment to strike to the greatest effect.
The mocking smile on Wallis’s face told Ranulf that time wouldn’t come until after he’d discovered why this man’s expression was so sneeringly confident.
Wallis put one of his hands on Sephie’s shoulder to push her so that she was walking in front of him as he approached where Ranulf stood in the center of the nave.Conveniently where the vaulted ceiling was at its highest, in case he needed to shift into the fierceness of his dragon.
The bruising to Sephie’s face alone was enough for his dragon to clamor for the retribution that also burned in Ranulf’s chest.
He narrowed his gaze as he took in the rest of Sephie’s appearance.
Her arms were pulled back and her hands bound behind her.She wasn’t wearing a coat, only a cream Aran-knit jumper and fitted jeans, along with the same inadequate fashion boots from earlier today.
It appeared to Ranulf as if these were the same clothes Sephie had been wearing under that puffy coat earlier.Her pink hair was wet from the snow still falling outside, and there was that bruise on her cheek and her swollen lip.
Whatever Wallis had done to cause his mate pain Ranulf would return it tenfold.
A hundredfold, his dragon threatened.
A thousand fold, Ranulf roared inwardly when, the closer Sephie came to him, the more he could see the absolute terror in her beautiful blue eyes.
Ranulf had no way to reassure her without alerting Wallis and having him question the reason for it, when this man believed he was the one in control.
Hecould choose to believe that.But Ranulf knew it was far from the truth.
He shifted his gaze, glaring his fury at Wallis, thankful when no smoke came from his nostrils to alert the other man to how close his dragon was to making an appearance.Not that he cared for Wallis’s sake, but he doubted Sephie had any idea of the existence of dragon shifters, except possibly those that some of the romance authors now wrote about in books.Seeing Ranulf shift into a thirty-foot-tall silver dragon before he had explained the situation to her would probably deeply traumatize her.
Calm, he instructed his outraged dragon,for now, time is our friend, not our enemy.
Ranulf’s eyes narrowed when he saw that Wallis was holding something black in the hand that wasn’t pushing Sephie toward him.Probably the gun Sephie had mentioned him having earlier.
As if a gun would ever harm us, his dragon scorned.
It was true that a bullet, unless it was armor-piercing, couldn’t penetrate the dragon scales beneath Ranulf’s skin.Even then, it would only be an inconvenience that would heal itself within minutes.
