The moment Ranulf heard the two wordsContainedandSafeinside his head, he knew the agonizing time of having to listen to the gloating Wallis’s threats was finally over.
He would be forever grateful to Sephie for doing as he had asked when she closed her eyes and kept them closed.
He didn’t want her to see any of what was about to happen.
The two of them needed to be completely alone, and not under any sort of threat, when he explained who and what he was and what she now meant to him.
Her unquestioning compliance now allowed Ranulf to snuff out the candles with just a thought before he moved forward with preternatural speed.Neither of which Wallis had any chance of reacting to until it was too late.
Unlike Wallis, Ranulf had enhanced dragon vision, allowing him to see in the dark.A stroke of his long talons across the fragile skin of Wallis’s wrist, and the hand holding the controller with the button set to detonate the dynamite in the inn was no longer attached to Wallis’s arm.He was tempted to do the same to the other wrist, detaching the hand that had dared to touch his mate’s hair minutes ago.He might still do that later, but for now, he restrained himself.
But he did enjoy hearing Wallis’s shocked gasp after he had reignited the candles and the man was able to see his own dismembered hand lying on the tiled floor.The scream that immediately followed was music to Ranulf’s ears.
He watched with satisfaction as the man immediately released Sephie to use his other hand to attempt to stem the flow of blood from the stump at the end of his arm.
“You bastard!”he accused when the blood kept pumping through his fingers.“You fucking?—”
Ranulf had cut off Wallis’s flow of curses by placing his blood-wet talons around the other man’s throat.“Keep your eyes closed,” he growled at Sephie when he sensed she was about to give in to her curiosity and open them.
Her lips thinned indignantly in a show of irritation at his order, but thankfully, she still did as he asked.
Seconds later, Ranulf applied pressure to the strategic points in Wallis’s neck, and the man was rendered unconscious.Ranulf then dragged Wallis over to the open doorway and handed the dragon hunter off to his brothers waiting outside.
Lachlan took the detonator and put it in his pocket, while Hunter retrieved the severed hand and then incinerated away any evidence of blood on the floor, before the two of them silently departed.Once they were outside, Lachlan grasped Wallis’s coat collar and easily pulled the still unconscious man across the snow-covered ground behind him.
None of them was willing to touch any more of the murdering bastard than they needed to be able to carry out the rest of their plan.
Ranulf knew his brothers would be taking Wallis to Drake House and securing him there.The exact method of his death, as he had brought deliberate harm to all of them in one way or another, would be decided later.
They had come up with this plan earlier today after Hunter and Lachlan, having sensed Ranulf’s deepening distress in regard to his mate, had listened to his explanation of what was happening and then shared that situation with their mates.Zoey and Belle had insisted they all must assist in saving Sephie and her family before disposing of Edgar Wallis once and for all.
Mates, Ranulf had realized, could be bloodthirsty creatures when the people they loved were threatened.
Much to Zoey’s and Belle’s annoyance, Hunter and Lachlan had suggested they remain at Drake House until the worst of this situation was over.
A brief conversation later, and the two women were instead accompanying their mates to the village inn to release Sephie’s parents while Ranulf kept Wallis’s attention occupied inside the church.
Since learning of its existence, Ranulf had also warned his brothers through their mental link of the necessity of disabling the dynamite in the inn before doing anything else.
After that, Ranulf had only been waiting for his brothers to let him know that the Malcolms were safe and the dynamite was contained.
The moment he had heard those two reassuring words through their familial link, Ranulf had asked Sephie to close her eyes.
It had all gone exactly as they wanted it to.Allowing Ranulf to check to make sure there was no evidence left anywhere, on the floor tiles or otherwise, before he invited Sephie to “open your eyes.”
* * *
The first thing Sephie realized when she raised her eyelids and instinctively turned to face the danger in the room, namely Edgar Wallis, was that he was no longer standing behind her.
Nor, after a quick glance, could she see him anywhere else in the shadows created by the half-dozen lit candles inside the church.
She was a little wary still about assuming his disappearance was a good thing.As far as she could tell, the detonator was also missing.
“What happened while my eyes were closed?”she prompted cautiously.
“I would hardly have asked you to close them if I then intended to answer that question in any detail,” Ranulf chided gently.
“Why can I detect the metallic smell of blood and something burning?”
