“Fuck.” Thorin shoves away from the table and stalks across the cabin.
I guess we’re answering the door.
My heart is pounding, and I’m shifting nervously in my chair, eyeing the distance between the table and the stairs and wondering if I can make it to the den before it’s too late. It’s pointless to keep pretending I’m dead, but I don’t see any other way out of this.
Unless we kill the sheriff.
A new bolt of panic seizes my muscles.
Oh, God… They’re not actually going to kill him, are they?
My eyes slide to the side where Se—uh…Zeke—is sitting quietly, leaning back in his chair with his fingers laced on his abs and an unreadable look on his face and for the first time I’m happy that Seth isn’t awake.
He would snuff the sheriff in a heartbeat to keep me.
Miserably, a pang of longing for the unhinged alter stabs at my heart, and I force myself to look away.
Zeke isn’t Seth. And I’m pretty sure Zeke hates me.
The door opens, and I hear Thorin mumble something and then stand back to allow the sheriff and the two deputies by his side to enter the cabin. Khalil stands, but he doesn’t move away from the table. He futilely angles his body at the head of the table to block me from view.
I hear a sharp inhale and follow the sound to see Zeke sitting forward, his knuckles white and the veins in the back of his hands bulging from how hard he’s gripping the edge of the table.
He looks cornered…scared.
He looks ready to bolt.
I can’t help reaching out a hand to comfort him, stretching my body to reach him at the other end of the table. “A-are you okay?” I whisper.
Those wide green eyes shoot to me and immediately narrow. He snatches his hand back and answers shortly, “I’m fine.”
Okay then.The rejection stings a little, but Zeke doesn’t owe me anything, so I shake it off and refocus in time to see the muscles in Khalil’s back bunch and hear his bark.
“That’s far enough, sheriff.”
I peek around Khalil, and the knots in my stomach twist further when I see the sheriff making a beeline for the table.
For me.
There’s a deputy stoically posted at the front door with his arms crossed while the other is a step ahead of the sheriff with his hand already on his gun and his uneasy gaze pinned on Khalil. My stomach bottoms out and it’s fortunate that I haven’t had the chance to eat or else my lunch would be all over the floor.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I reach for Khalil as if I have any hope of removing him from the path of a speeding bullet.
I’m not the only one who notices the unspoken threat either.
“Sheriff,” Thorin growls in a tone so menacing that as the hairs on my nape and arms rise, it dawns on me with a wind chill cold enough to rival Everest’s that I haven’t seen Thorin truly angry. Until now. “Get control of your fucking deputy before any goodwill between us dies and I remove him from my home out the back door.”
We don’t have a back—oh.
The cliff.
Thorin just threatened to throw an officer of the law off the cliff.
And his words fall on deaf ears as the nervous deputy continues to watch Khalil, who’s standing perfectly still with his arms crossed and not saying a word. The sound of chair legs scraping across the floor breaks the tense silence, and in my peripheral vision, I see Zeke standing as if he seconds Thorin’s warning.
Zeke may not like me, but he loves Khalil, which means that in this moment, he’s just as unpredictable as Seth.
