He sees me and the color drains from his face.
"What the—" He stumbles back a step, hitting the gate behind him. "She's with... she's with a monster?"
I stop three feet away. Close enough that he has to crane his neck to meet my eyes.
"You must be Peter." My voice scrapes low enough to vibrate in his chest. "I've heard a lot about you."
His face twists—fear warring with the arrogance of a man who's never faced consequences in his life. The arrogance wins. Men like him always think they're untouchable.
"I'm her husband." He juts his chin up, trying to look defiant despite the tremor in his hands. "I have every right—"
"Ex-husband."
The correction lands like a slap. His mouth opens and closes without sound.
"Sarah Mitchell is under the protection of the Feral Sons MC." I let each word settle between us like a stone dropping into still water. "She is under MY protection. And you are trespassing on private property."
"Protection?" He laughs—the sound high and sharp, panic bleeding through the bravado. "She's my wife. She belongs to me. I'm taking her home."
Everything in me goes still. The way it goes still before I do the things that keep my people safe. My vision sharpens. The worldnarrows to this one pathetic creature and the hundred different ways I could break him without breaking a sweat.
"She belongs to herself." I step closer and he presses himself flat against the gate, eyes wide and white-rimmed. "And she chose to be mine."
Movement in my peripheral vision. Sarah, walking through the front door with Finn a step behind her. I should tell her to get back inside, to let me handle this, but the look on her face stops the words in my throat. She isn't hiding. She walks toward us with her shoulders back and her chin lifted. Pride surges through me hot enough to burn. My mate doesn't cower. My mate doesn't run. My mate faces her monster head-on.
"Go home, Peter." Her voice holds steady.
"Sarah." His tone shifts—softer now, wounded, the voice of a man who's practiced this performance a thousand times. "Baby, come on. You know I didn't mean—"
"I'm not going anywhere with you." She stops at my side, close enough that her shoulder brushes my arm. "I'm staying here."
His mask cracks. The charming facade falls away and I see what lives underneath—petulant rage, the fury of a spoiled child denied his favorite toy.
"With THAT?" He jabs a finger at me, his face contorting. "You'd rather fuck an animal than come home to your husband? What, does he have some kind of monster cock you can't live without? Is that what this is?"
The growl tears from my throat before I can stop it—primal, a sound that makes prey animals freeze where they stand. My brothers shift behind me. Waiting. Ready.
Peter's eyes dart between us, and I watch him calculate his odds and decide he doesn't like them. His hand drops to his waistband.
The gun comes up fast, pointing at my chest.
Time stretches like taffy.
Sarah screams my name—I think—but the sound warps and slows. All I see is the barrel. All I feel is the heat flooding my muscles, my vision sharpening until I can count his heartbeats from ten feet away.
I move.
My hand closes around his wrist before his finger finds the trigger. I twist—not hard enough to break—and the gun clatters across the pavement. My other hand catches his throat. Not squeezing. His pulse hammers against my palm like a trapped bird trying to beat its way free.
"You came to my territory." The words scrape out of me, barely human. "Threatened my woman. Pulled a weapon out."
Behind me, my brothers form a half-circle. Finn's hand rests on the knife at his belt. The prospects crack their knuckles.
"Give me one reason not to end you right here."
Peter's face goes purple, his hands scrabbling uselessly at my grip. Tears leak from the corners of his eyes. He makes sounds—blubbering, maybe begging—but I can't hear them over the roar in my skull. All I can see is Sarah flinching from a raised hand. Sarah documenting bruises with shaking fingers. Sarah driving three thousand miles to escape a man who treated her like property.
"Knox."
