“Dad?”
“I never thought you’d let someone turn your head like that,kochanie,” he grumbled.
“I want what you and Mom have,” I explained. “The forever kind of love. The supernatural society believes that fate ordains all of these matings. That means if I hadn’t met Cassie by her being my bodyguard, I would have met her another way. Walking down the street. At a game. It was going to happen sooner or later.”
Dad opened his mouth to respond but was interrupted by the sound of shattering glass.
“Get down.”
We all dropped to the floor as two men leapt through the broken window, brandishing guns.
“You!” One guy pointed a gun in my direction. “Athlete. Come with us.”
“The hell she will!”
Dad took a step towards him and the man shot him. Mom screamed as he dropped to the floor, holding his shoulder as blood seeped out from a bullet wound. I moved in front of my parents as Mom knelt down to help her husband.
“Don’t hurt them,” I said with surprising calm. “I’ll come with you.”
Cassie
“We haven’t heard from Marilee and Angie in over an hour, that’s weird. They said they’d check in after thirty minutes. I’m going to call them.”
The words were barely out of my mouth when I heard simultaneous crashes from throughout the house.
“We’re under attack!” I yelled.
Alexei and I stood back to back, blocking Eleanor between us.
“Give us the girls,” a huge guy in tactical gear yelled.
When I sniffed I realized he and his companion were human. We could work with that.
“What girls?” I asked, feigning ignorance. “Are you here for me?”
“Ruby Wozniak and Eleanor Parkhurst,” the man boomed. “Turn them over and the rest of you won’t be hurt.”
“Let me at them,” Eleanor hissed, trying to push past us. We didn’t budge. She might be a shifter, but she wasn’t much of a fighter.
“What do you think, Alexei?” I said in a deceptively casual voice as I let my fangs descend and my nails lengthen. “Should we give them the girls?”
I hissed at the men, making myself appear bigger.
“Vampire!” The man sounded panicked. He frantically dug into a pocket, coming up with a small wooden cross. With a shaking hand, he brandished it in front of him.
“Seriously?” I asked. “You’ve been watching too many movies.”
I moved fast, diving for his legs and crashing into his knees. I knocked the man over and to my disappointment he barely fought back. Pussy. I made quick work of snapping his neck, and by the time I jumped to my feet a half-shifted Alexei had disemboweled the other guy, who wasn’t enough of a challenge for him to even shift into bear form.
“Nice work.”
“You too.” Alexei gave me a big smile. He loved killing bad guys.
“If you two are done congratulating yourselves, we have to find Ruby,” Eleanor reminded us. “She and her parents are helpless.”
The three of us raced across the house, following the sound of fighting. Alexei moved ahead of me, using his bear bulk to knock down the door. Eleanor and I followed right behind him, then we all skidded to a halt as we observed the sight in front of us.
Stanislaus Wozniak was holding a gun on one guy, his arm steady despite a bloody bullet wound on his non-dominant shoulder. April was hitting a guy repeatedly on the head and shoulders with a long necked metal vase that she was brandishing like a sword while my mate – my brave, fierce mate – clung to the guy’s back, her arms locked around his beefy neck like she was trying to choke him out.
