“You’re not going with me either. It’s too dangerous.”
Cole’s phone let out a default ringtone, and he stopped at the door long enough to answer it. Erica, still hopeful that she could persuade her father, waited for him to finish the phone call.
“You’re sure you saw them, Jaime?” he asked.
Now she wished she had super hearing like the shifters so she could hear the other side of the conversation.
“No, don’t follow them. I’m headed that way.” He snapped his archaic flip phone closed and stepped out onto the front porch. Ronan and Hank slammed the door to the back seat of a car, presumably Hank’s, ready to go with their cargo for the incinerator.
Erica stayed close on her father’s heels. “What’s going on?”
“They’re not at the antique store anymore. Jaime saw them going down Second Avenue.”
“Out of town?” Ronan asked as all four met in the driveway.
“Maybe.” Cole wrestled the squad car keys from his pocket. “Or to the other side of Jade Lake. There are too manyhouses between the town square and Larson Caves. They need someplace to fight without being seen.”
“Fight?” Erica squeaked.
“What did you think they would do?” Hank questioned with a note of contempt. “Dominic would have tried to talk it out, but if Wyatt’s already shooting, they’re done talking.”
“Dominic wouldn’t be shooting?”
“Dominic hates guns,” Cole told her as he moved around to the driver’s side of his squad car. She went to the passenger side. “I told you, you’re not coming!”
“I don’t have many other options.”
She saw Cole’s eyes dart toward Ronan and Hank, a wordless command for them to detain her, but she grabbed the handle on the car door before they had a chance to grab her.
Hank grabbed her arm. “If Wyatt wants to use you as leverage against Dominic, you shouldn’t be anywhere near him.”
Erica turned on them, shaking with indignation. “I’m not just going to sit around and twiddle my fucking thumbs while my mate is in trouble!”
A ripple of surprise spread through all of them, even Erica. She knew they were mated. Dominic had told her earlier that day, but she never thought she would have taken so much entitlement from the connection to throw it as a trump card in everyone’s faces.
The two shifters who she assumed had never had mates looked to the one who knew something about the mating bond and the kind of powerful, mind-altering effects it could have on a person’s heart. Cole would know something of what she was going through, perhaps not fully, but in part.
Erica looked to her father and entreated him for just a little compassion. He owed her that much after all she had been through. “Please. Let me at least try and help.”
She couldn’t read Cole’s hardened expression, half in shadows on the other side of the car. After a moment of consideration, he sighed and threw up his hands in surrender.
“Fine, but you’re staying in the squad car. Do you understand?”
She nodded, though she had no intention of doing as he said. The betas seemed put off by the way the alpha gave in so easily, but didn’t argue as father and daughter climbed in and tore out of the neighborhood, headed south for Jade Lake.
*
Dominic caught himself on the rough trunk of a pine and brought his momentary retreat to a full stop. He ignored the fiery pain in his chest as he gasped for air. A few broken ribs began to slowly mend back into place as blood trickled from the wound in his arm. A moment to breathe—that’s all he needed.
Behind him, he could hear Wyatt struggle to his feet, panting and choking on his own blood that gushed up from the cut in his neck. That should have been the last blow, but the shifter kept healing and coming back for more.
Dominic had tossed away his shirt as soon as they entered the forest on the other side of Jade Lake. It proved a hassle to lead the obsessed alpha out of town, away from the people who could witness their fight. It might have looked like the Prime Alpha was running, but he was setting his pieces in place, preparing the battlefield. Here, they could let out their wolves and finish this. Men could fight with fists and bash away at each other as Dominic and Wyatt had been doing since the gun knocked out of the fight. As beasts, this could be over within minutes.
He shook off the concussion that Wyatt had given him just moments ago and turned to face his opponent. Wyatt, blood drenched down the front of his expensive shirt, straightened and looked up with golden eyes full of menace. Dominic begged his wounds to heal faster.
“This is insane, Wyatt! Why would you even want Tolstone? Why go through all this?”
Though he had let the wolf take control and fight with a thoughtless ferocity that even Dominic hadn’t expected, it gave him some time to assess Wyatt’s motives. This couldn’t just be about power and control over a pack or two. This was about territory. The alpha wanted a place of his own, a town to claim. There were dozens of towns in Illinois where no shifter had ever set foot. They had even given them the locations when he first arrived, so that he could find a home for him and his pack. Why couldn’t he have settled for one of those? Why make a run for Tolstone when it was already claimed? He was making it so much harder for himself by trying to take a place that didn’t belong to him.
