Page 88 of Those That Defy the Realm

Heading in the direction I spotted my best friend, the crowd is still thick, so I’m half guessing my way as I duck and dive between the bodies, of which at least half seem taller than I am.

Sensing that I’m nearing the edge of the masses, I dip to my left, into a gap, but at the same time a broad shouldered guy in a grey overcoat does the same.

“Oops, sorry,” I immediately say stepping back from where I’d just slammed into his chest.

His hand comes to my bicep, steadying me in a gentlemanly way. I expect him to respond with the same sentiment, but instead, his hand tightens around my arm and in a swift manoeuvre, he is twisting my entire body around and forcing me to walk back through the crowds with him.

“What the fuck? Let go.” I pull to try and dislodge him but it doesn’t work. I’m about to scream when he leans down and speaks in a low voice right beside my ear.

“If you cause a scene, I’ll snap your neck quicker than you can blink. We’ve got detail on your friend too. I’d hate for her to find herself in the water, maybe underneath the next boat to leave the docks.”

My blood runs cold, my skin erupts in goosebumps, and a shiver wracks me from head to toe that has nothing to do with the chill coming in off the ocean.

“Who are you?” I manage to stutter.

The entire time he’s pushing me in the opposite direction of Bree. I try to look over my shoulder, but this guy is so massive, I can see nothing but the width of his chest and shoulders.

“You’ll find out soon enough.” A press of teeth against my ear lobe sends my already speeding heart into overdrive. It goes from thumping to thrumming. There’s the distinct length of canines in his nip.

Vampire.

My feet turn to lead. I stumble a couple of times, but this guy has no trouble holding me upright. The crowd also seems to part for him, yet doesn’t take the blind bit of notice of me, for I must look as petrified as I feel. No one stops us, nobody intercepts the huge dude practically dragging a lone woman through the crowd and into an alley off the side of the docking area.

His threat rattles in my head. Not the bit about my neck, but about Bree. How did he know she was waiting for me? Better yet, how did he know about me? He must, right? The odds of this being a random attack and they just happen to catch the one female who knows the truth, who carries vampire DNA in her veins are so slim to none, that I cannot believe this is a coincidence.

But this vampire can’t be in any way involved with Rory. There’s no chance one of her pack would treat me this way. And I’ve met them all. Rory has never mentioned having others that don’t live in Froan.

Henry has told me about the pack that lives here in West Scotia. Of how they are brutish and embrace the shadier lives they’ve been forced into by being extradited from society.

No, the vampire at my back must belong to the pack here.

Maybe he doesn’t know who exactly he’s caught. I can use that to my advantage. I’m not sure how yet, but it must help that I know what he is and what he wants.

I’m about halfway to a plan when we stop. My attacker looks around, we’re alone in the alleyway, which seems to be a dead end.

He spins me to face him before slamming me into the wall.

The pain lances through my head a moment before everything goes black.

CHAPTER 31

HENRY

We are first off the ferry. It’s approaching midnight now, and Claire has been missing for hours. Missing and under threat, physically harmed.

The call from Ash came through just as we were boarding. Bree’s a minute later. My fangs haven’t retracted since.

“Let’s get into the hub of the city as fast as we can. Antares, which bars do they use? We need to see if we can track down a member of their pack,” Ty says. The plan had changed the minute Ash called, Ty immediately stepped up to help me.

Rory and him had the closest thing to an argument I’ve ever seen them have as she demanded to join our party as well. But in the end she agreed to let her mate come. If our worst fears were true and the West Scotian pack were behind this, then it was safer for Rory to stay in Froan. Not that she can’t handle herself, she’s proven that already, but we don’t need the target on us that she would unfortunately bring. If the pack weren’t involved and realised our head female was in their city, we’d have one hell of a fight to get out of it again, and we didn’t need that unnecessarily. Ty was a big enough risk alone.

Instead, Rory was coordinating things from back home. She’d already alerted the authorities and after an apparent fit of rage at our ‘carelessness,’ Agent Morris was deploying a private boat to get us back to Froan once we’d completed our mission.

And we would complete it; find Claire and get her home. There was no alternative in my head.

“This way,” Antares leads us away from the docks. We walk southwest from the piers, towards the side of the city I know the least. Mainly because it's known to all of us living in secret that it is the base for the West Scotian pack. What was left of it, anyway, after the war.

“Wait!” comes a female call from behind us as we emerge from the first walkway and are about to cross the street.