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I’ll bet, he thought.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“Nothing,” Nate muttered. “It was nothing. Listen, I gotta go. I’m in the field.”
“You’refighting? After the accident?” His mom’s fake-calm self-control started to slip, a choking sound rippling through the connection. “Nate, come in so Doc Jane can get a look at you. You weren’t wearing a seatbelt and…”
As his mom went down that old, familiar rabbit hole, he closed hiseyes and wished like hell he had the guts to tell the woman the same thing he had Shuli. Sarah and Murhder hadn’t birthed him; he was a responsibility they’d volunteered themselves for when the latter had raided the lab Nate had been imprisoned in, and the former, a human who had been working in the facility, had discovered what had been done to him.
If he kept pushing them away, sooner or later they just had to let go, if only because the law of attrition applied to emotions. Or at least… it should.
“I was wearing a seatbelt,” he cut in. “And you can verify that with the car’s computer.”
“Nate,” she whispered. “Please.”
Please what, he thought.
“I’ve got to go—”
The punch on his shoulders came from out of nowhere, knocking him forward, his phone flipping from his hand and cracking on the pavement.
“How you like it, asshole? Huh? You think it’s fucking okay to push women around?”
Nate turned around to the bulldog human with the duffle bag who’d deflected the temper tantrum. The knight in shining Under Armour was a gym bro looking for a squat rack, all roid muscles and not much engine between the ears, it seemed—or he wouldn’t be picking this fight. With his jutting jaw and his cologne, he probably didn’t have to look for dates, and given the way the woman with the sparkles across her chest was all superior at his six, he wasn’t going to have to search far after this heroic confrontation.
“You think it’s fucking okay, asshole? Answer me, pussy—”
The man went to punch forward with his palms again.
That was as far as he got.
Slapping a hold on both of those thick wrists, Nate pulled a pivot-and-push, pinning the guy face-first with arms behind the back against the front of a restaurant that was closed for the evening. With his fangsdescending and his upper lip twitching, Nate had a thought that he was waaaaay too close to the edge. But he didn’t care enough to follow through on the whoa-Nelly to his own temper.
Putting his face in close, he said in a low voice, “Do youreallywant to do this tonight.”
The thick-necked human did not move. No breathing, no talking. It was as if he were frozen in time as their eyes met over that pumped-up shoulder.
Then again, Nate really did want to rip the man’s throat out. Right here, on the sidewalk with so many humans around. He could practically taste the blood.
And clearly that message had been received.
“You tell him!” the woman said. “That’s right!”
Like she didn’t understand how the upper hand in physical conflict worked.
“What are you,” the man whispered.
No doubt Nate was showing off some hard-core dental hardware. But he didn’t care about that either.
“You can take the woman,” he said softly, “and get the fuck out of here. Or we can do this, you and me. Your choice. Make it now.”
The second he loosened the pressure, the man slipped out and took off, running across the traffic, dodging cars to the soundtrack of blaring horns, his duffle bag slapping his ass like a jockey on the final leg of a horse race.
The half-naked woman stared at the departure in disbelief.
“I’m sorry I pushed you,” Nate said to her.
“Ah…” She glanced back to him, her brows flickering like she was trying to decide whether or not she needed to be afraid. “What did you say to him?”
