Page 44 of Desired By the Dragon

He chuckled, waving the gun through the air. “This ends with you dead, and me a lot richer than I would have been with the Arizona haul, thanks to the places we hit on the way here.”

Trying for bravado, I smirked. “You really think I’m dumb enough to believe you’re going to shoot me? You underestimate—” The bang of sound made my body jolt. Or maybe that was the bright flare of pain in my shoulder. “You–You fucking shot me!”

Derek advanced, his face dark as he raised the gun again. “I’m going to do a lot worse than that.”

Chapter Seventeen

Max

There was a pit in my gut. I couldn’t work out why, or what was the matter with me, but I had a nagging feeling, insistent. It made me antsy, keeping me on my feet even when I tried to ignore it.

“Just go and call her,” Taylor urged me from his seat across from me as I tidied my bookshelf for the fourth time that hour. “You’re making me anxious just looking at you.”

“I’m trying to give her space,” I protested, straightening one spine and then swapping two books around so the related material was together. No. That looks stupid. I moved it back into alphabetical order and Taylor groaned.

“She’s had all night, Max. Call her.”

I was still debating it when my office door flew inward, shaking the walls and toppling the books I’d just reorganized from their shelves. “What the — Mom? Are you okay?”

She was panting, her cheeks red but her mouth white. “Kiernan⁠—”

The pit in my stomach solidified as an icy calm fell over me. “Where.”

“About a block or so away, just off from the park.”

I was moving before she’d even finished speaking. Panic tried to take over, but I wouldn’t allow it. I didn’t know what had happened, but I could guess it had to do with that shithead ex of hers.

I shut down all other thoughts, focusing on getting there, finding her.

Protect. Protect. Protect.

The doors to the college crashed behind me, the noise registering under the veil of calm powered by wrath that I’d summoned.

Mate. Mate. Mate.

Black claws shone at my fingertips, whistling through the air as I pumped my arms, running at breakneck speed.

Pain exploded in my shoulder and I stumbled, catching myself against the base of a streetlight before forcing myself onward, faster, faster.

Kiernan.

I couldn’t stop to wonder about the pain, whether she was okay, or when exactly our bond had fallen into place — I just had to get to her.

My temperature rose, my clothes flaking away, and the cobblestones cracked beneath my footfalls from the heat I generated. My stride became heavier, claws snicking on concrete, and when I caught her scent I panted into the air, tasting it on my tongue and letting it pull me to her. I scented at least five of them, plus Kiernan.

Outnumbered.

Metallic, copper, the harsh scent of blood, made me roar as I rounded the corner to an alleyway. Kiernan’s blood.

They had hurt her.

Screams sounded as fire swept out from me, incinerating the first two men that rushed me until only ash remained, blowing lazily in the wind. A gun went off and fear slammed into me as I searched her out, my mate, my mate, my mate.

Bullets pinged off my hide, the scales having formed so effortlessly I’d barely noticed that my skin had changed.

The man who’d shot at me shook where he stood as he looked up at my form, towering over him. The chances of him living through this had been slim to start with, but when he raised his gun again and pressed it to the pale temple of the woman I loved, clutched in his grip, that slim chance became nonexistent.

“Kiernan!”