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“Go to the closet, Elizabeth,” he ordered.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I can hold my …” A great bigboomechoed through the house, and the backup generator powered on the computers and lights. The electronic whir was different … definitely a little louder. “See?” she said. “All is good! You were scared for nothing. A glitch in the grid.”
“I own and operate my own grid. Shit like this doesn’t happen.” His fingers flew over his phone. “Mel isn’t responding.”
“She could be busy. Driving or sleeping. Has she had any sleep since I came here, or have you just been giving her one job after another?”
Canaan took her hand in his and led her to the bedroom. He opened the closet door, but she held her ground. “The generator is working. It’s safe in the house.”
“I wanna go check it. I won’t be able to focus if I’m scared you’ll follow me.”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes and stepped into the closet. Canaan ran his fingers along the back wall and pressed down. A loud metallicclickresonated, and the back of the closet opened to a large square room. It had a couch and a few other essentials. “Why do you even have that?”
“Planning,” he responded.
“I see why your family calls it the compound now,” she teased. “Go. Check the generator. I’ll be fine.”
“Close the door,” he instructed.
“You got it,” she said as she watched him rush toward the door. Elizabeth took a peek inside the panic room, but she didn’t enter it completely. Even if therewassomething outside of the house, Canaan was a shifter. He could turn into a wolf and chase away whatever robber was dumb enough to attack a shifter’s home.
She grinned to herself, pleased that she was starting to think like a shifter’s mate. Surely, Kyle and other mates felt their partners’ skills were helpful in circumstances like this. She sat on the bed and waited for Canaan to return, probably to tell her that a transformer blew or was struck with lightning.
Footsteps sounded from the hallway, and she hopped off the bed, nearly skipping to the door. “Told you it was nothing,” she said, rounding the corner.
It wasn’t Canaan standing there.
A strange man dressed in black with his face covered by a balaclava rushed toward her.
Elizabeth scanned her surroundings, looking for a weapon. Right there, in one of Canaan’s shadow boxes, was a replica of the sword wielded by the Enchantress inFantasy Warriors. She broke through the glass, covering her eyes. She barely had time to grab the hilt of the sword before the man was on her.
She kicked at him, spinning wide with the sword. The man caught the blade between his hands, making Elizabeth wince. There was no cut on his hands as she pulled the sword. She swore. The blade was probably dull, given that it was a prop.
But she could still use it to maim the intruder.
“Hiya!” she shouted, raising the sword over her head until she could crash it down on the man’s head. He stumbled back but quickly recovered, coming toward her with more speed now.
He waspissed.
“You should know,” Elizabeth screamed in rage, “that the man who owns this house has special skills that make him very scary.”
“Same,” the man chuckled before he exploded out of his human body and into a black wolf.
“Ah, shit,” Elizabeth screamed, running for the kitchen. She really needed to replace her dull sword with a sharp kitchen knife.
Good thing all of my video gaming has trained me for this moment.
She scampered to the kitchen, the black wolf hot on her heels.
TWENTY-FIVE
CANAAN
Dusk was only just falling, but Canaan knew something was wrong.
The backup generator had never kicked on in all of the years he’d lived in the compound. He had to manually test it. His place was a fucking fortress.
If the power went out, it was definitely because something was amiss. Mel still hadn’t texted him, but he’d sent messages to Kyle and Ryland.
