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The violence pouring out of him stunned me. Beckett seized my upper arms and shoved my back against the wall.
His voice broke when he kissed my cheek again. “You’re my girl, Lex. We go together. You put up with my shit, and I know we could have worked it out.”
Then he was crying against my face. Actual tears, and it made my legs tremble so fiercely that I came close to fainting.
Beckett had never once cried in my presence.
It wasn’t the kind of tears you shed for a love lost; it was a raw emotion I’d never seen in him before.
Ominous.
When his large hands wrapped around my throat and constricted my breathing, I suddenly knew why he was crying.
“Can’t breathe, stop,” I mouthed, trying to pull away and hit his arms. I was too weak—too dizzy. He squeezed harder and tightened his grip.
Then he let go and I gasped for sweet oxygen, falling to the floor.
“Why did you do this to us? We had a good thing and you go and date a piece of shit who gives you fucking roses! You think I couldn’t have given you roses? You neverwantedme to buy you flowers!”
He scooped up a handful of stems from the floor and hurled them across the room. I coughed, still gasping for air, feeling like I might vomit. “No…please.”
An obtrusive noise filled my head, but I couldn’t be sure if it was my heart beating against my eardrums or something else.
Beckett fell over me and kissed my mouth so sweetly I almost didn’t realize his fingers were wrapped around my throat.
“You made me do this,” he whispered.
Something switched off in his eyes. The emotion evaporated, replaced by a vacant, soulless stare. I clawed at his face and the pounding at the door grew louder until I heard the crack of wood.
The last thing I saw was Austin Cole, standing in the doorway looking as handsome as ever. He’d never know how beautiful his eyes were to me—like glaciers on a cloudy day. His dark hair was wild and messed up, just the way I liked it.
But his expression was savage.
Bright flashes of light filled my vision and darkness closed in, but I knew the Grim Reaper would have nothing on the menace Austin carried in his pocket.
I let go of Beckett’s face and reached out to a beautiful black wolf with my trembling arms.
And then it went dark.
* * *
Austin approachedthe suspicious car in Lexi’s parking lot and confronted the sleeping man, ignoring his ringing phone. It was Reno’s ringtone—“Thunderstruck” by AC/DC.
That’s when he recognized one of Lorenzo’s men, probably sent to watch Lexi. Some fucking joke as the guy was asleep on the job. They got into a heated argument and Austin abruptly stepped back and looked around. Something felt off. The hairs on the back of his neck rose up and he looked toward Lexi’s apartment window.
Austin lifted his nose in the air—an alpha could pick up scents a regular wolf could not. It was nowhere near the capacity a Chitah had, but sometimes intense emotions bled into the air. Austin could taste the sting of adrenaline in the wind, blowing from the direction of her apartment.
The Shifter became a memory as Austin ran toward the stairwell. The closer he got, the more intense the feeling. Alarm ran up his spine and he leapt up three steps at a time.
That’s when he heard a man shouting from inside her apartment.
Naya peered out of her door with earbuds in her ears. “What’s going on?”
“Back inside!” he snapped, summoning all his alpha energy. Naya slammed the door and Austin turned the knob to Lexi’s apartment, but it was locked.
One singular word almost triggered him to shift involuntarily, but he had to maintain control of his wolf or he’d never get inside.
The word was “no.” Then he heard Lexi say another word that made his animal thirst for blood.
