“Bullshit you are,” he snarled. “He can’t be married to you unless he wants to go to war, because he made an agreement to marry a bitch from my pack. He’s going to honor it. He’s going to void the marriage with you, and marry whoever the hell I send him. You are going to come with me, and I will make you tell me where she is.”
“No, I won’t,” I said through gritted teeth. My arm pulsed with pain under his brutal grip.
His laugh was an ugly thing, more like a combination between a bark and a snarl. “Trust me, when I’m done with you, you’ll be begging to talk. Then I’ll declare war on your family pack, and we’ll wipe out the males, and take the females for my men. When I find Camille, I’m going to drag her back by her tail and-”
“Let go of her, now.” An angry voice cracked through the air. It was Sheriff Battle, and he had half a dozen shifters with him.
“Make me,” Kray snarled.
While he was distracted, I shifted. Kray’s hand slipped from my furry leg, and I pulled away and tripped, rolling over on the dirt. I scrambled to my feet and ran behind the sheriff and his men as fast as I could.
There were more men coming, people pouring out of the restaurant, both men and women. “Get away from her, and get off our land!” one of the women yelled. “You’re not welcome in this town!”
Kray stood there, glaring, fists bunched. He had three men with him. There were about forty men and women facing off against him now. The diner had emptied out, everyone had come running to my defense.
If he started a fight, he risked being defeated and killed, or having to submit. He’d lose an incredible amount of face.
Sheriff Battle pushed forward, grabbed Kray by the collar, and threw him up against the truck.
“I’m up for a challenge,” the sheriff snarled. “Right here. Right now. Are you?”
There was a moment of silence, the air crackling with tension. Kray stepped back, and bowed his head. The crowd broke into a chorus of howls of derision.
Kray climbed in to his truck, and his men scrambled in after him. As they pulled out, he stopped the truck for a minute and stuck his head out of the window. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear there were tears of rage and humiliation glittering in his eyes.
“I am not submitting, and this is not over!” Kray screamed.
“Sure looked like submitting to me,” Sheriff Battle shouted after him. “Maybe they call it a different name where you come from.”
Kray screeched out of the parking lot, and roared away down the road as if the hounds of Hell were on his tail.
I didn’t get it, I thought, staring after him. He really didn’t seem all that Alpha at all. How was he winning all these death challenges? He seemed like a typical bully to me, a wanna-be. He seemed like the kind of guy who pushed it too far and then got killed by an Alpha. Maybe he won because he was only challenging the Alphas of smaller packs. I was just surprised to see that he was winning any challenges at all, seeing the way he carried himself, the way he bullied and terrorized those weaker than him but backed down the second an Alpha offered to fight him.
With him gone, I shifted back to human form and stood up, stark naked. Someone rushed over to me with a sheet, which I wrapped around myself.
“Maxwell is on his way,” the sheriff said to me. “Are you all right? Let me look at your arm.”
People were crowding around me. Someone thrust a cup of coffee at me.
“I’m fine,” I said shakily, holding my arm out. “He didn’t hurt me.”
Maxwell pulled up minutes later, parked, and ran over to me. “Jesus Christ, are you okay?” he demanded.
I stood there rubbing my arm. “I’m fine,” I said. “What are we going to do, though? He’s going to be looking for Camille now.”
Did that mean the marriage was off? I wondered. Supposedly, we’d been carrying on this charade so that Kray wouldn’t know to look for Camille. Now what?
“I have a feeling that we’ll be resolving this issue one way or the other very soon,” Max said calmly. “I can’t tell you any more than that.”
As soon as we got back to the compound, he walked outside to make a phone call. I went inside, scowling. He was gone for a long time. I poured myself a cold beer to steady my nerves, and sat at the kitchen table, and waited. And waited.
He came back in. “I have to go up to the lodge house,” he said. “My father and I need to hash things out.”
He came back about an hour later.
“What happened? What did you work out?” I asked.
“We had to report matters to the Elders,” he said. “Kray called here demanding that I end the marriage, deliver you to him, tell him where Camille is, and marry a female of his choosing, or he’d issue a death challenge.”