When Nikolas glared at her, she tried to wipe the grin off her face, but she wasn’t fast enough.

What the righteous fuck, Sophie—no! he snapped telepathically. He looked genuinely infuriated as he growled aloud, “I’m putting my old-timey foot down.”

“Old-timey foot…?” one of the other men said blankly. Sophie hadn’t gotten all the names and faces sorted out, but she thought it might be Braden.

It really, truly could be jealousy. She probably shouldn’t feel so delighted since first of all that was insane. She and Rowan had barely exchanged five words together. And secondly, it was insulting.

What did Nikolas think, that she was going to instantly leap at one of his men for sex without even talking first, when they had just made love—had sex—themselves twice in the last twenty-four hours?

Rolling her eyes, she muttered under her breath at him, “You’re crazy,” and punctuated it with an emphatic nod.

For a moment Nikolas himself looked like he might be the one to choke her. Half amused, half angry, and totally exasperated, she stepped into his personal space and stood toe-to-toe with him, daring him silently with her eyebrows up to make good on the fierce warning stamped on his taut features. What are you going to do, Nik? Just, what?

Much to her shock, he snaked an arm around her, blanket and all, which trapped her hands and arms against his chest. Angling his head, he gave her a short, fierce, scorching-hot kiss that flatlined her thinking and wiped away both the anger and the amusement.

When he lifted his head again, his eyes were glittering. What a load of primitive crap. He had not just staked a claim on her, had he?

By God, he had.

She ogled Nikolas before she remembered to shut her mouth with a snap. A quick, sneaky glance around told her what she already knew—the other men were staring at them with varying degrees of surprise.

Rowan looked decidedly disappointed. She shrugged. Ah well, if the other man had persisted, she would have just had to turn him down anyway.

He shook his head at her. I would have made it so good for you, the sultry look in his eyes said.

I know, she blinked at him in resigned reply. It is all so very sad.

One of the other men—she thought it was Cael—had turned away from the exchange to look out into the night. “We might have gotten rid of the lorry, but the lawn is so soaked it still left some pretty definitive tracks.”

They all gathered at the door to look. Nikolas hadn’t removed his hold on Sophie. Instead, he just shifted his arm to circle her shoulders. While she wasn’t sure what his actions implied other than he was behaving like a dog with a bone, she wasn’t annoyed enough to shrug him away.

The weight of the lorry had torn through the turf, and it had left deep tracks with high ridges. “How much of a problem is that?” she asked. “All that the tracks reveal is that a truck has been here tonight. No one will be able to say why, only that some kind of activity took place here while the ground was wet.”

While her tired mind tried to tease out if there were any further potential problems, Nikolas’s arm dropped from her shoulders. He said, “It creates a question and leaves it unanswered, which points to more reason to scrutinize you. We want them to leave you alone if we can possibly manage it. Everyone else has a null spell painted on their hand, so I’ll take care of it.”

He strode out into the storm, a lean, pantherish, imperious man who carried as much Power as the lightning. Something about seeing him out in the elements brought a lump to her throat.

When he reached roughly the middle of the lawn, he went down on one knee by the tracks, placed his hands on the ground, and bowed his head. Something she didn’t know how to define rippled out from him. The tracks melted back into place, and the torn turf knitted back together. By the time he stood, the sodden lawn looked unscarred again.

Sophie bent her head, hiding her mouth in a fistful of blanket as she watched. He could literally reshape the earth. This time she didn’t even bother to run around in her own head to stamp out all the sneaky bits of awe.

As Nikolas turned back to the house, a creature appeared behind him, emerging out from under the nearby tree line, and raced toward him. It was a huge, werewolf-y looking monster, and it was followed by several more.

Many more.

Dread sucker punched her in the stomach as they kept pouring out of the woods.

The Hounds had arrived.

The men shouted a warning at Nikolas and lunged for weapons. Nikolas spun, saw the danger hurtling toward him, and sprinted toward the house.

He was fast, but the Hounds were too, lethally so. Other than his own inherent Power, Nikolas didn’t carry a weapon. Along with the others, he had set his sword harness aside to work on moving furniture and supplies.

Sophie was still wearing all her weapons, both the magical ones painted on her arms and the Glock, which gave her precious seconds on the other men. Dropping the blanket, she lunged into a sprint, pulling the Glock out from the waistband of her jeans. How far away would she have to get before the gun worked?

She reached ten yards, eleven, twelve. Nikolas was roaring at her in fury, but she couldn’t make out his words. That was okay; she probably didn’t want to hear them anyway.

Watching the Hounds bounding forward while she raced toward Nikolas was one of the most terrifying things she had ever seen. Every moment stretched into an intolerable infinity. As she ran, she aimed at the nearest lycanthrope at the head of the pack, and she started pulling the trigger.

Click. Click. Click.