The next few days passed like seconds for Citrine. Every day he looked forward to getting up and seeing Robbie, going to town together, learning more about her.

Every day he was falling more in love with the woman who was destined for him.

And though she seemed to be getting more nervous now that the full moon was almost upon them, Citrine wasn’t worried at all. He knew as surely as the sun would rise tomorrow that things would work out. That he was meant to give her freedom and that somehow, someway, he would be able to take care of her village, too.

Things were turbulent in the dragon world, and he would no doubt be needed at some point, but he would just have to explain to the oracle that Robbie’s family needed him here and his first duty was to his mate.

He could hardly wait for her to meet his dragon.

He assumed he wouldn’t be able to transform during the fight, since he wouldn’t be mated to Robbie already, so he would just have to fight in human form, using what powers he could, and it would hopefully be enough.

No wolf, even a strong one, should be able to take on a dragon like him, even restrained.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Robbie said, coming out to join him on the porch, two mugs of steaming hot chocolate in her hands. It was their new habit in the evenings, sitting together, watching the sunset. Tonight, there was the feeling of enjoying peace before the oncoming storm.

“Just thinking how nice the past few days have been,” Citrine said, taking the mugs from her and pushing her chair back with his foot so she could sit down.

“They have been nice,” she said. “Almost as if nothing wrong was going to happen.” She took her mug from him and sipped it with a solemn look on her face.

“What’s going to happen?” he asked.

She looked up at him warily, her brown eyes dark. Her hair was down and creating a beautiful halo of curls around her face. He loved it down the most.

“The alpha challenge. Everything about it is wrong. I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want you to—”

He cut off her protests with a swift kiss, then pulled back. “I promise you I won’t be.”

“But how do you know?” she asked, wrapping her hands around her mug. “I’ve been trying not to think about it. Trying to just stay in the moment with you, but now that it’s coming so soon, I can’t just put it out of my mind.”

“Try,” he said. “It’s not your problem.”

“It is my problem. It’s my life, my home, my town at stake.”

“Robbie, I know I’m going to win this.”

“How do you know?” she asked. “I mean, I’ve had to watch the future my whole life, thinking only about how to prevent certain consequences and make sure everything worked out. I’ve never had the luxury of just doing what I wanted and hoping for the best.”

“I know I won’t let you down the same way you know you won’t wake up tomorrow and hit me with a baseball bat,” he said flatly. “Because I know myself, what I’m capable of, the lengths I will go to in order to protect those I care about.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it, wishing he could do more to reassure her.

When they made love, she let go of all her inhibitions, coming alive in his arms, holding nothing back. And most of the time during the day, when around her parents or around town, where the locals were getting much friendlier with him, she managed to stay mostly relaxed.

But there were still times like this, where he could tell she was caught up in thinking about the alpha challenge, too worried to let it go.

He hated that she had to feel trapped like this. Hated that she felt the weight of her pack on her shoulders. As much as he admired her for always trying to do the right thing, he wished she could think of herself sometimes.

“Would you really be okay living here?” she asked. “If you do win.”

“When I win, we can talk about it,” he said. “I want to be wherever you are, and if you want to be here, then I’m here.” But if she did want to go back to Seattle, he could always see about hiring some guards for the town until he could work something out.

“I don’t know what I want,” she said. “But if I’m not with Bryson, then I guess I have to be here, because otherwise, I won’t know the town is safe from his harassment.”

“I don’t want to talk about this now,” Citrine said, holding her hand and squeezing it. “I just want to enjoy us. Being together. How fun the past few days have been. How much I want to do all of this forever. How much nothing else matters in comparison to that.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she said, leaning against his shoulder. Heat rose between them, familiar and tempting, and Citrine let out a sigh.

The past few nights, he’d made love to her, but not gone all the way simply because it made the dragon roar inside him, made him feel he was losing control.

That one time he’d been inside her, under the water tower, he’d felt as if his heart were bursting, like all the fire inside him were threatening to come out at once.

It had been a wondrous and frightening feeling all at once, because suddenly the condom had been too much between them and he’d wanted to feel her fully against him while holding her in his arms.

But he could wait just a little while longer.

“Come on. Let’s go watch a movie,” he said, taking the mugs and helping her up. “It’ll help you relax.”

“I guess so,” she said. It was already getting dark outside, and Citrine knew sitting and talking about the challenge wouldn’t make her any less nervous about it.

Best to just keep her distracted for now.

Her parents were away tonight, making some last-minute arrangements and signing some papers to do with the challenge tomorrow, so they had the house to themselves until pretty late.

They were just closing the front door behind them when Citrine heard the sound of voices.

Instinctively, he did the lock on the door, following Robbie into the living room.

But he could tell she had already heard something, and she stiffly kneeled down to look at DVDs as Citrine stayed standing, ears perked.

The sound was muted at first. Distant. Just a few voices at first, then others joining them, approaching gradually.

Citrine turned to the window behind him, spreading the drapes just barely so he could peek outside.

Sure enough, dark figures emerged from the shadows surrounding the house. The light from the porch was only barely enough to cast the men’s faces into relief as they strode out of the darkness in small groups of twos and threes, chatting amongst themselves excitedly about something.

All told, there was more than a dozen. From the look of them, some were drunk, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess whose pack they were from.

But a quick glance showed Bryson wasn’t amongst the small crowd.

Apparently, he let others do his dirty work.

“Hey, Citrine, we know you’re in there. Why don’t you come out and talk, just for a minute?” one of the men called, stepping forward into the dim light. Like the others, he was tall, lanky, and fairly muscular with a sad excuse for a beard peppered around his face.

Citrine looked back at Robbie to see she was no longer looking at DVDs, but was now watching the windows.

She didn’t look afraid, but Citrine could sense the air around them was thick with tension so tight you could cut it with a talon.

“He won’t come out. He’s a pussy city boy,” one man said, folding his arms and looking at his pals.

“Yeah, nothing alpha about that pansy. Just keep hiding,” another jeered.

“Ha-ha, the only town he’s alpha of is Loserville,” a third called out, this one’s speech slurred.

“Don’t listen to it, Citrine. Just ignore them. They’re only trying to get in your head,” Robbie said calmly, standing and coming to the window to look out at the scene.

How she could act so calm when his own blood was boiling inside him, Citrine didn’t know. But it wasn’t the insults that burned. It was the entitlement. The way these douchebag wolves acted with impunity toward the most special, amazing woman he’d ever known. It just baffled him beyond belief.

“They need to leave,” Citrine said, his voice tight in his throat, his fingers clenching into fists.

“I dunno. Maybe we should give them a formal invitation to come out?” one man offered sarcastically.

“Yeah. Let us in. Let us in. Or we’ll huff and puff and blow your house down.”

Ha-ha. A real joker.

At that, the men started to advance slowly in a wide semicircle around the house, their blackened silhouettes disrupting the otherwise serene yard of Robbie’s parents’ home.

“Pretty please, Robbie, let Citrine come out and play.”

“We’ll give you a free preview of tomorrow’s alpha challenge. By kicking his ass,” the ringleader said, a dark grin on his face making him look all the more evil due to the severe shadows.

“Don’t pay any attention and they’ll just leave,” Robbie said, closing the small opening in the drapes and turning around.

But Citrine couldn’t help but pace in a small line. The very real feeling that someone was on his turf (even if it wasn’t his own house), threatening his mate, either directly or indirectly, was something he could never turn a blind eye to.

Trouble was trouble, no matter how innocent it seemed to start.

The eerie silence surrounding them was interrupted by the sound of something breaking loudly, and Citrine looked out the window again to see one of the large clay pots from the front porch smashed on the cement walk leading to the front door.

He could see the red tint of the men’s eyes, the feral glances they sent as they looked at him at the window, daring Citrine to challenge them.

“Please, Citrine,” Robbie said, “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Please, Citrine,” one of the men, now on the front porch, mocked as he patrolled along the windows, trying to get a look inside. Damn wolf hearing.

Another pot broke, and something inside Citrine broke with it. He made his way to the front door.

It wasn’t even the plants, though he was certainly no friend to any person that would harm living things so callously. No, he could never allow, permit, or forgive anyone who could do this to his mate. Anyone who willfully impinged her safe space. Anyone who used bullying and terror as way to get what they wanted.

Oh, they were going to pay.

The front door flung open, groaning on its old hinges as Citrine strode out, shutting it behind him in one motion. A split second later, he saw the blurred shape of a small, orange clay pot hurling toward him at incredible speed.

With pinpoint precision, he stretched out his hand, catching the pot mid-flight before it crashed through the windows behind him.

“Oh-ho-ho, the prince emerges from his palace,” one said with a mock bow. However, the comedy was lost on the others. In their grins, Citrine could see fangs as the wolves zeroed in on their prey.

But they were mistaken about one thing.

Tonight, they were the prey.

Rage rushing through him at a million miles an hour, Citrine lunged at the closest jerk, the one that had been prowling on the porch. He was completely caught off guard as Citrine lifted him off his feet and threw him out into the yard, rolling and barely missing the others.

Before they could come any closer to the house, Citrine leapt off the porch, right into the middle of the men.

No one was getting near his mate.

Astounded at the audacity of Citrine’s move, they stepped back a pace, surprised. Citrine used the opening to charge the one next to him on his right, sending his fist into the guy’s face. But he didn’t have time to watch him fly as the others leapt into the fray all at once, fighting like a loosely coordinated wolf pack.

Citrine dodged the first swing, ducking under it easily, then drove his knee into the chest of the next one. The guy made a loud oof as he rolled backward. The rest ignored him as they assailed Citrine, though, and he blocked one punch, then the other, before returning the favor to the ringleader with an uppercut into his chin.

Two more attacked from his left, trying to blindside him. Citrine whipped his fist to the side in a wide hook, catching one across the cheek, sending him flying, and the other in the shoulder, bowling him over.

But even though they were wolves, and much stronger than average humans, they were nothing compared to his dragon strength. Even with the collar on, he could still access a fair amount of it. Perhaps the collar had sensed his mate was in danger as well?

When it came to wolves acting crazy around alpha females, though, this took the cake. They were so far beyond simple neighborhood bullying it made Citrine feel the world had gone crazy.

He blocked a punch with his forearm, then drove his foot into the man’s knee and heard a loud snap as the man buckled over in pain. Two more came at him, and he snatched both of their heads and cracked them together, knocking them out.

The man he’d thrown off the porch earlier was charging at him now, mouth practically frothing. Citrine, completely unfazed by the guy’s rage, charged back, clotheslining him with his arm across the face with such incredible force it sent him flinging onto his back with a thud.

One guy, dazed and struggling to get up after a hard hit, looked up in horror as Citrine then turned his attention on him. Then with a single punch to the face, he was out like a light.

Another man tried to grab Citrine from behind, attempting to restrain him. But a quick elbow into the man’s kidney made him buckle over, groaning.

At this point, any who weren’t out or on the ground, reeling in pain, just watched Citrine, cowering in fear and resentment. Probably wolves low on the totem pole, too scared to jump into a fight they knew they would lose.

Citrine heard an angry shout, and he watched the ringleader pick himself up and dust himself off. Probably the pack beta. Second-in-command to Bryson.

With a growl, the man began to shift before Citrine’s eyes, clothing ripping off as his body grew outward, changing shape as fur covered everything. When he was done, there was just a large wolf before him, standing a little shorter than Citrine did but still several times larger than any wolf he’d seen in the wild.

The wolf howled, then charged, fangs glistening in the nearly full moonlight above them. But Citrine stood his ground. He wasn’t afraid.

The wolf’s jaws opened, threatening to clamp down on Citrine’s human form. But with unbelievable accuracy, he grabbed the wolf’s jaws in his hands, shutting them with a snapping sound and wrapping one hand around the wolf’s snout, keeping his mouth firmly closed.

Citrine knew that with most predators, the muscles used in closing their mouths were always more developed than the muscles allocated to opening them.

The wolf struggled against his grip, pawing at the ground and struggling desperately to break free from his arm holding him, but it was no use. Then Citrine used his free hand to punch the wolf in the face once, twice, three times. It yelped, thrashing around as it tried to back away from a fight it had been sure it would win.

But Citrine needed to make an example out of him so the others didn’t get ideas about shifting. So his crew watched in horror as Citrine mauled the idiot who’d dared incite a threat on his mate’s land, punching him until blood and bruises started to show on the wolf, who only struggled harder.

Finally satisfied, he let the wolf free. And even though the injuries were by no means permanent for the advanced healing wolves possessed, it was clear to everyone in Robbie’s yard who was on top.

The wolf, still whimpering, cowered before Citrine. And the other men who hadn’t already fled at the sight shrank away from Citrine as he stood in the center of the dim porch light, practically quaking in fear.

“Try me. Just try me. I dare you,” Citrine growled, and it felt as though his own teeth were sharpening, elongating as the dragon inside him pounded against the magical barrier within the chain that sealed his powers, roaring to be set free to devour these thugs.

At that, all fled, going as fast as their feet could take them. Several shifted, picking up knocked-out companions or friends in too much pain to carry themselves, then running away and disappearing into the darkness beyond his vision. Followed by the sight of them, the sound of their harried steps vanished as well, until all was silence and it was just Citrine, his heart still racing in fury.

But Robbie was safe now. He let out a long breath and turned to make his way back to the house. Thankfully, the damage done to the property itself was minimal, but that still didn’t mean perhaps he hadn’t jumped the gun on getting violent with the interlopers.

Hopefully she wasn’t mad…