Chapter Seven
Logan found himself speeding down a highway again, with Thea securely behind him. His guy at the upstate site informed him that Leon was tipped off about Logan’s involvement. The two wolves whose throats he had ripped out were probably a good convincing factor. Leon was running scared now and back to Greece from what Logan’s contact had told him. Logan needed to intercept them before they left, and with such short notice, and some of his other men too far away at the other sites, he’d be facing fifteen men and an alpha, with Thea and her toys, his shifter contact already waiting at the site, and possibly Teresa if she wasn’t badly injured.
He hated the thought of killing so many shifters, especially since they’d be virtually no threat once he took Leon out, but he’d do it if it came down to protecting his woman and her sister. He steeled himself for the possibility of not having a choice.
“What the fuck?” Logan said when he pulled up next to a familiar Ducati about a half mile away from the site. “Son of a bitch.”
“What is it?” Thea asked.
He had no time to answer her since the son of a bitch in question came out of his hiding spot wearing a cocky expression as he walked toward them. “Now, now, Logan. If I’m a son of a bitch then so are you, and frankly, that’s no way to talk about our mother.”
“Your brother is your contact?”
“I’m Ian, beautiful,” his little brother said, addressing Thea when he reached them. He took Thea’s hand and brought it to his lips. Logan nearly choked on a laugh at her grimacing face.
“Charmed, I’m sure,” she replied drily at his old-fashioned attempt at suaveness, before pulling her hand back. “Do you know where Teresa is?”
“Don’t worry, beautiful. She’s still inside. She appears to be unharmed and—”
“I’m going to ask you once, to explain what the fuck you are doing here and to tell me where the hell Scott is,” Logan interrupted through gritted teeth. He hadn’t seen his brother in three years, but he just decided to show up in the middle of a job, the most important one he’d ever had, no less.
“It’s been me the whole time, big bro,” he said. “Scott’s been at location number two.”
“I’ll fucking deal with you later,” Logan snapped, his patience wavering. He grabbed Thea’s hand, an action that did not go unnoticed by his little brother, and began walking toward the house.
“Wait, she’s human,” Ian called behind him.
Thea whirled around. “And not someone you want to mess with.”
Logan didn’t bother turning around when he asked, “You heard her. Are you coming or not?” He may have been mad as fuck at Ian, but he trusted him to have his back in a fight. And since Ian was apparently well informed of the goings-on inside, he’d be an even bigger asset. Logan didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he tugged on Thea’s hand and began walking again, impressed as hell with his little spitfire. He heard Ian’s steps behind him.
“Three out back and two in front,” Ian informed as they reached the location.
He would have preferred the cover of darkness under normal circumstances, but when it came to hunting wolves, their vision was as impeccable at night as during the day. The door opened, and the three of them moved downwind to avoid being detected just yet. Four men came out and walked over to the garage with bags in their hands.
“Back first,” Ian suggested. “If we attack the front, they’ll all swarm in at once.”
“Agreed,” Logan said. They might have a chance to take out three while the others are distracted outside and busy inside.
They stealthily went around back. Just as Logan was getting ready to pounce and Thea reached into her pocket, Ian held out his hand to stop him. “Seriously, Logan, I see the mark. I know what she is to you. You’re going to let your mate walk into the line of fire like that?”
Logan was actually touched at his brother’s concern. “I’ll kill anyone who so much as breaks one of her nails.”
“And his mate happens to be a badass,” Thea interjected.
As proof of her bad-ass-ery, Thea stepped out into the line of sight of the three guards, and with a smile on her face, she walked toward them to their utter confusion. It was Logan who held his brother back this time. “We may avoid some bloodshed.” He counted her steps and gauged how many feet she had left. “Sixteen … Fifteen.”
She held out her black Taser and watched as the one in the middle began to shake. It looked like he was doing some kind of ritualistic dance at first, and then he fell, twitching and convulsing on the floor. The other two exchanged frightened looks right before they set their sights on Thea.
“What the hell?” Ian muttered beside him, but Logan ran out from behind the trees and extended his claws, his feral side taking over. He saw Thea retract the wires from the black Taser, her pink one already in her other hand, but she would not be able to hit another one with how fast they were running. She’d have to get one of the guys at close range, which would mean he would have to have his hands on her. Even the thought of that fueled Logan’s rage. No matter, he’d get to her before either of those fuckers would.
He reached Thea and pulled her behind him just as one of the shifters reached them. He grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off the ground, cutting of his air supply. He heard dual growls coming from Ian and the shifter he was locked in battle with. He flung the guy he was holding to the side and went to aid his brother. Ian was a great fighter, but the asshole he was fighting was huge and just as skilled. Thea beat him to the punch with her Taser. She got him in the leg and it was almost comical how the big guy’s eyes widened before he began the same ritualistic dance as the first one. He went down hard just as the back door opened.
“We gotta go now,” Logan yelled. There was no time for the element of surprise. Leon could easily sneak out the front with Teresa while they were preoccupied with fighting his pack.
They ran, reaching the door in time so that Logan and Ian could push back two shifters inside. Once again, he pulled Thea behind him as soon as they were inside. Leon was there and he was holding Teresa, a pink object poised at her throat, and his twelve remaining wolves surrounding them.
“How many of these do you think I owe your sister after what you did to my men?” Leon asked, staring directly at Thea. “And after that, maybe one for every year I had to spend looking for her after your filthy human parents took her away. I’m not completely sure she’d get up again after two dozen or so hits in a row, do you?”
Several things happened at once. Thea went around him, yelling at Leon to release her sister along with a bunch of nasty expletives, and prepared herself to lunge at him, but Logan pulled her back and secured her in his arms. He cooed softly in her ear, trying to calm her. He wasn’t going to let Leon go through with his threat. And then Ian, beside him, uttered the word “mate.” Logan heard a growl escape his brother, watched his canines drop, and saw pure fury was written across his features. Logan turned to Teresa, to see her staring directly at Ian. She mouthed the word “mate” back to him.
“She’s not even your fucking True Mate?” Logan spat at Leon. All this time and pain he had caused Teresa and her family, murdering her biological parents, and the fucker wasn’t even her mate.
“Easy, Ian,” he said to his brother. The last thing he needed was for Ian to challenge an alpha, a fight that would end with his brother dead, so he spoke up instead. “I, Logan Munro, challenge you, Leon Kostastakis, for position of Alpha.”
He just spoke the antiquated words these cultists would understand. For Leon to refuse in front of his men, his family, his followers, it would make him lose all credibility as their leader. Logan didn’t miss the twitch in Leon’s left eye. Perhaps Leon had been expecting them to surrender, or leave quietly without Thea’s sister, or maybe he even counted on all hell breaking loose with a battle while he quietly, like the fucking coward Logan now saw he was, slipped out with Teresa.
Logan smiled, his canines, longer than those of a regular wolf, dropped, making the twelve wolves step back reverently. He kissed Thea on the top of her head and pushed her toward his brother. He took off his leather jacket, not wanting to get any blood stains on his favorite new purchase, and handed it to his mate.
“Please be careful,” she whispered to him, grabbing his hand.
He squeezed lightly. “Always.” He turned to his brother. “Protect my mate and I swear to get you yours.”
“With my life,” his brother swore. He and his brother exchanged grateful looks. If things didn’t work out in Logan’s favor, he at least knew his brother would do everything he could to protect Thea in his stead.
Logan walked toward Leon as the other shifters moved back to give them room. “You need the girl as a shield?” Logan goaded, inclining his head toward Teresa. Leon still held onto her with a Taser at her throat. “Too chicken-shit to accept my challenge?”
Leon practically shoved Teresa toward one of his men. “Hold her,” he said. “If she moves, use that thing on her.”
Logan heard Thea whimper and Ian growl, but he tuned them out and focused on his prey. He’d never fought an alpha before, but he knew it wouldn’t be as easy as simply going for the instant kill.
“I accept your challenge,” Leon said. He gave a loud growl, his own canines dropping and his claws coming out. Logan could almost smell the bloodlust on his opponent as he charged him.
Logan met Leon half way, and their bodies collided. Pushing and pulling at each other, ducking the other’s blows. Logan ducked again and then managed a swift upper cut to Leon’s chin on the way up. His head snapped back, and Logan took advantage by delivering several hard blows to his stomach and ribs, followed by a swiping kick that left Leon writhing on the floor.
Vaguely, through his feral state, he heard Leon utter the command, “Do it.” When Logan heard Teresa’s scream, followed by Thea’s, and then Ian’s harsh growl, he understood. He saw Teresa, twitching in the arms of the wolf who held her, and too late he realized it was meant to be a distraction.
He felt the sharp pain of claws digging into his neck, a pain like no other he had ever felt before. He could feel the blood pouring down his neck, could hear Thea screaming his name in the distance. His head felt heavy, almost dazed, and then a blow was delivered to the right side of his head, dropping him to his knees and hands.
“I’ll have both of them,” Leon said into Logan’s ear. “I’ll use the human filth to entertain my men.”
Logan yelled when he felt claws digging into his back, but it wasn’t the excruciating sting that caused him to cry out, but the vision of his sweet feisty girl being passed around like she was nothing. He saw her face, devoid of the bright light that shone within her, and he no longer felt much of anything.
Swiftly, he sat up on his haunches, took another blow from Leon, who resembled every bit the predator kneeling beside him, just toying with his prey before he killed him, but Logan swung with his right hand, digging his claws in Leon’s neck when he made contact. He left his claws fastened there, to Leon’s horror. Now Leon’s sole focus was on dislodging Logan’s hand.
“I know that fucking hurts like a bitch, doesn’t it?” Logan neither expected, nor waited for a response. He swung with his left hand and dug his claws on the other side of Leon’s neck, curving his fingers. Leon’s hands wrapped around Logan’s wrists as he thrashed and yelled. Seconds later, Logan had him pinned on his back, writhing, his throat exposed. He retracted his claws from Leon’s neck and went in for the kill, ripping out Leon’s throat with his teeth.
He sat back on his haunches, momentarily spent as a scuffle ensued around him. He heard a few bodies fall, thudding on the floor, followed by the sound of tearing flesh, and then Thea was there, putting her arms around him. His brother was there next to him, too, cradling Teresa in his arms as she still twitched.
Thea cupped his face, lifting it so that he would look at her. “Logan, please tell me you’re okay.”
“I will be, honey.” Already his wounds were closing. He felt the tightening and pulling of his ripped flesh as if it were sewing itself back together, but his wounds were delivered by an alpha and therefore taking longer to heal than normal. He’d probably feel a little bruised for a day or two.
He finally focused on his surroundings of the aftermath. The two wolves who had stood closest to Thea and Ian lay twitching on the ground. Another, who had stood in a direct path to Teresa, also lay twitching, while the one who had held her and later tased her lay dead with his throat ripped out. He looked over at his brother to see that Ian had blood around his mouth and chin as well as his shirt and hands.
The rest of the men stood assembled around him as if waiting for some kind of instruction. He decided he’d give it to them. He stood, wincing from the pain. Thea stood with him, supporting him. “As your new ruling alpha, I order you to all get a fucking life.” He heard murmurs of confusion around the room as the men stupidly glanced between him and each other, so he decided to elaborate. “Go out into the world, get jobs, find your mates, build a house with a white-picket-fucking fence, or move back to Greece. I really don’t give a shit what you do, but get with the twenty-first century already.” He let out a breath as one of his cracked ribs repaired itself. “More importantly,” he went on,” if any of you fuckers ever come near my family, and that includes the members of the Petridis clan, I will end you. Spread the word to the twitching assholes on the floor and outside when they are able to absorb it, and the ones at all your other locations and such.” He ended with another antiquated phrase these men would understand. “My word is law, and so it shall be done.”
The shifters bowed in acceptance of his words. Logan knew that they had a long way to go before learning to stand on their own, if ever, but at least to them, he was now their alpha, and therefore his word to leave them in peace really was law. He wasn’t about to babysit grown-ass men who were in dire need of learning how to fend for themselves.
Thirty minutes later, he and Thea, and Ian and Teresa, who had somewhat recovered, were on their way back to Brooklyn in Scott’s van. A few of his other men were driving his and Ian’s motorcycles back for them.
Thea and Teresa sat huddled together in the back on the bench seat across from him and Ian. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” Thea told her sister.
“Me?” Teresa shook her head. “That bastard told me he was holding you somewhere and that he’d order his men to kill you if I ran away.”
“Actually, she was very damn impressive wielding those Tasers,” Ian admitted. Then he said to Thea, “You were pretty badass!”
“She definitely is,” Teresa said, beaming at her little sister. She then went on to explain she knew Leon wasn’t her true mate the moment he grabbed her. She was too young back in Greece to have known he was lying, but the moment she was in his presence, it was unmistakable, just like she had known without a doubt that Ian was her mate when he stepped into the room.
Mr. and Mrs. Petridis had been practically crying with relief on the phone when speaking to their daughters and then Logan spoke with Constantine to let him know that he would be returning his ten grand. This particular job was definitely pro bono, what with the added bonus of finding his mate, and as he had stated earlier to the cultist shifters, the Petridis clan were now his family.
“Are you and I good, big bro?” Ian asked him.
“We would have been good three years ago if you hadn’t run off,” Logan stated.
“If it’s any consolation, she and I broke up a month later.”
“You think this was about Casey?” Logan asked, his voice rising.
“Kimberly,” his brother corrected. “Her name was Kimberly.”
“Whatever,” Logan huffed. “This wasn’t about some girl I was dating that my brother stole. They were all just temporary for me anyway.” He turned to Thea and said, “All of them until I found the one I was waiting for.”
Thea gave him a breathtaking smile, full of dimples at his declaration.
“For me, too,” Ian quickly added, looking at Teresa.
Teresa waved it off. “None of us were born on the day we met.”
“And yet I feel like I was,” Logan said, still holding eye contact with Thea. Before he let his mind run wild with all the things he planned on doing to her once he got her back to his apartment, he turned to his brother. “You ran off instead of facing me. I would have punched you in the face and then moved on, but instead, you not only left me without my brother, but without a partner, and with a shit-load of extra clients, for a business you convinced me to start with you.”
“I know,” Ian said. “I’d get all these ideas in my head and attack them without thinking them through, and because of that, I would always chase the next thrill. You, man, you were always so sure of yourself. You were even sure of me with the bounty hunting business. I’m sorry, man.”
“I’m not letting you come back as my partner,” Logan said firmly, but business aside, he had already forgiven Ian when he entrusted him with Thea earlier.
“And you shouldn’t,” Ian said. “I’ll be happy if you let me work in the field. I missed it. I missed you.”
Logan punched Ian in the arm. “We’re good, you little turd.” He then mumbled, “I missed you, too.”
Thea and Teresa sat giggling at their exchange. Who better than them to understand the bond of siblings, he thought.
“I’m actually surprised you never showed up on any of my doorsteps,” Ian added. “I left you clues.”
Logan rolled his eyes. “I saw your latest in Men’s Magazine.” Once again, he locked gazes with his beautiful mate, although he was speaking to Ian. “I was about to come find you, but then my day had taken a very interesting turn in the form of one very electrifying woman.”
Thea gave him an impish grin. “And you always catch your prey.”