Her gaze narrowed at him. “Seriously?”
He wasn’t sure why he was asking her to do this, but it seemed like the right move. Anything to keep the evening going. There was no way he was going to admit defeat. If he only had three days with her, then he was going to make sure they would stick together. “It’s not far from here, and all I’m asking is for you to look at the house and see how big it is. We might not even run into each other.”
“So, you want me to come and see your big house, huh?” she asked, a hint of humor in her tone.
Was she making an innuendo? He swallowed hard. “Uh-huh. You’ll have your choice of bedrooms, your own bathroom, and we even have a pool and hot tub.”
“We?”
“Yeah. It’s my parents’ house, but they live in Texas now, and they left it to me to renovate and update. So.” He shook the black folder at her. “What do you say?”
“Fine.” She snatched the folder from him. “Let’s pay and get out of here.”
She put in a couple of bills into the folder and he did the same, then they walked out to the parking lot.
“Just follow me, okay?” He waited for her to get into her car before heading toward his truck. Turning the engine on, he maneuvered out his parking space, then out of the lot. For a moment, he thought she would change her mind and drive in the opposite direction, but when he turned into the street, her headlights popped into his rearview mirror.
With a sigh of relief, he continued out toward the highway. He wasn’t sure why he asked her to some see the house. But somehow, it felt right. Like he wanted her to see this place he had been fixing up for the last year. For her.
It clicked in his mind all of a sudden. This home he’d been working on, with his own two hands, was all for her, his mate. He wanted so bad to see her live in it. With him. Have their children grow up there and—
The loud kaboom came from nowhere and jolted him out of his thoughts. The world flipped over several times and he realized that sound came from his truck. Metal crashed and scraped on asphalt, making his sensitive eardrums ring. Closing his eyes and gnashing his teeth, his first thought was of Sarah, who had been a few feet behind him.
When the ringing in his ears dissipated, he opened his eyes. The truck was on its side and there was a gaping hole in the windshield where the glass had shattered. Gasoline burned his nostrils as he felt the temperature rise. He knew he had to get out of there now.
He unsheathed a claw and sliced through his seat belt, then crawled out of the cab, getting as far away from the truck as possible. His vehicle was completely trashed, but that wasn’t important right now. Something was definitely wrong.
The hairs on the back of his neck rose and his grizzly tensed before letting out a warning growl. It was eerily quiet outside, and as his shifter vision adjusted to the darkness, he saw six figures approaching him. His inner bear raised its paws, ready to attack. There was something about them that made his brain scream danger, and considering he turned into a nine foot, eight hundred pound killing machine, he knew there was more to those men than meets the eye. They all wore black and were fully armed with several kinds of automatic weapons.
“Who the hell are you?” he said, standing up to full height, ready to shift at any moment.
One of them, a tall man with a shock of white hair and pale silver eyes, spoke. “You damned filthy beasts are hard to kill.”
He gnashed his teeth. Damn anti-shifters. But, how did they get his truck to flip over?
And more, important, where was Sarah?
It took all his might not to turn around and check for her. These men were focused on him for now and he needed to keep it that way. “What do you want?”
“You, Daniel Rogers,” the man replied. “Specifically, we want you dead.” The others around him moved closer and began to raise their weapons.
“I’d like to see you try.” Clothes ripped and bones snapped as he shifted into his grizzly. The mighty beast roared, its massive arms raising high, claws extending from furry paws. There were more of them, but he was a shifter and thus he had superior speed, strength and healing. He went for the man with the largest weapon and brought his paws down on him, raking his razor-sharp claws down his body, piercing through the body armor he wore.
The human let out a scream, and his companions all pointed their weapons at them. Daniel’s grizzly slammed its body sideward, knocking down two more of his attackers.
“Get him!” someone screamed.
The hulking bear got to its feet, ready to attack as it saw the weapons raised.
“No!”
The feminine shout made his blood run cold. Fuck! He was hoping Sarah had run away when his truck flipped over. She must have come up on them.
He heard the sound of the trigger pulling, and the bear let out a roar. Daniel braced himself for the pain, but it didn’t come. Instead, he felt something heavy wrap around his bear and force it down. They had deployed some kind of metal net that engulfed the animal’s body.
“Daniel!” Sarah was running straight toward them now, seemingly unaware of the danger she was in.
Run away! He screamed from inside his bear, but it was no use. His animal was in a rage, its claws tearing at the steel mesh. These men, whoever they were, weren’t messing around.
“Grab the female,” someone ordered. “We’ll have to get rid of her too.”
The grizzly roared in fury, but the net was too strong. Helpless, it watched as one of
