It would heal.
Maybe.
“What are you guys even waiting for?” one Copperhead yelled angrily at the group as they continued to circle Dallas and attack.
“How does he move like that?” another exclaimed.
But Dallas just ignored them, deflecting several punches with his incredible reflexes, then kicking one guy in the gut hard before following up with an elbow straight into the nose of another who’d been attacking from behind. He sidestepped as a Copperhead leaped past, catching nothing but air and Dallas’s shadow before Dallas grabbed two men in front of him and smashed their heads together like cymbals.
There were still a ton of them, but their numbers were dwindling fast. And each time one had the audacity to try and strike Dallas, he retaliated with blows ten times stronger than the low-blood wolf shifters could ever muster.
Compared to the kind of brutal punishment he’d had to endure at the hands of his “family” in his youth, fighting some Copperheads was Easy Street.
His tiger wasn’t just growling now. It was roaring, itching to tear out of his skin and terrorize these Copperheads like the filth they were. But even though that sounded like good fun, Dallas wasn’t a killer. Not like that at least.
And he was aware Mel was watching in the background. So even when he had the opportunity to throw a Copperhead thirty or forty feet away when they got too close to him, Dallas chose the more subtle option and just beat in their face instead.
There were only six left, one of them Drew, who’d somehow picked himself up and charged into the fray.
From every direction, they attacked. But Dallas was a flurry of motion, gone like air the second a punch or kick was about to connect on him, then crashing like a hundred-foot wave the instant his enemies were off-balance or their weakness was exposed.
Three. Two.
He slammed the second-to-last one into the ground, then followed with a swift jab to the face, ensuring the guy was out cold.
Leaving just Dallas and Drew.
He yanked Drew forward easily, his huge hand able to wrap around even the meaty shifter’s neck, and Drew let out a choked gasp.
“Who sent you?” Dallas wasn’t playing nice anymore. This shit was personal.
“I… I don’t know.”
His hands clenched down harder, almost cutting off Drew’s air completely. “Wrong answer.”
Drew made a hurk sound. “I swear. This guy, he contacted us online, said he had a job for us.”
“Go faster.” Dallas was getting impatient.
“They wanted us to follow the reporter. See what she was after. Stop her if we had the chan—ugh.” Drew’s eyes bulged a little in their sockets. “I don’t know who it is. I swear!”
Dallas punched Drew out cold, knowing there wasn’t any more information to be gained here.
They’d been hired as thugs. Anonymously.
Just great.
To his surprise, Mel had moved closer to the carnage, not away from it.
And from the looks of the phone she had in her hand, she’d been filming it the whole time.
A rush of dread fell over him, and he quickly came up to Mel, happy she was safe but worried about what could happen if anyone saw what he’d just done.
Granted, he hadn’t shifted. But he was still a wanted tiger, even years later. He couldn’t risk the people he’d left finding out.
“Holy cow, that was incredible! I mean, how’d you do that? Do you do martial arts or something? Was that jiujitsu?” she exclaimed.
“Delete it.”
“Huh?” She looked up at him as though he’d just asked her to do a backflip or something, though he could scent that she’d been scared watching him fight too.
The fact she cared about him only meant that video needed to be gone, now, forever.
“Delete the video. Please.”
“Oh, I was just taping in case the police needed a report or evidence. But I guess…” She saw the seriousness in Dallas’s gaze, and she impressed him utterly by not questioning why he wasn’t budging on this. “Yup, deleted. Though, I would have liked to have seen it again. I don’t even know how you moved that fast.”
There was just a hint of a pause in how she said it that made Dallas’s nerves tense, and he quickly ushered Mel back toward the safety of the truck, just leaving their second ATV stranded.
He didn’t care if the Copperheads or anyone stole it. They were Reno’s pet projects, but Dallas would buy him ten more just to be out of here, fast.
Not that he was scared of Copperheads.
It was what they couldn’t tell him that scared him the most.
Mel was safe. That was all that seemed to matter to his tiger right now.
And if anyone or anything dared come for his mate again, he’d show them exactly how vengeful a tiger could be.
9
Back at the trailer later that evening, Mel sighed as she pored over everything she had found so far.
Interviews, recordings, journals, notes, all of it.
A ton of information right in front of her, and still she couldn’t seem to fit all the pieces together. It didn’t help that, except for her trip out to the range with Dallas, the afternoon had been unfruitful.
Then again, getting to share an ATV with Dallas had more than made up for the fact that they had found little except for some upturned dirt. She blushed as the feel of his buff chest and arms came to mind, all beautiful, corded muscle.
She’d tried to contact Trent after they’d gotten back, but he’d run off again to hang out with his new “friends” in town.
This whole trip was making her wonder how he ever kept his job in the first place, though, strangely, even this level of flakiness was new for him.
Mel stopped for a second to peek out the blinds of the trailer to get a look at Dallas as he sat in a camp chair, whittling something yet again. In the few hours since the attack, he’d been more watchful and careful than ever.
Heck, he hadn’t even come
