“You can stop that now. Thank you,” said Brunes.

The electrical shocks stopped, but still his body twitched like he was hardwired to an electric shock machine. The convulsions stopped, but still his muscles jumped and spasmed. Arms grabbed his, lifted him, then shoved him into a chair. He couldn’t quite keep his head up. It rolled backwards so that he was staring at the ceiling. No matter how hard he tried to make his neck work, he couldn’t lift his head.

Brunes came into view, towered over him. Then his head slammed left, right, left, then right again as Brunes laid into him with hard fists. The pain didn’t matter. It was a minor flair to the shocks making his limbs twitch. A feminine cry sent his eyes wide. God, he knew that sound. Fuck, no, he couldn’t have her.

“Bring her over here,” Brunes ordered in a hard voice.

A rush of footsteps ran across the room, then there she was standing over him. She’d been crying. Her eyelashes were wet, eyes red. Anger, the kind he hadn’t felt in a long time exploded inside of him. They’d taken her from him, then hurt her. She collapsed against him, sobbing, trailed soft wet kisses across his face before she was yanked away. Finally, his head worked. It hurt like hell, but he lifted his head to take in the scene.

Five heavily armed guards filled the room. Brunes’ face was a bloody mess and that made Brayden smile darkly. Vanessa’s arms were tied behind her back in a way that brought nasty memories of her naked in the forest in a very similar situation. One face, though, he didn’t see in the room.

“Where’s Joseph? I believe he might object to you treating his mate like this?”

Vanessa lunged forward before the guards yanked her back by the arm. She winced and he fervently started moving his fingers, his toes to get his circulation back to normal. If he could buy a few minutes, he could stand.

“They killed him!” cried Vanessa. “They shot him in the head.”

Brunes cast a disgusted glance her way. “Shut her up, will you?”

The guard on her right slapped her hard across the face. Brayden saw red. In a flash, he struck. With two lethal cracks, he snapped the guard’s neck holding her, then shoved Vanessa behind him as the other five guards raised their rifles.

Brunes held up a hand to them. “Relax. I don’t want this to go fast.”

Just then, the windows at the back of the room shattered in a loud explosion. Glass flew across the room. Swat-clothed men stormed into the room shouting commands. One man wore no swat clothes whatsoever.

“Dmetri?” Brayden asked, dumbfounded.

Dmetri’s eyes shone with determination. He flicked him a glance, then swept on the guards with a flurry of attacks and cringe worthy kicks. But Brunes ducked down below the fighting, crawling quickly toward the gun still lying on the floor. Brayden flew to him. He caught Brunes by the back of his long hair, then made his face kiss the floor—hard. He did it again. One for the death of Sarina’s mother, another for Daniel, one for the guard he’d murdered, and twice as many for taking Vanessa and hurting her. He wasn’t finished, but arms flew around his chest pulling him away. He growled at them and launched one brutal kicked to Brunes’ head. The old lykaen’s head whipped back, then he slumped to the ground.

“Never touch my woman,” Brayden growled.

“Relax, man, relax.” Dmetri’s slightly accented voice penetrated through the raging fog in his mind.

He watched Brunes try to lift himself back up, then slump again to the floor.

“We got him. We heard his confession.”

That sent Brayden whirling around. “You were here this whole time?”

“Nah, the butler called the Justicars in. Then they called me. Needed another higher up on the case.” Dmetri grinned, then clapped him on the back. “No way was I going to intrude on his confession.”

A small hand cupped his. He looked down at Vanessa’s face and something inside him broke. He pulled her into his arms, holding her close. She clenched her arms around him as if she needed to be holding onto him as much as he did her. God, it felt good. Almost beautiful.

“Why didn’t you crash in when you heard the first gunshot, asshole?”

Dmetri sobered. “They found Joseph Harrington’s body in a ditch along the highway halfway between here and Justicar’s headquarters. Figured they’d taken her. Figured she was here. We didn’t want to act to soon and cause...any unnecessary problems.”

Meaning, he didn’t want to act too soon and have someone pull the trigger on Vanessa before they’d even stormed in. “Yeah, I got it. Now I’m going home.”

He didn’t even make it to the front door before he lifted Vanessa’s face, looked into her deep brown eyes and kissed her. His heart pounded loudly in his chest.

“I’m so glad you came,” she said brokenly. She gave him a wobbly smile that pulled at all his heartstrings.

“I love you,” he said.

Her eyes flew wide. She gasped.

Then he kissed her again.

Two weeks later

“And now, this one.”

The pen flew across the black line as she signed her signature on the last page of the document. The behemoth stack of divorce papers had looked so intimidating, but with Brayden by her side, it’d felt like nothing. In fact, she’d smiled the whole way through and happily scribbled her signature and dated the lines where necessary. She was now free.

The clerk looked over the last signature then nodded. He slammed a big stamp over the last page, then stuffed them into a big manila envelope.

“Congratulations. Once these are made official, you can consider yourself divorced, Ms. Kategan.”

Vanessa’s smile was so huge her cheeks hurt her. She turned into Brayden and gave him a big hug. He laughed at her and she liked that too.

“When will I know?” she turned back to ask the clerk.

He glanced at a calendar. “It generally can take up to two weeks for it to go through.”

She lost her smile. Two whole weeks. Two more weeks that she’d still be considered mated to Joseph.

“Come on.” Brayden tugged her hand and led her outside.

The sun looked brighter, the air smelled fresher. Everything was good. Everything except her nagging conscious.

Brayden glanced down at her. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, I feel guilty.”

“About what?”

She took a deep breath and let it out. “I feel guilty because I don’t feel bad that he’s dead. Isn’t that horrible? I mean, here I am making the divorce official, just so I can get my old name back. But, I don’t feel bad about it. Shouldn’t I?”

She didn’t know what his answer would be, but she certainly didn’t expect him to lean down and kiss her in full display of the Justicars heading in and out of their headquarters. It was a warm, tantalizing kiss that brought her blood to a simmer, causing her heart to race. He pulled back just as she started to think of all the nearest locations she could get his clothes off.

“No, you shouldn’t. He deserved what he got. I just wished I could have done it.”

Her jaw dropped. “What? You would have killed him?”

His eyes darkened so fast it scared her. “In a heartbeat. He hurt you for two long years...” his voice trailed off as a finger skimmed down her cheek. “Come on, let’s go.”

With her heart bursting in her chest, she couldn’t stop smiling. God, she loved him. Like really, madly, deeply, insane kind of love. “You never did tell me where we’re going.”

“That’s because I said it’s a surprise.”

Not put off in the least she replied, “It doesn’t have to be a surprise. They’re totally overrated anyway.”

He chuckled, then helped to lift her in his SUV at the curb. “Nothing you could do could convince me.”

Her eyebrow arched and he looked at her and winced. “Don’t even.”

She relaxed into her seat and parted her legs. “Oh, really? Nothing I could do...could convince you to tell me?”