either side of a bladelike nose and unshaven jaw. Jess had never seen this guy around town, either, but the vibe he gave off was nothing like Ty’s. It made her want to shrink within herself.
“This is a private conversation.” Ty’s monotone held an edge of menace to it. His pulse ticked in the vein in his neck, just above the edge of his T-shirt.
Jess had never come to the OON for a reason. All her brothers said the place could be dangerous. And now she saw why. The tension in the air snapped and crackled like an exposed electrical connection, just waiting for something to combust. She pressed her back against the bar, feeling trapped, since the two of them were between her and the exit.
She grabbed hold of Ty’s arm, extremely glad he was there with her when the creeper had showed up. “I think I’m ready to go, Ty.” The tremor in her voice annoyed her, but there was nothing Jess could do about it.
The imposing biker dude leered at her. “And miss out on all the fun? Oh, no. You get to stay right here, with me.” He reached out to touch her and faster than Jess could blink, Ty grabbed the biker guy’s hand. From the way the tendons in Ty’s big hand stood out in stark relief and the muscles in his arm bulged, Jess could tell he had to be crushing the guy’s hand.
They glared fireballs at one another.
“The lady wants you to leave her alone. And so do I,” Ty growled.
Jess held her breath.
Chapter 2
The vampire blinked, and Ty saw the brief rim of crimson around edges of the brown-colored contacts he wore. They were on the hunt for blood.
Shit.
A sneer curled the vampire’s lip. His fangs hadn’t dropped, but that wouldn’t take long. “I don’t take orders. I give them.”
Ty’s teeth throbbed as an image of tearing into the vampire filled his mind. Tension flashed through his system, amping up every cell as his muscles and bones prepared to transition. He took a deep breath to steady himself and maintain his control, but his body shook with the effort. Wolfing out in the middle of a bar in Sinclair wasn’t an option.
“Wasn’t an order. More like a threat. Plain. Simple. I’ll break more than your hands if you touch her.”
The vampire’s eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared as he caught Ty’s scent. That’s right. Werewolf here, ready to chew your ass.
Any normal vampire would have realized going one-on-one with a Werewolf was a bad deal, but this vampire was hungry and stupid. In a blur of movement, he wrapped his hands around Ty’s throat, squeezing hard enough to make a burst of white sparks shoot across his vision.
Oh, it’s on. Ty’s reaction was just as swift, just as strong. He growled and kneed the vamp hard enough to drop a linebacker, then punched him with a powerful uppercut. The vamp dropped back, stunned at his attack, a smudge of black vampire ichor staining the edge of his lips like licorice candy.
The vamp growled, dropped his head and charged. Ty sidestepped at the last moment, letting the vampire careen into the bar and put a head-size hole in the wood. It would’ve knocked out any normy. But this guy was a monster just like him. So were his two buddies, who showed up to get in on the action.
The two vampires still standing took opposite sides of Ty so he could keep his eyes on only one of them at a time. A rocket of red-hot pain shot up Ty’s spine as one of them kicked the base of his back where the nerve bundle on a Were was most vulnerable. He grunted and fell to one knee, sucking up pain. Without going wolf, beating back this many vampires on his own was going to hurt. From the startled gasps and outraged cries, Ty knew this had already happened too fast for the onlookers to track. Their movements were probably no more than a blur. He needed to end it before any of the normies got hurt, or worse, died. That was the last kind of attention he needed as the new guy in town.
“Fight!” someone yelled.
The atmosphere inside the bar thickened with anticipation and excitement as people glanced at the commotion and automatically moved toward it, attracted to the action like gawkers to a car accident. He straightened and tried to bite back the pain as the lead vampire pulled his head out of the bar and shook off the splinters. Ty didn’t wait. Why fight fair when the odds weren’t in your favor anyway?
He kicked back without warning, catching vampire number two behind him in the chest. It spun backward over a pool table to land in a heap on a table, amid shrieks and toppled beer spraying everywhere. Son of a bitch deserved that and worse after it’d tap-danced on his spine. Payback was a bitch.
The third vampire melted into the crowd as Ty and the leader were instantly surrounded by the crowd pressing in around them with cries of encouragement and money changing hands.
Ty glanced up at the myriad faces, looking for just one—Jess. He wanted to make sure that the third vampire hadn’t taken her while he’d been distracted.
Her blue eyes were wide as she squeezed past the edge of the crowd. He wasn’t taking any chances. He grabbed hold of her hand and pulled her close, putting her behind him. “Stay here. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“But I—”
Ty didn’t have time to listen. The vampire in the duster came at him once again, fake brown eyes glittering with malice. He swung at Ty, and Ty blocked the blows. They kept coming, fast, hard. Sweat beaded on his skin, trickling into his eyes and making his hair damp. His muscles were growing tired in his human form, slowing his reaction time. One blow evaded his block, cuffing him hard enough in the side of the head to make his ears ring and his vision blur for a moment. The drunken crowd cheered.
Ty shook his head to clear it. He and the vampire circled one another, the superior sneer on the vampire’s face making him more irritated by the moment. Then he glimpsed Jess’s frightened face and a whole new rush of energy filled him from his scalp to his toes. He could do anything, be anything, to protect her.
The vampire lunged forward. Ty thrust the heel of his hand up hard against the vampire’s beak of a nose. The distinctive crunch of bones breaking was followed by a hard grunt as the vampire bent forward and Ty brought his elbow down hard against the vampire’s neck, knocking him out. If there weren’t all these people around, he would have carved the vampire’s fangs out of his mouth as battle trophies, the way his pack had done for centuries. But this wasn’t the time and place for the old ways and sooner rather than later, that vampire and his buddy would wake up. Probably call in reinforcements.
He was alone. No pack, no friends in the town.
There was a slap of high fives and the clink of beer bottles, along with cheers from the crowd. It had all just been another night’s entertainment to them. He stepped over the vampire to get to Jess. Her face was pale.
“Want to get out of here?”
She nodded. Ty wrapped her small hand in his and together they skirted around the prone vampire and headed for the door, keeping a vigilant eye out for vampire number three.
The air was clean and cold outside. Ty’s head cleared, his senses grew sharper. The cool evening breeze, heavy with the salty scent of nearby Puget Sound, ruffled Jess’s hair, sticking honey-colored wisps to her full, rosy lips.
“You okay?” he asked as he gently tucked the
