in his pack. His presence would be too threatening, and Cyprian wouldn’t jeopardize his position as an alpha.
“Can I help you?” he asked, his hand slowly drifting to the gun at his waist.
The lycan didn’t remove his stare from Niklas’s face. And yet Niklas knew that he knew. He knew Niklas was reaching for a gun, and he was ready.
His hand whipped upward, one finger held aloft in warning. “I wouldn’t reach for that—not unless you want your next breath to be your last.”
Niklas stopped the descent of his hand. For now. “What do you want?”
He nodded his head to Darby hovering just beyond. “I want to know why the female over there looks at me like she has seen a ghost.”
Those words just confirmed Niklas’s suspicions. The lycan spoke with a quality that marked him as old. Older than any lycan he’d ever come across before. Niklas glanced uneasily over the lycan’s shoulder. Where there was one lycan there would be more. They weren’t solitary creatures.
“Maybe you look familiar.” He shrugged and tightened his hold on the edge of the door, preparing to slam it shut, put a barrier between the lycan and the girls for however long he could.
“No. She looked at me like she … knows me.”
And Niklas understood his meaning perfectly. He meant she looked at me like she knows what I am.
Niklas contemplated several ways this could play out, all the while realizing he had Darby and Aimee to consider. As Darby said, it wasn’t just him anymore. He had to make sure they were unharmed. Damn. He’d never had to worry before. About anything or anyone. And now he did. Now he had to worry and he’d probably end up getting them all killed anyway.
All this would be for nothing.
Shit. Not if I can help it.
With that burning determination feeding him, he pretended to turn away as if intending to address Darby. Then, in as fast a move as he had ever made, he launched himself at the lycan.
Darby cried out as they tumbled out into the corridor. He seized his weapon and jammed it beneath the lycan’s chin.
The lycan stilled beneath Niklas, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed. “Silver bullets, I take it? Now how would you know that?” His pewter gaze scoured Niklas’s face. He inhaled, drawing in Niklas’s scent. “You’re not a hunter … but you’re something. What? Not a dovenatu.”
“Niklas?” Darby called from behind him.
“Close the door,” he ground out, determined that she and Aimee be safe at least. “Bolt it.”
“I’m not here to harm you,” the lycan declared. “If I wished it, I could have already unarmed you.”
“You could try.”
“My point is that I wish you no ill.”
“A good lycan not bent on killing?” he spat. “Whoever heard of that?” He deliberately ignored that that was essentially himself.
“My name is Darius.” He nodded to the gun. “I would appreciate if you kept that silver bullet in its chamber. I don’t mean you or—” His gaze flicked to Darby. She hadn’t obeyed him. She still stood in the open door watching them. “Yours any harm,” he finished.
“Niklas,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t think he’s going to hurt us.”
“She’s right,” Darius agreed.
“Darby, go inside.” He cast her an annoyed glance. And that was the moment Darius chose to relieve him of his weapon. He surged beneath him and flung Niklas off, taking the gun from his hand in one smooth move.
Niklas hopped on his feet, ready to charge, inwardly cursing that he let Darby distract him.
Instead he stopped, froze when he saw the lycan stepping in the threshold and handing the gun to Darby.
“Here. I feel much more at ease with this in your hands. You seem the understanding sort.” The bastard motioned inside the hotel room. “May I come in?” Without waiting for an invitation, he strode past a gawking Darby.
She looked at Niklas blankly before rushing back inside the room, no doubt remembering Aimee was asleep only a few feet away, defenseless.
Niklas followed. Darby stood anxiously, splotches of color marring her face, her fingers twitching nervously at her sides. The lamplight shone on her hair, setting it afire.
Darius moved with deceptive idleness, his animal power banked but there, present, humming near the surface. Niklas was not fool enough to think he should drop his guard simply because Darius had turned the gun over to Darby and claimed he meant them no harm. The fact remained that he was a lycan. And no lycan was good. They