Quickdraw Slow Burn (Battle of the Bulls #3) - T. S. Joyce Page 0,50

slamming his head against his ribs, slashing with his horns. She could hear the echo of the bear’s ribs cracking.

A claw raked out and caught Quickdraw across the neck.

“No!” she screamed, pushing to her feet.

The grizzly was now on the defense, backing away on his belly, turning the sand crimson with his streaming gashes. His ears were flat against his head, and he looked furious and something else. Was that…was that fear in his eyes?

Quickdraw’s injuries weren’t slowing him down at all. He was pure rage and aggression, and he wasn’t backing down an inch.

And then something awful happened. Out of the corner of her vision, she saw movement. Fast movement.

A dark brindled bull was charging right for Quickdraw.

Arrow. Arrow was a mother-fucking traitor bull.

She needed that gun someone had shot. She needed it for Arrow. For Griz. For anyone who ever looked sideways at Quickdraw. He was hurt.

“Quickdraw, behind you!” she screamed.

The massive bull turned just as Arrow reached him. With his head lowered, he took the brunt of the charge with his skull and skidded backward, his hooves etching deep divots into the dirt. Griz was limping away, and she could see why. He had huge gashes right through his ribs. Quickdraw’s horns were painted red. That bear was done.

Good. Die.

The bulls locked up and kicked up dust as they rammed each other this way and that through the carnage of the arena. Their bellowing was deafening, and in the pens behind the arena, the Hagan bulls were calling out, too.

“Back! Back!” Someone was directing the driver of a truck who was backing a trailer to the loading gate in the arena.

“They’ve got a trailer, Quickdr—aaah!” she screamed as someone yanked her backward.

Boot was back. The shifter who had held her earlier now pinned her arms to her sides. With an inhuman snarl, he dragged her backward.

“Let me go!” Geez, he was strong. He was crushing her, and her lungs were screaming for air. He was taking her to the trailer. No, to the truck. Shit!

She locked her legs against the uneven ground, grappling for every moment she could stall.

She’d never appreciated her wolf, or missed her more than in this moment. This was the wrong form to fight in.

There was a man on the fence aiming a rifle at the bulls. Trevor. Arrow had called him Trevor.

“Nooo!” she shrieked as he pulled the trigger on Quickdraw.

Looking over at Quickdraw in terror, she realized they weren’t shooting bullets. Three darts hung from his shoulder with red feathers on the ends.

They were putting his bull to sleep.

“Now!” Trevor ordered, putting the rifle down as he stood straight up on the fence. “Arrow, pull him in!”

Arrow disengaged from the brutal smashing of their heads and locking of their horns and bolted toward the trailer.

She didn’t realize what they were doing until it was too late to warn him. Quickdraw chased him right into the trailer, but there was a side panel open with two men waiting. After Arrow bolted out through the opening, they slammed the panel closed and latched it. Trevor jumped down off the fence and shut the back of the trailer closed with inhuman speed and strength. Traitors. Traitors everywhere. Shifter betrayals, and Annabelle wanted to kill them all.

“Keep your head,” the wolf murmured.

Boot shoved her into the back of a big black Chevrolet truck where Arrow sat. It was unsettling how fast he could change. He sat on that seat relaxed, completely naked, and bleeding from gashes in his throat and shoulders, his eyes full of fever and hate.

He grabbed Annabelle by the arm and slammed her back against the seat. “Give me a fucking reason to snap your neck. I lost half of my goddamn team because of you.”

Nostrils flaring, breath shaking from her adrenaline rush, she gritted out, “Good. You’re next.”

The shifter who had dragged her here sat next to her, trapping her in the back seat. He slammed the door beside him with a string of curses. Trevor took the passenger’s seat, and the driver hit the gas. The other men were piling into a black SUV near the Hagan bulls.

“Are we not loading the Hagans?” Arrow asked as they passed the holding pens where the bulls were pissed, charging the fence panels and fighting with each other.

“This bitch ruined all those plans,” Trevor growled. “You couldn’t stay out of this, could you?”

The fury in his tone made her want to flinch. He was a dominant shifter then. She didn’t flinch for submissive