Zodiac Academy Fated Throne - Caroline Peckham Page 0,166

confusion for a moment before she hurried away to get my order and I looked back across the room to my girl.

My blood heated as I spotted her in the centre of the restaurant, standing by a table full of drunk looking assholes as one of them held onto her wrist and made her stop to talk to him.

He was leering at her, loudly urging her to come sit in his lap while the guys around him all laughed their encouragement and rage lit my blood on fire as I strode back across the restaurant at a fast pace. Roxy was saying something in reply which had his friends laughing at him, but I didn’t give a shit if she was already handling it. If he didn’t take his hand off of her right now then I was going to break it off.

A waiter stepped out in front of me but I just shoved him back, making him drop his tray of food and not even looking at him as I stepped over his legs and finally made it to the dead man with his hand on my girl.

A few of his friends saw me coming and straightened in their chairs, pointing me out so that the asshole swung around to look at me a moment before my hands landed flat on the table in front of him. I leaned down to glare at him, certain the Dragon in me was clear for him to see.

"Take your fucking hand off of her," I growled in a low tone that had him dropping his hold on her wrist instantly and stammering apologies to me as if I was the one he needed to be offering them to. "Apologise to my girl for laying your hand on her," I snarled as several people around us started sidling away like they could tell I was about to beat his smarmy face in.

"I'm sorry - I didn't know she was yours," he gasped. "Sorry, man. Sorry-"

I reached out and grabbed hold of him by the collar, half lifting him out of his seat and twisting him to look at Roxy. "Say it to her."

Roxy had fallen still and beneath the bloodlust that had taken hold of me at seeing that asshole manhandle her, I realised that she was afraid of me again. Fuck.

"I'm sorry," the guy gasped and I used my grip on him to toss him to the floor as I tried to fight back my temper, my gaze fixed on the girl I loved as she regarded me like she thought I might turn on her next.

But then she lifted the asshole's beer from the table and dumped it in his lap, swallowing thickly as she stepped over him and moved to my side.

"I don't need you to fight my battles," she said firmly, fighting off her fear as she folded her arms and met my eye with defiance in her gaze.

"I know," I replied and she nodded as she headed over to the booth I'd gotten us and sat down.

I followed slowly, working to try and push back the Dragon in me as the asshole and his friends scrambled out of the restaurant. The owner came bursting out of a door beside the kitchen, calling out something about me needing to leave, but it only took a couple of words laced with Coercion to send him scurrying away again.

I sat down opposite Roxy, finding the table piled up with all the food I'd ordered and eyeing her hesitantly and she narrowed her eyes on me.

"You told him I was yours," she said, reaching out to take a nacho and loading it with guacamole.

"You are," I replied simply and she held my gaze as she thought on that.

"I never said that."

"No, you didn't. But you were mine from the first moment I laid eyes on you. You're just too damn stubborn to say it out loud."

Silence lingered between us as she scowled at me and I was pleased to see she’d pushed her fear aside again.

"Maybe," she said finally before giving her attention to eating her food and I tried not to grin like a smug motherfucker as I joined her.

We didn't say much while we ate, I just drank in her company while she moaned appreciation over her food so loudly I was beginning to think her goal was to get me as hard as stone for her.

When we'd finally eaten so much that there was no chance of us managing