Page 63 of Moody as a Minotaur

He angled the muzzle away from us with his trigger finger straight out along the side of the gun. With efficient movements, he clicked something, and acylinder swung open. He turned it while looking down at it. He obviously knew what he was doing, but I had no idea what that was.

Right.

Staring at him wasn’t helping. He’d given me a task. One that made sense. I needed to get on with it. I opened my phone and saw I had ten unread text messages. I could guess that at least a few of those were going to say they’d lost the hunters again.

Yep.

That did not make me feel better about any of this.

Me: Someone is in my house. Probably your missing hunters.

Isaac: Shit. OMW

Van: Me too

Hayden: I qn p

What the hell was that? Had the hunters captured our alpha? Son of a?—

Three dots appeared. Hayden was typing something more. I held my breath and stared at my phone, desperate for an update from my alpha.

Hayden: Damn it, Ry. I don’t think this ducking speech thing is working. Ducking texts. Look. Hayden. It’s there. Shit. It’s typing everything we say. Son of a ditch. How the duck do we stopit? I should have kept typing. What happened to ducking phone calls? Duck. Don’t touch anything or it will send.

Hayden: Duck. It sent.

Hayden: It sent something else. For duck’s sake.

Hayden: Ryley. Make it stop. Here. Take it. Tell them I’m on my way.

Hayden: This is Ryley on Hayden’s phone. Hayden is on his way.

Okay. The alpha was fine.

“Backup is on its way,” I told Parker.

He nodded. Whatever he’d been doing with the gun, he was done now. “We need to get into place.”

“Get into…? What’re you talking about?”

“If they breach, we need a defensible position,” he said calmly. “Is there only the one way in?”

I shook my head. My brain was still stumbling over the fact that Parker was using words like breach and defensible. I waved to the kitchen. “There’s another over there. The access is in the pantry. The entrance to that one is on the main floor through a hidden panel behind what looks like a large vent cover.”

Parker scanned the room. “Okay. Let’s move into the kitchen. If they have guns, we’ll hope they have smaller caliber weapons. Those shouldn’t penetrate that marble waterfall on your island. And if they come up throughsecond access, we’ll hear them before they come out of the pantry.”

He walked without making a sound. The boards didn’t even creak under his weight. He held the gun pointed down, but he looked comfortable and calm with it in his hand.

Was he some kind of weekend warrior? No. Surely, I would have known that about him if he was. And he never talked about being in the military. But I doubted most humans acted this way during a home invasion.

Me, though, I was neither comfortable nor calm. I also didn’t have a weapon. So, all I could do was trail after him and hunker down behind the island like he told me to do. I hated feeling so vulnerable and defenseless.

We didn’t speak. My breathing was louder than Parker’s, but I couldn’t figure out how to calm down enough to quiet it. I missed how relaxed I’d been a few minutes earlier when I was listening to Parker snore.

My skin tingled with the need to shift, but I didn’t. Not yet. I could shift quickly if I had to, but I wouldn’t be able to crouch down like this in my minotaur form. Were the hunters getting closer? Had they found the passage? I couldn’t hear them, but my heart was pounding so fast I wasn’t sure that I would. I blinked to clear the dizziness. It didn’t work.

And damn it. I’d forgotten to buy more antacids today.

“Pucker up, Levi. Just like that. The way you would to kiss me again. Breathe slowly, like before,” Parker whispered against my ear. “Can’t have you passing out on me.”