Abel heard chairs scraping, sensed Delilah and Jian-Li moving, smelled their fear, but he had to focus on fighting the transformation.
They were near and getting closer.
They had no time to run.
“Yuri, call Stephanie and Ryon,” Gregor ordered.
Yuri pulled out his phone.
“Perimeter around the women,” Lucien ordered. “No one breaches it.”
“Got it,” Hooker muttered, his back now to the center of the room, a gun in one hand, his knife in the other.
Xun, Chen, and Wei unsheathed their swords.
Jabber went to the table where the other weapons were hidden. He ducked beside it, Abel heard the steel scrape against the floor, then he emerged with Abel’s sword and tossed it to him, point up.
“Got another one of those?” Lucien asked.
“Or three?” Yuri added, phone to his ear.
“Jabber, outfit them,” Abel ordered.
Quickly, Jabber, going from table to table where the weapons were hidden, did as told.
Abel smelled it, felt it in his throat, and knew what was coming.
“We’re outnumbered,” he informed the room.
“Fuckin’ great,” Moose muttered.
“By a lot,” Lucien shared. “Close ranks. They’re almost here.”
The men moved in to close ranks.
Lucien’s tone had deteriorated a fuckload when he kept his eyes to a window but said to Gregor, “You’ll explain how this happened when my bride and the rest of The Three are safe.”
Callum was circling the outside of the group, growling low and snarling with his wolf lips curled high over his teeth, and Abel wondered briefly if he should turn wolf.
He had no time to wonder more.
They were there.
He lifted his sword as the doors flew off its hinges, front and back, and armed vampires and wolves burst through the windows, glass flying everywhere.
Abel knew in an instant, that instant being the next second when he was battling four-on-one, that he’d dreamed this. The location a blur because the action was too intense, but he’d dreamed it. And in the dream, he knew they were outnumbered and he knew they were all going to die.
He’d just never dreamed the end.
Now he knew how that dream would end.
But Delilah was there.
And she was breathing.
So he fought.
Viciously.
The room was a cyclone of activity. Grunts. Growls. Snarls. Gunshots. Steel clashing against steel. Wind wafting as bodies shot around the room. Flesh thumping against walls and floors. Blood spraying.
Within moments of the fight starting, he heard, sensed, and smelled Snake go down and knew the man was dead before he hit the floor.
The only other thing that could enter his mind was to fight until he died so they wouldn’t get Delilah.
So he did that. Even when his flesh was torn away by wolves’ teeth. Even when a blade sliced into his thigh, then his forearm and through his side, he didn’t falter. He didn’t tire. He took head after head because his mate’s life depended on it.
“No!” He heard Leah shriek, sensed Lucien dart toward the table, and Abel knew all was lost.
But Delilah was still safe.
So he kept fighting.
“Chen!” Delilah shouted. Abel tensed to pounce, knowing he was going to her instead of his brother, his heart squeezing so tight he thought it’d explode.
And then the vampire and wolf he was fending off dropped, both headless at the hands of two women he’d never seen in his fucking life who’d materialized out of goddamned nothing and were floating in the air.
They didn’t float long.
They, and dozens of others beside them, were darting around the room, unarmed but seriously fucking power-packed and in a motherfucking fury.
And they were on the good side.
What the fuck?
Abel didn’t give it more time to process. He kept fighting with the others, pushing the enemy back. With their reinforcements joining the battle, they reestablished the perimeter around the center table and forced them back.
“Withdraw!” a vampire shouted, and as one, the enemy turned and shot through the windows and doors, the floating women charging after them.
Abel stood, breathing heavily, bleeding heavily, staring out the windows and listening to Delilah’s rapid, but healthy, heartbeat.
Lucien didn’t stand. He moved in a blur and ended another blur, slamming Gregor’s body into the floor in front of Abel with his hand at the vampire’s throat, Lucien kneeling over him, face an inch from Gregor’s.
“Fucking explain how that fucking happened right…fucking…now,” he snarled.
“Lucien—” Gregor choked.
“They touched my bride,” Lucien bit out.
As Abel watched this, something cut through him, nearly bringing him to a knee. He twisted and saw Delilah on her knees on the floor bending over Snake, Hooker on Snake’s other side, the rest of the bikers, his brothers, and Jian-Li gathered close.
“He’s not dead. He’s not dead. Tell me he’s not dead,” Delilah chanted, her hands moving over Snake’s prone body frantically, her words and the rasping emotion behind them cutting Abel to the quick.
Abel bolted to her side.
“Fuck me, fuck, fuck me,” Hook whispered, his fingers pressed tight around Snake’s neck like he could stop the flow. But the blood rush was done. Abel knew it at a glance, seeing as Snake had no throat left, the entirety of it torn out by wolf teeth.
“We need a doctor, Abel,” Jian-Li said softly beside him. “There are many injuries.”
He crouched beside Delilah but tipped his head back as he did, his eyes to Xun.