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out in a loose semicircle around him, staring at Ethan.
     
    Travis laughed, the sound a chilling mockery devoid of humor. “You lie. I can smell you on her. You‟re fucking her, aren‟t you? How does it feel to know somebody you care about is hurting? That she might die?”
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    Marie started to speak. “You gain nothing by threatening me. He spoke the truth. I—”
     
    Travis dug the point of the knife further into her throat, and she broke off with a strangled moan. Ethan roared out his fury and started toward them, but the three thugs blocked him from Travis.
     
    Travis shouted his command. “Stop or I‟ll kill her now. Just like I killed your precious panthers. Did you get my message? Or, wait, was it my half-dozen messages, delivered in the form of dead cats?” His chilling laughter rang out, and Ethan noticed that even Travis‟s henchmen shuddered. A panther shifter who could murder cats of his own kind was worse than the lowest kind of scum.
     
    Ethan froze, gaze locked on the knife point where it was sunk into Marie‟s skin. “What do you want, Travis? Tell me now, and leave the woman alone.”
     
    “I want you, alpha,” Travis said. “I call blood feud and alpha challenge upon you.
    Tomorrow night, under the full moon, we will battle for your title, your lands, and your pride. Dare you to refuse?”
     
    Ethan stared at the Texas shape-shifter, assessing strengths and weaknesses. There was no option. Alpha challenge could never be refused. But if Travis harmed Marie any further, Ethan would kill him now.
     
    He‟d kill them all. Four to one was just another way to say good odds to an alpha who‟d been trained by the best.
     
    “I accept your alpha challenge, Travis, pride-brother to Fallon,” he said in the formal words of acceptance. “The blood feud will resolve itself at the challenge. Now let the woman go.”
     
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    Travis moved the knife away from Marie‟s throat and shoved her at Ethan so hard that she fell, then signaled to his men and turned to run. “Enjoy your woman and your land while you can,” Travis shouted. “In twenty-four hours, they will all be mine.”
     
    Ethan leapt the distance to Marie, lifted her off the ground, and cradled her in his arms.
    “How badly did he hurt you? Your neck, your hands, and your knees are bleeding. He‟s going to die painfully for this, I swear to you,” he vowed, his hands almost compulsively clutching her to him.
     
    “Ethan, please. It is not…I am not severely injured. Merely surface wounds. But I would like to return to the cabin, if you do not mind.” She was trying so hard to be brave for him, he could tell, but her breath caught in a hitching sob at the end of her sentence.
    She pressed her face into his chest, and he felt something cold and hard in his heart soften even while rage pounded through him.
     
    Protective instincts far older and more primitive than any he‟d ever known, even in his role as alpha, swamped him. He would protect this woman, no matter the cost. His cat snarled its agreement inside him, roaring out its claim. Marie was theirs to protect.
     
    As he carried her to the car and placed her gently into it, he surrendered in his internal battle. No matter that it didn‟t make any sense at all. Marie was his, and he would avenge every scratch, every bruise, every touch from that knife.
     
    Travis was going to die screaming.

SEVEN
    While Ethan made several phone calls warning his pride members of the danger and informing them of Travis‟s alpha challenge, Marie spent the time in the car on the ride back to the cabin trying to overcome the terror that had frozen her into immobility in the Shifter’s Lady – Warriors of Poseidon 2.5

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    encounter with Travis. Gradually, fury—both at herself and at Travis—won out over the fear.
     
    By the time Ethan whipped the car into the