Ready Or Not

More Than You Bargained For

**Daniel**

Theo stood in the wreckage of what used to be a very nice lamp and a heavily potted plant, shoulders heaving with every breath he was taking for the sole purpose of calming himself.

“Neither of you did anything to stop this? What the fuck, Porter?”

I heard my own teeth creak, protesting the force with which I was grinding my jaw. I could barely look at him. His rage was justifiable.

“I told her to run, Teo. Begged her to. Told her we’d find her- we’ll always find one another. She wouldn’t go.”

My eyes dropped and my hands tangled in my hair. Another crash startled me and I looked up to see Theo had pulled his bookshelf over. A murmur was building outside in the hall, and I could feel the eyes of the people gathered there burning into the back of me and the very, very angry front of their VP.

I stood and tried to go to him but he was moving again, pacing back and forth, footfalls heavy enough I thought they might go through the floor.

“The fuck not?”

I shook myself, and forced myself to stop fingering the necklace around my wrist. “What?”

“Why. The fuck. Wouldn’t. She go.” His voice was as dark as I’d ever heard it. The only time it had been nearly as frightening was when he’d found out Anna had walked willingly into that psycho Henrik’s hands.

I started to answer him when a voice that suddenly sounded much more Southern than I’d heard it before rang out in the hallway.

“Whatever it is, it’s none of your concern. Scoot. Y’all have work to do. I’ll handle it.”

Theo turned slowly towards the door of his office. He knew why Lydia wouldn’t run.

He was across the room and hauling Hannah inside through the suddenly opened door in the space of a blink.

The door slammed behind him, and Hannah trembled in his grip.

I put my hands out. “Theo, baby, you’re upset.”

He scoffed. “You think?”

I ignored his tone. “You’re upset, and you don’t want to hurt Hannah, so you need to let go of her before you accidentally, I don’t know, fracture her humerus or something.”

Hannah whimpered, and honestly, as low as she was on my list of favorite people at the moment, for the way she’d hurt Lydia, I still liked her, and I didn’t want her hurt. Besides which, she hadn’t turned her back entirely on my oldest sister. She just needed time. That was something I could understand. I’d been a human dating a vampire once, and while I’d taken the details of their life much better than she had, it hadn’t meant that I’d had no internal conflicts with myself whatsoever. I knew where she was coming from.

Theo shot me a look that told me we’d be having a serious discussion about my coming to her defense later, but he dropped her arm, and Hannah took three steps towards a chair before she just gave up and fell to her knees crying. I helped her up and settled her in the chair she had been aiming for, very aware that Theo was watching us without blinking. I knew he wanted to spill blood.

I also knew he’d regret it if he didn’t think it through first. Hannah was his friend, whether he remembered it at this moment or not. And it wasn’t her fault that Lydia wouldn’t run. Well...not really. Still, Theo had every right to be as pissed as he was right now, so I’d let him be angry. I’d just also have to stand by to mitigate damage.

“Christ, Dan. I’m just about fucking done worrying about breaking the humans that break my Lydia.”

He stalked toward me, there was no other word for it, and laid his head on my shoulder. I was sure he was going to yell or scream in my face, but he just spoke. All in monotone. All in scary monotone.