"Hey!" Feet slapped the pavement. Lucas threw a look over his shoulder and mentally cursed as four uniformed cops ran toward them. That's all this situation needed to truly go to hell—humans seeing something they shouldn't.

Stephen froze, his cold eyes flicking toward the officers. Impotent fury flashed over his face before he took a step back. "We will settle this," he hissed.

Lucas glared back. "Not tonight."

"What's going on, Lieutenant?" The officers fanned out and surrounded them, studying Stephen with narrow-eyed hostility. "This guy giving you trouble?"

"Yeah. He just assaulted this woman right in front of me." Lucas turned toward Elena. Just the sight of her bruised cheek was enough to make his outraged instincts snarl. "Do you want to press charges?" Say yes. He wanted to lock his rival up for a few hours—long enough to find out what the hell was going on and figure out what to do about it.

"Elena!" Stephen growled. "If you do this, you're going to pay for it."

She didn't even flinch. "Yes, I want to press charges. I want him to go to jail."

"Oh, you stupid little bitch."

"That's enough!" Lucas grabbed Stephen by the shoulder and whirled him around. For a moment, he was tempted to slam the man's head into the hood of the Hummer. Instead he jerked a set of handcuffs from his pocket. He hoped the other officers didn't notice his hand was shaking with the intensity of his rage.

The werewolf stiffened, obviously considering fighting him before thinking better of it and allowing himself to be cuffed. Evidently he wasn't insane enough to violate the Direkind taboo against using their abilities in the presence of humans.

Still, Lucas could literally smell his fury, pungent and acrid against the springtime scents of the flowers in the department's flowerbeds.

"You all right, ma'am?" one of the officers asked Elena. "You want to go to the hospital?"