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“I have to Change.” Vyr had been on the verge of a Change the entire drive.
“Can you feel her!”
“Straight!” Vyr roared, holding onto the oh-shit bar of Wreck’s truck.
Could he and Vyr have Changed? Yeah. Could they have flown here, to this little town of a hundred on the outskirts of Saratoga? Yeah. Could they have burned the entire thing to the ground? Yep.
But that wouldn’t get them where they needed to be any faster. Vyr needed his mind to track down Riyah.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, man, they’re hurting.” Vyr slammed his head back on the headrest, and the veins in his neck were popping. “I’m sorry. I have to…I have to…”
“Stop!” Wreck yelled. “You want to burn this town to the ground? I don’t care. I’ll help you eat the ashes. Take me to the girls first, and then you can destroy everything, and whatever prison they put you in,I will break you out!Just get me to the girls first.”
“Riyah is crying. She’s crying. She’s saying to help,” Vyr ground out. “Motel looks like…brown walls, brown-and-red bedding. Thirty-seven. Room thirty-seven. There’s a woman holding her together. There’s a body in the room behind them. Aaaah!” he roared.
“Get me a name!”
“Riyah,” Vyr ground out in a voice that couldn’t pass as human. He closed his eyes like he was listening to something.“Lodge. Pine River…Lodge.” Vyr’s whisper lifted the fine hairs on Wreck’s body. Stank like witch’s magic in here.
“Go,” Wreck said.
“What?” Vyr asked. His red hair was mussed from running his hands through it with the stress. His bright-silver eyes were wide.
“I’ve got her. Go.”
Vyr huffed a helpless sound and shoved the door to the truck open. He exploded upward, morphing into something monstrous above the highway. His gargantuan red wingspan blocked out the entire sky.
Leaning forward to look at the sky, Wreck watched the red dragon blow fire as he beat his wings against the wind, aiming for the clouds.
Pine River Lodge was right off the highway, thank goodness. He didn’t even have to punch the name into his GPS because a sign appeared along the highway. Two miles ahead, exit seventy-nine.
He punched the accelerator to the floor and tried not to imagine the picture Vyr had painted in his mind.
Riyah Daye was dying. Her voice had come through to Vyr, and they’d taken off from the trailer park.
Oh, they knew they were being separated off. Knew it. That’s how lion Prides hunted, but what else could they do?
The Holland Pride hadn’t take the girls far, but the urge to Change was enormous.
The Pine River Lodge sign was visible from the highway. He didn’t have time to take the exit and wait at the stoplight before he looped under the road.
Wreck veered left and plowed over the median, blasting through honking oncoming traffic and down a shallow hillside toward the motel.
He didn’t brake until he saw the room numbers, and skidded to a stop in the gravel lot in front of room thirty-seven. He threw his truck into park and didn’t even turn it off before he was bolting for the room.
There was no knocking, he just kicked the door open. What he saw there would sit in his memory for years to come. His whole life, perhaps.
There was a lioness in the corner, bloody and not moving. The furniture was upended, and Timber was knelt down with her bare back to him. She was putting pressure on a woman’s stomach. Riyah, he would guess. She was pale as a ghost, and her eyes were closed.
Timber turned just enough for him to see her face, and it was not the face he recognized.
Timber was gone.
In her place existed a stark-featured, snarling, blue-eyed shifter. “I need the fire.”
“What?” he asked.
“The green fire. I need it.”
