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“Vyr is here,” Hallie said in a somber tone. “He and Wreck will destroy those people after what they did. We have to get away from the fire. Ruger! Can you hear me? Where are you!”
Okay. Okay! They needed to escape, but the boy came first.Think. Timber was a bear. She was a polar bear. She could smell. What did Ruger smell like?
A line of fire suddenly blasted across the tree line, singeing her hairs with the wave of heat that followed. Shit!
“Ruger!” Hallie screamed, running down the trail away from the trees that had been engulfed in fire.
A trail of lava blasted into the trailer park. Oh fuck, that wasn’t supposed to happen. Another dragon beat its wings on the air.
“Damon is in the air! We have to go! Faster!” The terror in Hallie’s voice said everything Timber needed to know. They needed to get out of the path of the monsters. There was nothing they could do for the trailer park now. Whatever was happening, the fire-breathers were on a rampage, and the mountains were burning. Plumes of smoke were fogging the woods, burning Timber’s eyes as she ran behind Riyah, desperate to get away from the heat.
Time was up.
The metallic clicking of a firestarter echoed through the woods. In horror, Timber looked over her shoulder to see a line of fire headed down the hill toward them. It was aimed at a trio of lionesses that were bolting straight for Hallie, who was falling behind.
“Hallie!” Timber roared in a demon’s voice as the trail of fire headed for them. “Move!”
Hallie was running as fast as she could, but the brambles were thick here, and the trail thin, and she was getting caught up.
Timber turned and rushed her. She didn’t have to say a word. Hallie clutched onto the fur at her nape and swung her leg over, ducking her face into the scruff of Timber’s neck as she bolted away from the blistering heat.
The burn had her pushing her new body harder, faster. She had to get Hallie out of here. She had to save her and her little baby.
Hallie grunted in pain, and Timber couldn’t even imagine how much it hurt on her human skin. That thought spurred Timber on faster, and faster. She was barreling down the hillside, crashing through brush and felled trees that were in her way.
To her left and down the hillside, Riyah’s polar bear was also cutting a path, and she could hear the bear panting with the strain of fear and effort. It matched her own.
“There!” Hallie screamed, releasing her death-grip on Timber’s nape long enough to point to the right.
There was a flurry of motion in the woods, and then Timber heard it—the roar of an angry, cornered lioness.
They were surrounded.
Ruger had his back against a tree, and was yelling something Timber couldn’t understand. He was pissed. She could see the rage in his little face. There was a lioness in front of him, back to him, fending off four male lions.
Oh fuck no.
“Protect the Fastlanders,” Hallie said in her ear before she released Timber’s fur and let go.
Timber didn’t miss a step. She aimed for the lions as Hallie’s weight left her. Behind them, the woods were on fire, and the sky was full of sparks and ash and smoke, but ahead?
Death.
Timber and Riyah reached the lions at the same time. Sloane was hurt, striped with bleeding claw marks, but she was giving the Pride hell protecting her boy.
When Timber and Riyah reached them, they barreled through the lions like they were nothing, and that was the moment Timber realized the gift Riyah had given her. She wasa monster. She was violence. She was the blade that could cut through anything that came for the people she cared about.
Behind her, the entire world was on fire, but here, in this moment, in this little battle, she was Queen. Riyah was Queen. Sloane was Queen. And Hallie was a Queen, standing behind them, picking off anything that limped away. Her shots echoed through the woods.
Inside and outside of Timber, there was nothing left but fire.
The trees around them were leafless, covered in drying lava and patched with flames, and smoke threatened to choke her. Timber came off the last kill, roaring her promise to murder anything that came for Ruger or her friends.
The sky was full of smoke, and ash was raining down on them. As she looked upward, she could see Wreck’s fire taking up the whole sky.
He was okay.
Wreck was okay, but what about everyone else? There was too much heat. Too much fire.
