Page 23

A wall of warriors forms between me and the hospital doors. Six of them. Maybe seven. Shoulder to shoulder, a living barrier of muscle and bared teeth, their eyes reflecting the torchlight in twin points of gold.

Through them. Now.

I shift.

The change rips through me like a second skin tearing free, bones cracking, fur erupting, my body expanding into the massive black wolf that has killed everything that stood between me and my family tonight. I hit the line at full speed.

The first warrior goes down before he’s finished shifting. My shoulder catches him square in the chest and drives him back into the second, and the second stumbles, and the gap between them opens for half a second, just enough. I’m through it. My claws rake across a third’s thigh as I pass, and he screams, and I don’t look back.

The fourth tries to tackle me from the side. I feel his weight hit my flank, feel his arms lock around my ribs, and I roll. We hit the ground together. His grip breaks on impact. I drive my elbow into his sternum, once, twice, and he goes still beneath me. Not dead. I don’t have time to kill. I just need them unconscious.

The fifth and sixth come together. They’ve learned. They’re coordinating now, one high, one low, trying to take my legs out from under me. I drop to a crouch and sweep. The low one’s ankles catch my arm, and he goes down hard, his head snapping against the cobblestones. The high one overcommits. I rise into his swing and catch his wrist, twist, and his own momentum carries him past me and into the wall of the building behind us. The impact is wet and final.

One left. He’s young, younger than the others, his hands shaking, his eyes wide with something that isn’t quite fear and isn’t quite courage. He looks like the leader from earlier in the woods. He shifts anyway. A grey brown wolf, smaller than the others, and he launches himself at me with the desperate, suicidal bravery of someone who knows he’s going to lose but can’t make himself stand aside.

I don’t want to hurt him. I really don’t. But Arlene is behind those doors, and the pups are behind those doors, and nothing in this world or any other is going to keep me from them.

I sidestep. My hand finds the back of his neck as he passes, and I drive his face into the ground with just enough force to put him under. He goes limp. I let him go gently.

The square is quiet. Bodies scattered across the cobblestones like fallen leaves. None of them dead. All of them, still breathing. I did that. I made that choice, and the weight of it sits in my chest alongside everything else.

Ten feet to the hospital doors. I take one step. Two. The air changes. It’s not a sound. It’s not a smell. It’s a pressure, a shift in the atmosphere like a storm front rolling in, the air going thick and charged and wrong. My wolf goes rigid inside me.

Lycan.

The word doesn’t form so much as arrive, a fact pressed into the air itself, undeniable, the way gravity is undeniable. My wolf’s hackles rise along my spine, every hair standing at attention, and the sound that builds in my chest is not a growl. It’s something older. Something that recognizes what’s coming the way prey recognizes the shadow of the hawk.

He steps from between two buildings across the square, and the night rearranges itself around him.

Tall. Broader than any wolf has a right to be, even shifted. His eyes burn silver white in the dark, and the power rolling off him hits me like a wall, thick, ancient, the kind of power that doesn’t announce itself so much as simply exist, the way a mountain simply exists.

Lycan Alpha.

“Silver Moon’s Alpha.”

Darian be careful. Be smart. We have to get our mate and pups.

We look at each other across thirty feet of blood slicked cobblestones, and not a single word passes between us. None are needed. His posture says everything, the set of his shoulders, the way his weight shifts forward onto the balls of his feet, the absolute stillness of a predator that has decided what it’s going to do.

He’s protecting his pack. I’m going to my family. We move at the same time.

I cover the distance in three strides. He covers it in two. Our bodies meet in the center of the square with a sound like a tree splitting, bone against bone, muscle against muscle, the impact driving the air from my lungs in a single explosive grunt.

I’m on my back before I’ve finished processing the hit. The cobblestones bite into my spine, and the Lycan is on top of me, his weight crushing, his silver white eyes filling my entire field of vision. His claws, longer than mine, thicker, tipped in something that catches the torchlight like polished steel, rake across my chest. My skin splits. Blood wells hot and immediate.

I roll. He follows. His fist drives into the ground where my head was a half second ago, and the cobblestone cracks beneath the impact like a gunshot. I scramble sideways, find my feet, and come up swinging. My fist connects with his jaw. It’s like punching a wall. His head snaps to the side, and for one fraction of a heartbeat, I think I’ve hurt him.

He turns back. Slowly. The look on his face isn’t pain. It’s patience.

He shifts.

The change happens faster than mine, a blur of light and reforming bone, and then he’s not a man anymore. He’s something older. Something that makes the air itself pull back from him. His Lycan form towers over mine by a full head, his fur silver white and luminous, his claws extended to their full, terrible length. The power radiating off him is a physical thing, pressing against my skin like deep water.

I shift too. I have to. My black Alpha wolf emerges, massive and lethal, and for one brief, desperate moment, I think I can hold my own.

He moves.

I don’t see the first strike. I feel it, his claws opening four parallel furrows across my ribs, deep enough to scrape bone. The pain is white and absolute. I lunge, teeth bared, and he sidesteps like I’m moving through molasses. His forearm catches my throat. He uses my own momentum to drive me into the ground.