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“Why aren’t you out hunting Adrian Holt?” I demanded, my voice cutting through the floodlit silence. “His house was spelled to hide a Veil merge. Unheard of practitioner magic. That’s your real problem—not me.”
Phelps’ mouth tightened into something that wasn’t quite a smile, and I saw the accusation already written in his posture, in the way his men had us surrounded. He wasn’t here for answers. He was here to pin this on me and Jude, to make us the convenient cause of everything spiraling out of control. Maybe they already had Adrian, and planned to use him for whatever their next conquest was.
I scanned the armed cordon, the tactical lights, the sheer absurd firepower aimed at one retired soldier. This wasn’t containment. This was a message. I’d turned them down, kept Jude out of their reach, and now they thought killing me solved all their problems. And it actually might.
“Killing me won’t get you Jude.” I let that hang in the floodlit air. Because that’s what this was all about, wasn’t it? Not the merge, not Adrian Holt. They wanted the wellspring of power that walked beside me, and they’d burn the world down to get it.
“Your mate is dead,” Phelps said, his voice carrying that practiced, hollow sympathy that made my blood run cold. “You’re protecting an illusion.”
I let my gaze drift past him, past the BearCats, past the soldiers, to three figures huddled near the back of the cordon. Practitioners. Robes fluttering in the night breeze, chalk in hand, tracing something onto the asphalt.
My stomach churned. Of course the military used practitioners. It wasn’t like they’d all magically vanished after the war. The SED might not hire them anymore, but that didn’t mean other organizations didn’t recruit them to augment their own power. The old loyalties ran deep, and money corrupted the need for control.
Power rose from the chalk-scarred asphalt like heat off summer pavement. It locked onto me with the weight of a physical touch, and the hairs on my arm stood on end. A strange sensation crawled across my skin, ants marching up my spine, and I braced for the bite, for the searing pain of binding runes trying to peel the magic from my bones. They could force a change, and demand control of my other form. I’d felt it before, during the war, practitioners who thought they could carve into a soldier like a surgeon, extracting what they wanted and leaving the husk behind.
But the pain never came.
Instead, a tingle of warmth erupted at my back, spreading outward like a second heartbeat, and then leapt past me, arcing over my head, and landing in the yard between us with a soft thud that shook the grass.
Nox.
He stood there, four paws planted, hackles raised, a low growl rumbling from his chest that vibrated through the concrete. It would have been almost comedic—a Maine Coon kitten in the front yard facing down a legion of guns and battle-hardened soldiers. For a breath, everyone paused. Even the practitioners froze mid-stroke, their runes half-finished and forgotten.
Then the magic flared again.
A cold tendril probed the air between us, wrapping around me with a slick, invasive touch that slid across my skin like oil and slime. The hairs on my neck stood on end, and my stomach lurched. They were trying to reactivate the runes etched into my skin, even after being warded and rewoven by Jude, they wanted to turn me into a puppet.
But Nox batted a lazy paw, and the magic dissolved like smoke in a storm, unraveling into nothing with a faint, offended hiss.
The practitioners stared. Their runes flickered and died.
Nox yawned, showing a mouthful of needle-sharp kitten teeth, and sat down in the grass as if he’d just swatted a particularly annoying fly.
The practitioners scrambled to regroup, chalk scratching fresh lines into the asphalt, but Nox growled, shadow growing long, into something that definitely wasn’t a cat. A soldier reacted. A crack of gunfire, sharp and wrong, splitting the floodlit night.
The bullet hit my good shoulder.
A punch of pain. Burning. Sudden wet heat blooming down my arm. My knees buckled.
Victor caught me, his body at my back. The whole team pressed in behind him, their energy and anger pulsing like a living current. I felt them there, waiting for my word. My team. My family. Always at my back.
The Bastion energy stirred in my chest, rising to meet the threat like it had been waiting for this moment all along. My shoulder knitted itself together, bone and muscle weaving, the bullet pushing free and clattering to the asphalt, though the ache remained.
And with my change, the team shifted behind me.
Victor’s grip on my arm tightened, his fingers lengthening, strengthening, claws dimpling my skin with a pressure that was almost painful. Beside him, Bobby’s form twisted into something leaner, sharper—vampiric, shadow-hungry, his fangs catching the floodlight like polished ivory.
Wade’s silhouette blurred at the edges, swelling, expanding, his dark form unfolding into something massive and ursine. A bear that had no business existing in the mortal world, all muscle and fury and barely leashed rage.
And Ezra’s howl tore through the night, no longer human, echoing off the BearCats and the houses and the terrified silence of the soldiers—a massive dire wolf, jaws wide, eyes burning gold. His beast only matched by what I’d seen from Xavier’s rare shift, and Ezra was far from a demigod.
We had never been just a team. We’d always been a pack, a family, even if the bond wasn’t bound by blood.
Gunfire erupted in a massive wave, though no order came. Not to start. Not to stop. The soldiers just opened up, as if something in their collective nerve had finally snapped.
Rounds tore through the air, through the grass, through the shadows where we stood. Muzzle flashes strobing across the lawn like frantic lightning.
Victor launched off the porch in a blur of claw and sinew, tearing toward the nearest shield wall. He hit it like a battering ram, ballistic plastic splintering, soldiers flying backward, rifles spinning into the dark. No one dead, but likely removing many of them from the battle.
