Claimed by the Pack

Hold steady…

I choked back my emotions as her clothes ripped away, her face extruding itself into a long snout. One that ended in a dark nose, set below bright red eyes. And beneath all that… a sight that flushed ice water through my veins. Two long, jagged rows of razor-sharp, canine teeth.

Steady…

There was murder in her eyes. Cold-blooded, uncaring death. Her jaws parted slightly, and her legs coiled beneath her. A second later she sprang, and my entire world disappeared.

Karessa leapt just as I put my hands together. I extended them outward, palms together…

… and pushed.

34

DAMIEN

I’d taken only a dozen steps outside the citadel, and one thing was certain: I was being followed.

Followed in the sense of stalked, really. But I knew my brood. My clan. I knew who was on me even before they knew I’d made them. But none of that mattered. Not once I realized what was really going on.

Karessa was many things, but a loser wasn’t one of them. She didn’t know what it was like to be on the short end of the stick. In all the years I’d known and loved her, she’d never tasted defeat. Which was why it wasn’t like her to just let me go… especially after all the trouble she went through to catch me.

Unless, of course, it wasn’t me she wanted to begin with.

Dammit Karessa.

I’d been foolish, leaving the hotel. And now that foolishness was going to cost me, or possibly Broderick, or even Serena.

For that, I had no one to blame but myself.

I entered the forest then looped back, forcing my pursuers upwind so I could catch their smell. It didn’t take long to pick out the two distinct scents. Lionel was the closest… and most dangerous.

Of the three who opposed us, I trusted him the least. The others might hold back a bit. In a fight, they might have reservations about ripping my throat open and letting me bleed out on the forest floor.

But not Lionel.

Wherever he’d come from, making him had been a big mistake. Where most of us loved the thrill of the hunt, for Lionel it was all about the kill. The scent of blood drove him into a frenzy, and I’d seen him gorge himself on the entrails of fresh prey long after his hunger had been sated.

As a wolf, he was gluttonous. Savage. Deadly.

In human terms, he was an asshole. And a giant one at that.

I circled back and re-entered the citadel while they were still in the woods. It wouldn’t throw them off completely, but it would buy me time. From there I drove deeper into the Underhalls, where I could sense Broderick…

And beyond him yes, Serena too.

I descended the stairs two at a time, working my way downward into the rough-hewn chambers I never really liked. The biggest one — the one I was in now — we called the ‘chasm’. Because, well… one side of the room ended in a big fucking chasm.

A cold wind wafted up from the big opening as I skirted past it, moving toward the opposite exit. Serena was closer than Broderick, I could sense that now. I’d head to her first. But the others…

The other were coming on quickly. As in four-legged quickly.

I could change. It would be faster, easier… and I’d see better in the dark. But I wasn’t ready yet. Not until—

“Damien!”

I froze. Behind me, something shifted in the shadows.

“That’s as far as you go.”