I backed away slowly.
It snarled at me.
Flakes of snow blew in from a broken window.
Men laughed across the street in the garage.
Glass crunched underneath my feet.
The wolf was all the way under the truck, claws digging into wood and ice as it pulled itself toward me, jaws open wide.
Nevermore.
The raven flew.
The pack knew. They knew. I felt it. All of them.
The Alphas were there. In me. In my head.
gordo gordo gordo
And Mark.
Always Mark.
I pulled on those threads. The ones that connected us all.
And pushed.
There was a shriek of metal as the boom twisted, the tow truck shaking.
The wolf opened its mouth, tilting its head back to fucking howl and—
The boom snapped to the side, the linoleum floor underneath it splitting apart.
The boom landed outside of the diner in the snow.
For a moment, the tow truck hung suspended.
The wolf’s howl cut off even before it began as the tow truck collapsed on top of it. I heard a wet crunch as six tons of metal met bone and muscle.
I didn’t hesitate.
Even as the hunters began to shout in warning, I pushed myself up and ran toward the back of the diner. The door we’d come in was hanging open, snow falling. A wave of cold air washed over me as I passed through the doorway, looking over my shoulder on the off chance the wolf had survived the truck falling on top of it and was coming after me.
It wasn’t.
“I think it’s dead,” I said to the others. “I think it—”
I bumped into someone.
I turned.
Chris. I had stumbled into Chris. Rico was to his left. Jessie to his right. Tanner stood on the other side of Jessie.
They weren’t moving.
“What the hell are you stopping for?” I demanded, pushing my way through them. “We have to—motherfucker.”