Launching through the air, I land on the closest of Quinton’s minions and latch on to his scruff, taking him down with my momentum and body weight.
I hit the ground on my side and continue rolling, tossing the wolf off me with the strength of my jaw. He skids away from me on the rocky ground but comes up spitting mad, so that I barely have time to get my paws back under me before he’s countering my attack. But my distraction is just what this particular group needed to get the upper hand. Two of the larger Silver Crest males tag team Quinton’s wolves one at a time, darting in to attack and then dancing backward, working as a coordinated unit.
We split off to help the others, and I race past Frost as he fights viciously with one of Quinton’s new shadow shifters. The sight almost makes me do a double take, because my immediate thought is that it’s two of my men fighting each other. I’m so used to the three of them being the only feral shifters in existence. But despite the fact that Frost’s sparring partner looks a lot like him, I also recognize that he’s unfamiliar. One of the new ones. The ones Felicity warned us about.
I spare a brief thought for Frost’s mental state. What if fighting like this and being in his shadow form undoes whatever Felicity did to fix him and sends him right back into the shadows? But for now, he seems stable and capable. As I pass, he rips out the other shifter’s throat with an arc of gristle and gore from his sharp, giant teeth.
Nearby, one of Quinton’s wolves has pinned one of our allies to the ground. She’s bucking like a wild horse, but he’s much larger and his weight is immovable from her prone position. I lower my head, speed up, and then slam into his side so hard that I feel his ribs crack beneath my skull. He yips, flying off into the grass.
The red-furred Silver Crest wolf leaps back to her feet and shouts, Look out!
I turn, but not fast enough. Teeth clamp onto my throat, and I’m dragged straight to the dirt, slamming painfully onto my spine. There’s no room for me to defend myself, not even a second’s worth of time before the enemy wolf latches on to my throat.
I’m going to die.
Holy shit.
Death is always a possibility for a shifter. Rival packs, dangerous predators, unforgiving landscapes… at some point, we’re all going to die. But it’s such an abstract thought. You can come to terms with the idea of death. You can promise yourself that when the time comes, you’ll be okay.
In this flash of a second, though, I’m devastated by the idea that I won’t get to spend the rest of my life with Kian, Malix, and Frost.
Then four giant black paws slam into the dirt next to my head, and the ground shakes beneath me. Kian shoves the Blood Moon wolf off me with a massive swipe, and the wolf takes a chunk of my skin with him. Enough to hurt, but not enough to do irreversible damage.
I’m still on my back, blood trickling softly through my fur. Kian stares down at me with eyes that, in his shadow wolf form, glow faintly like blue fire from the inside. Our gazes hold for several loaded seconds, and I swear I can sense through our bond his fear at seeing me in trouble.
Then he lopes away, throwing himself back into the battle.
I clamber to my paws and prepare to do the same. Everything around me is chaos, wolf fighting wolf, the air filled with the sounds of snarling and growling and pained cries. Everyone is wrapped up in their own battle, fighting to get out of the conflict alive.
As I swing my head from side to side, searching out another enemy, my gaze lands on a familiar salt and pepper wolf facing off against another large wolf.
Felicity.
And… Quinton.
My heart drops into my stomach. She’s completely alone, all of her other pack members either downed or preoccupied with fighting off Quinton’s men. Felicity is no wilting violet, but Quinton is twice her size and made of rock-hard muscle. The two of them bare their teeth, growling and snarling as they circle each other, hackles raised.
She didn’t come here to fight today. She didn’t come here prepared to go up against her ex. But clearly, she doesn’t have a choice now.
In the space of a single heartbeat, the tension between them snaps, and Quinton lunges.
The two of them slam together, both of their bodies whirling from the brutality of their speed. They go down in a heap of limbs and fur, but Felicity comes out on top and latches on to Quinton’s head with her teeth. Even with the fighting happening all around me, their snarls are the loudest as Felicity claws at his eyes with one paw, shaking her head viciously.
Quinton comes up off the ground like a mountain bursting forth from the earth. He gives a single shake of his big head and sends Felicity flying off to one side as if she’s nothing more than a flea.
My breath catches in my throat.
Fuck. I have to help her.
Leaping into a sprint, I dodge a fighting duo of shifters, then leap over a fallen wolf, my sights set on the two alphas.
But before I can reach them, a wolf comes out of nowhere, blindsiding me. I don’t know if he’s purposefully keeping me from reaching Felicity, or if he just saw my distraction and used it to his advantage, but he rams my left hip with the full weight of his body. I spin around, the world blurring around me as I go down and roll from the momentum of the blow. Luckily, he hit my rear, not my head, so I manage to keep my wits about me and pop back up onto my feet.
He charges me again—clearly a man of few fighting strategies.
I whip around in a circle, throwing my body weight behind my headbutt. My skull connects with Quinton’s minion with a dull thwack, and he goes boneless, out cold before he even hits the ground.
Unfortunately for me, the close quarters of his attack didn’t give me the right angle to use proper technique. My stomach lurches from the pain radiating through my head, and I stumble several steps to the side before I’m able to right myself.