He had to end this.
The realization that he could gut Julian and Shea wouldn’t feel a damn thing was like letting his wolf out of the cage. He didn’t shift, only because he was sure he’d ward off the Nightwalker better in a two-legged shape, but he did allow his wolf to take control.
The fight was over in seconds.
While Julian spun around him, his wolf waited until he got too close and he pierced him with his claws, tearing into the flesh as he hooked him like a fish. Julian howled and bucked, trying to escape. When he couldn’t, he hissed and bared his fangs, aiming for Colt’s throat.
He was fast, but not fast enough. Inches away from burying his fangs in Colt’s throat, his wolf reacted. He unhooked his claws, jamming his arms up, wrapping them around Julian’s neck. Using his immense shifter strength, he wrenched the Nightwalker’s head clean off his shoulders before throwing it far away from him.
It landed with a thud. Julian’s body—recognized that he’d finally met his second death—folded up beneath him, crumpling to the floor.
Colt panted, victorious.
Shea ran to him. Covered in blood and gore, his sweet mate wrapped her arms around his heaving body, sending support through their bond. Because, no matter what, she would always accept what he was.
Breathing in her woodsy scent, grounding himself in the sanctuary of Shea in his arms, Colt forced his need to continue the hunt back. His prey was dead. His mate was safe.
But how was she free?
The last thing he remembered was Shea being captured by the other Nightwalker—
—the other threat.
His body spun toward Rafe.
He was just standing there, his arms hanging at his side. His silver eyes had done wide, his once dark skin washing out as he stared at the remains of his king. He hadn’t expected Julian to lose, that much was obvious. But what was he going to do now?
“Julian wanted to grow the family,” Rafe announced, his voice hoarse with a mixture of shock, despair, and grief. “But there is no family without him.”
No shit. In between the first two bounces of Julian’s decapitated head hitting the floor, Colt felt the disturbance in the air, heard the shrieks as the vamps realized their leader was dead. No doubt the place had cleared out.
The more that Wright researched what was going on with Julian’s crew, they’d learned that a Nightwalker gang was nothing like a pack; loyalty was to one, not the whole clan. His followers might have feared Julian, they might even have worshipped him and made him their king, but his body wasn’t even cool yet before the clan had scattered like cockroaches.
That left Rafe.
Unlike Julian, he didn’t represent a threat that needed to be eliminated on the spot. So, when he took one last angry look at the remains of the former kind then dashed out of a door hidden behind the dais, Colt let him go.
Rafe wasn’t important. Not now. With Julian dispatched, he had to find Wright.
He gently removed himself from her barnacle-like hold, gesturing for her to stand back. He didn’t want her to go anywhere near the two halves of the former Nightwalker king, but he wasn’t willing to risk her going out int he abandoned nest alone, either.
“Stay here,” he told her. “Wright can’t be too far—”
The door swung open again. Slung over his back in a fireman’s carry, Rafe held onto an unconscious human male.
Blonde hair. Stocky build.
Spicy scent.
Wright.
It all happened so quickly.
As Rafe shifted him roughly, Wright let out a moan that proved he was still alive. However, once the vamp had propped him up on his feet, he bared his fangs.
Unlike Colt, Wright didn’t have a shifter’s reflexes.
The Nightwalker lunged for Wright’s throat and, with one quick jerking motion, tore it out.