“What is it?”
His face was angled toward the right, and his eyes were on something in the trees. “Do you have your gun?”
“Yes,” she whispered, unzipping her jacket automatically.
“How many bullets,” he whispered so softly, she almost missed it.
“I have a full clip.”
“Just one?”
“I have an extra clip in my purse. In the truck.”
“Fuck,” he gritted out.
“Owooooooooo.” The howl pierced the air and Destiny startled hard. It sounded so close.
“Is it your Pack?” she whispered.
“No.” Dodger was already peeling his shirt off.
When the second wolf howled from farther away, the roaring in her ears settled. This was it. It was here—the moment her dad had trained her for. She looked at Dodger and witnessed the solemn fury on his face. They were outnumbering them.Hunting them. Why? They were here for Dodger, to teach the Rogue Pack a lesson. To hunt from the outside in. To take them one at a time, but they were also here for her. Destroying females and dens hurt a Pack the most, and she’d felt it last night…the Rogue Pack had accepted her.
She hated these wolves in the woods. Hated that they would draw blood from the man she loved. Hated that they couldn’t just leave them alone. They’d gone after Nory, bled the Rogue Pack, burned Liam’s den, and now this? And all because of the Elders and their unwarranted vengeance.
This moment of clarity felt so big.
It settled the shaking inside Destiny’s body.
Gritting her teeth, she pulled her Glock and angled it down, finger resting beside the trigger. Next, she pulled her phone from her pocket and opened a text to her dad.
“My dad has my location,” she murmured. She texted her dad the word he’d told her to since she was a little kid. The word that was every bit as important as ‘help.’
Heel.Send.
Yep, she was going to drag Behren Young’s wolf to her. It was the best thing she could do for Dodger if he was up against a Pack. All she had to do was buy him time.
A snarl vibrated the air. Destiny slowly looked up from the glowing screen of her phone. Through the trees, a jet black, enormous wolf stalked out from behind a large boulder.
“Get to the truck,” Dodger snarled in a voice she didn’t recognize.
“But—”
He angled his face toward her, eyes trained on the wolf. “Get to the truck and get out of here. Don’t turn around. Just run.” The last word was a snarl in a voice that wasn’t Dodger’s. It belonged to the wolf. He clapped his keys into her hand. He held her gaze for a moment, blue fire in his eyes.
Dodger turned and pitched forward onto the snow. His face was strained as his bones broke with an echoing sound that would be burned into her memory for always. She stood there over him as his body snapped and contorted. As the black wolf bolted for them, she lifted her Glock and aimed. Dodger’s throat would be vulnerable until he could finish his Change.
She squeezed her left eye closed, settled her finger on the trigger, and blew out a breath to steady herself, held the air in her lungs, and…boom!
A sharp yelp escaped the charging wolf, and it stumbled, skidding in the snow. It ran into Dodger, but he was Changed and latched onto him immediately. The fight that followed filled the woods with a heavy power she could feel.
She couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, and the wolf’s hip hit her as Dodger slung him to the side by his throat.
She flew backward and landed hard against a tree. Her breath whooshed out of her lungs, and she crumpled onto the snow, gasping. She couldn’t breathe!
Movement caught her eye, but it wasn’t from the fight. Two dark gray wolves were charging out of the trees toward them.
“Run!” Dodger roared in a monstrous voice.
