Hunt must have followed my thinking because his face went pale under all that mud. “Knox. You’re not seriously thinking about-”
“Do you have a better idea?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “That’s going to hurt like a bitch.”
“Yeah.” I took a deep breath, steadying myself. “It is.”
I shifted my hand back into a paw. The bones were different in this form, arranged differently, but they were still too large for the cuff. I needed to make them smaller. I needed to break them.
I started pulling.
Not just pulling. Yanking. Wrenching my paw against the metal with all the strength I could muster. The cuff bit into my fur, into my skin, tearing through flesh as I forced my paw through a space too small for it.
The first bone broke with a crack that echoed through the garage.
Agony exploded up my arm, white-hot and blinding. I bit down on my tongue to keep from screaming, tasting blood as my fangs pierced the flesh. My vision went white at the edges. Every instinct screamed at me to stop, to give up, to find another way.
I kept pulling.
Another bone cracked. Then another. I could feel them grinding against each other, fragments scraping together inside my mangled paw. Blood was running freely now, slicking the metal, making it easier to slide through even as the pain threatened to drag me under.
One more yank. One more burst of agony that made my entire body shake.
And then my paw was free.
I collapsed against the wall, panting, cradling my destroyed paw against my chest. It was a mess of blood and broken bones, barely recognizable as a limb. The pain was incredible, pulsing with every heartbeat.
But I was free.
“Damn,” Hunt said, his voice sounding sick. He swallowed hard, staring at my ruined paw. “Fuck, I’m gonna hate this.”
“Do it fast,” I managed to say through gritted teeth. “Don’t think about it. Just do it.”
Hunt took a deep breath. Then another. Then he shifted his hand and started pulling.
The sound of his bones breaking was even worse than hearing my own. Each crack made me flinch, made my stomach turn. Hunt didn’t scream, but the noise he made was almost worse. A high, keening sound that barely seemed human.
But he didn’t stop. He kept pulling, kept breaking, kept forcing his paw through that too-small space until suddenly he was free too, collapsing against his section of wall with blood dripping down his arm.
We sat there for a moment, both of us breathing hard, both of us trying to push past the pain. My paw was already starting to heal, the wolf in me knitting bones and flesh back together, but it would take time. Time we didn’t have.
I forced myself to stand, swaying slightly as a wave of dizziness washed over me. Had to keep moving.
“The door,” I said, nodding toward the hidden entrance Mira had used. “That leads to the house.”
Hunt pushed himself up, grimacing as he jostled his healing hand. “You think they know we’re loose?”
“Not yet. But they will soon. We need to find the babies before they try to run.”
We moved to the door together, Hunt using his good hand to work the lock while I stood ready to bust through. The mechanism was old, rusty, but not particularly complicated. After a few seconds of fiddling, I heard a click.
“Got it,” Hunt said.
That’s when we heard it.
The sound of fighting outside. Grunts and growls and the unmistakable noise of wolves tearing into each other.
Hunt ran to the window and looked out, his eyes going wide. “Holy shit. Knox, you need to see this.”
