“Be careful,” she said, grasping his hand for a moment.“What if it’s Otto?”
“Then I’ll stop him,” he said with a growl.
She nodded, her eyes shining with worry.
He raced from the house with his sons.The lions who’d gone to bed and were part of the security team were hurrying behind them as they made their way to the stairwell and through the employee cafeteria.
They reached the ground level as the lights came back on and the generators clicked off.
“What the hell is happening?”Lucius demanded.
He saw Marcus and Joss and joined them.“It has to be a damn EMP,” Joss said.“Something took out the park’s grid for a minute and a half.”
“Wait, did you hear that?”Marcus asked.
They went silent and then he heard it.A scream.A bellow from Tank the moose.
“Someone’s in the park,” Joss said.
Jupiter joined them with a tablet from the security office and showed them footage of people inside the norms’ paddock and racing toward the gate, which was no longer locked because the system had been offline.“The security teams that were on duty at the time are on the way to the paddocks now.”
“It has to be Otto,” Caesar said with a snarl.“That son of a bitch has broken the final straw.”
“We’ve got your back,” Joss said.
“The security team is assembling and scouring the park,” Jupiter said.
They fanned out and headed toward the paddocks and the safari tour area.Caesar was furious.The male was so unhinged he simply wouldnotstop.
“Bring me Sera,” Otto bellowed, his voice echoing around the park.“I’ve come to collect my mate.”
They found him and eight males just outside the safari park pathway, surrounded on both sides by the security team.
“She’s not yours,” Caesar said.
Otto laughed, a sharp and humorless sound.“We’ll see about that.”
“You can walk away for good and put an end to this,” Caesar said as he moved forward.Around him the park shifters fell into formation—lions, bears, wolves, elephants, and gorillas—all supporting him and Sera.The jaguars were vastly outnumbered, but they didn’t even bat an eye at the sheer number of shifters standing against them.
Caesar met Otto’s gaze and saw nothing but madness and obsession.He could see that there would be no reasoning with Otto and he would never back down.
It wasn’t going to be a fight for dominance—it was an all-out war.
“Last chance,” Caesar said, his lion rolling under his skin, ready to fight for Sera.
“Bring her to me, or die screaming at my feet,” Otto said.
Several jaguars shifted swiftly and the park shifters answered in kind—lions and wolves howling and roaring as clothes ripped and animals took the place of the males.
Caesar threw off his shirt and let his lion rise inside him.
His bones cracked and fire licked down his spine as his beast surged forward in a blur of golden fury.
Otto roared in return.
The two alphas collided as chaos erupted around them.
There would be only one survivor.
