“We haven’t even gotten out of the tree line yet,” Landon yelled back over the open communications line. “I was hoping you’d draw most of the hybrids your way, but I’m guessing that part of the plan didn’t work.”
Angelo reloaded a fresh magazine before answering. “Your plan worked fine, Captain. We’re facing four to one odds over here.”
“Shit. We’ll be there. Just hold on five more minutes.” In the silence that followed Landon’s words, Angelo could hear the hollow booming sounds of grenades going off over the radio. “And by the way, I’m not your captain anymore.”
Angelo chuckled. “You’ll always be my captain. Now get the hell over here and pull my ass out of the fire, would you?”
“We’re coming,” Landon promised with that same grim determination Angelo had grown to trust. “Everyone okay on your side?”
“We’re fine,” Ivy answered. Her voice was so soft over the line that Angelo barely heard it. You’d never even know she was in the middle of a firefight. “What about you?”
“All in one piece,” Landon said.
“Good. Make sure you stay that way,” she said. “Don’t do anything crazy, huh? We’ll hold out until you get here.”
Angelo appreciated Ivy’s optimism, but he didn’t think they were going to last the five minutes Landon and the other guys took to get there. He didn’t say that, though.
“Okay, troops,” he shouted above the din of automatic-weapons fire and snarling hybrids. “Landon needs us to hold out for a little while longer. He’s run into some trouble.”
Tanner turned and locked eyes with Angelo, and a knowledge that soldiers instinctively understood passed between them. The former Ranger knew they weren’t going to be able to hold the hybrids until reinforcements got there.
Suddenly, Tanner’s normally brown eyes flickered with a bright red glow. Then his teeth elongated and his claws extended.Shit.Angelo knew Tanner had been working hard as hell to rein in his hybrid nature and force down the violent impulses that took his self-control away, but someone had to slow down the hybrids and back them off, or none of them would be alive when Landon and his team arrived.
Tanner was over the wall with a roar that echoed in the jungle. On the other side of Ivy, Derek and the other Special Forces guys stared in disbelief, the hybrids forgotten for the moment. Luckily, Tanner’s transformation and animalistic war cry stunned the hybrids, too. Tanner was in their midst before they had a chance to recover.
Tanner didn’t even attempt to fire his weapon. Angelo wasn’t sure he could with those long claws. Instead, he flipped his grip on the M4 in his hand and swung it like a club. When the weapon fell apart, he went at the creatures with claws and fangs. All Angelo could do was stare. He’d never seen anything like the way Tanner fought, unless you counted watching a show on Animal Planet. Tanner ripped into the hybrids like a lion in the middle of a pack of hyenas, bodies flying everywhere.
And yet despite the incredible damage Tanner inflicted on the hybrids, it didn’t seem to be enough. He needed help.
Angelo slapped a fresh magazine into his M4, then stood up from where he crouched behind the wall. “Take it to them!” he shouted as he jumped over the only protection that had been keeping him alive, and ran into the fray.
He didn’t look back to see if Ivy and the guys were following him. He prayed they were. If not, this was going to be the shortest assault in history.
***
Kendra was on her feet stumbling after Declan even as he and Marcus smashed into each other. The sound was so loud, she was afraid the collision had killed Declan. But then he was back up and throwing himself at the gigantic hybrid again, roaring in a way Kendra had never heard in all the time they’d known each other.
When she’d first seen Declan, her heart had almost stopped. She had left him in that shelter so he’d be safe from the hybrids. And what the hell had he done? Walked right into the blasted compound and practically hand delivered himself to the monster that ran the place. She’d wanted to shout at him and ask him what the hell he was doing.
But she knew what he was doing. He was there to save her butt because that was just the kind of big, soft-hearted teddy bear he was.
Yet, while Declan’s heart was the same as it had ever been, there was definitely something drastically different about the rest of him. She’d recognized it the second he ran into the courtyard. His eyes were blazing so vividly, she had no problem seeing them in the bright morning light. His jaw and fangs were pushed out almost as far as Tanner’s when he was losing it, and his claws were almost as long as Marcus’s. But what made her realize something big had happened to Declan was that roar. She’d never heard anything like it.
Though she had no ideawhyit’d happened, she knewwhathad happened—Declan had shifted more completely than he’d ever let himself shift before.
She stood there in awe as he squared off against the bigger hybrid and shook off vicious blows that no other shifter in the DCO could have even survived. In return, he laid crushing hits to Marcus’s shoulders and chest. Kendra had always known Declan could be a powerful shifter if he just let himself embrace his inner bear, but even she was stunned at the sheer power he displayed in standing up to the hybrid that had been hunting them for days.
Despite being terrified that Marcus was going to kill him, she was proud of Declan.
She knew Declan wanted her to run, but she couldn’t. Besides the fact that she was just too sore right now—getting tossed ten feet through the air by a couple of hybrids could do that—there was no way she was going to leave him here to fight alone. Even though she believed in her heart that Declan couldn’t lose, she had to stay to make sure.
Then she caught movement out of the corner of her eye that made her think maybe she was being a little too optimistic.
Three hybrids entered the courtyard, weapons down at their sides.Crap.Declan wasn’t in a position to take on more hybrids—he had his hands full with one. If they joined in the fight, Declan wouldn’t last.
She looked around for something she could use as a weapon. Her eyes locked on the broken bodies of the two hybrids who’d been dragging her to the lab, and the rifles they still had slung across their backs.
Ignoring the pain, she limped over to the bodies. She dropped to her knees beside the first dead hybrid and grabbed his weapon, trying to yank it off his back. But the corpse refused to work with her no matter how hard she pulled.Dammit.She jerked the sling strap off the front attachment point. She was getting the damn thing away from the creature if she had to drag him behind her.
