Hadley was hit by the blast wave first, thrown backward like she’d been hit by a gigantic hand. From the corner of her eye, she saw Lydia and Kat flying backward too, the latter out cold before the wave even reached her.
The impact with the ground knocked the air out of Hadley’s lungs. A grunt from nearby suggested Lydia had gotten smacked just as hard. Fighting for breath, Hadley pushed herself upright, ignoring the parts that wanted to lay there moaning in pain.
But she couldn’t.
She needed to know if Carter was okay.
When Hadley finally managed to sit up, she breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of Carter doing likewise, shaking his head as if to clear the cobwebs. She realized Strickland had been thrown back farther away than any of them. The skinwalker lay flat on his back in the weeds, not moving.
For several long seconds, Hadley let herself believe that it was over, that Kat had somehow realized what was happening and had taken Strickland down with a magical blast, even in the depths of the transfer spell.
But then she caught movement from the corner of her eye and looked over to see Strickland climbing to his feet. While his being conscious again was bad enough, it was how different the skinwalker appeared that had Hadley the most concerned. It wasn’t that he was necessarily bigger—at least physically. It was hard to put into words, but he appeared to be brimming with energy.
Energy he seemed eager to unleash on her soul mate.
It took a moment for Hadley to understand what had happened, but after looking back and forth between Kat, Kamden, and Strickland, the answer finally filtered in. Kat had completed the essence transfer. The skinwalker part that had once been inside Kamden was now in Strickland, making him even more powerful than he’d been before.
“Oh, shit,” Carter said, summing up the situation perfectly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Carter pushed himself to his feet, watching as Strickland came toward him, murder in his eyes. The increased energy coming off the man was tangible and considering that both Kat and Kamden were lying on the ground out cold, it wasn’t difficult to figure out that this new version of Strickland was somehow related to Kat’s magic spell.
It also wasn’t hard to figure out that he was seriously screwed.
Carter had been close to a blind panic as he’d tracked Hadley and Strickland through the Eastman Manor. His omega was disturbingly quiet as if it knew they’d be too late to save their soul mate. When he finally made it outside and found Hadley and the others scattered around the glowing warding circle, the relief he’d felt had been beyond belief. The next second, he’d been forced to stop worrying about Hadley as he tackled Strickland seconds before Lydia was torn to pieces. During the extremely short fight that followed, Carter had figured out that punching the skinwalker into submission wasn’t going to work. Doubting it was going to help much, he’d been about to pull his gun when the warding circle had blown up.
While Kat had said the possibility of Strickland getting stronger could be a result of the spell, Carter didn’t think she’d expected this. Because right then, Strickland seemed like he might be more than Carter could handle.
“I have no idea what she did to me, but I’m not complaining,” Strickland said as he took in the unconscious Kamden still lying beside the pile of dirt inside the lightly shimmering warding circle and then at an unmoving Kat twenty feet away before turning to Carter. “I’m not sure you’re going to appreciate it though.”
With that, Strickland closed the last few yards between them, moving faster and faster with every stride, until he was almost a blur. As a werewolf, Carter was faster than almost anyone alive. He’d been in dozens of dangerous situations where he’d avoided being hurt simply by moving before a blow or weapon could reach him. But this time, he didn’t even see the punch coming.
Carter felt something in his jaw crack, and then he was flying backward. He braced for impact, stunned at how much time passed before he hit the ground with a solid thud, bouncing several times before coming to rest only a few feet from Kat’s warding circle. Shaking his head to clear the cobwebs, he started pushing himself upright, knowing Strickland was probably already coming at him.
As if he’d just jinxed himself, Carter suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder. He rolled over, slapping the hand away at the same time, only to realize it wasn’t Strickland who’d grabbed him. It was Hadley. She was kneeling at his side, looking worried as hell.
“You and Lydia need to grab Kat and Kam and get the hell out of here!” he said urgently. “Now!”
“I’m not leaving you,” Hadley insisted, tugging on the front of his uniform like she could drag him to his feet. “If any of us are leaving, you’re coming with us!”
“Nobody’s going anywhere,” a deep voice interrupted as a hand reached down and batted Hadley aside before grabbing the front of Carter’s tactical harness, yanking him to his feet like he was a rag doll. “Not until I’m done with you.”
Carter’s flailing hand somehow found his handgun. He drew the 9mm and fired point blank into Strickland’s chest, getting seven rounds into the skinwalker before the man reached out and casually ripped the weapon out of his hand. Then Strickland tossed it into the nearby weeds without even reacting to the fact that he’d been shot multiple times in the chest.
Extending his claws, Carter swiped at the skinwalker’s face, chest, and shoulders. But while the claws caused a lot of damage, Strickland didn’t seem any more bothered by that than the gunshot wounds. He simply pulled Carter a bit closer and then threw him across the warding circle like a toy.
The shield protecting Kamden and the circle must still have been active because Carter skipped off the top of it before crashing to the ground again. What little air left in his lungs exploded out on impact, and all he wanted to do was lay there and wait for his breath to come back.
But the sound of Hadley screaming from somewhere behind him had Carter scrambling back to his feet, ignoring the pain surging through his body. His heart seized in his chest when he saw Hadley on the ground, crab-walking backward as Strickland came at her with his jaw low and starting to unhinge.
Carter charged forward, letting his body shift as far as it could, his fangs extending, his claws out even further than they already were, the muscles of his legs, back, and arms spasming as his body tried to assume a four-legged form. It was kind of surprising that his omega didn’t make an appearance at that point. It had been a damn near certainty lately during a partial shift.
Was his omega staying away because it thought that letting Carter deal with this alone was the best chance they had to save Hadley?
Carter stopped thinking when he slammed into Strickland as the skinwalker reached for Hadley, the impact sending them both to the ground and giving his soul mate a chance to scramble away.
“Hadley, get out of here!” Carter yelled, even as he ducked a swing from Strickland that would have likely taken his head off, countering with a slash of his claws that opened four gashes across the skinwalker’s stomach. “I don’t know how long I can hold him off!”
