“Is she breathing?” I demanded, reaching out for her.
The other wolf narrowed his eyes at me, his breathing raspy until he fell to his knees beneath the smoke line.
I went down with him. Her chest rose and fell. She?—
“Is alive,” the other wolf said. “Is alive.”
18
Dakota
Ihad never felt more useless in my entire life as the moment that we realized the house was on fire.
I was a mage, super powerful and able to fell werewolves with a single thought... except that I knew how to start a fire, but I had no idea how to stop one. It seemed like it would simply be the opposite of starting a fire, but when I tried that, the result was a dimming of the flames, but they didn’t go out.
And the moment I stopped concentrating on it, they went right back to their previous height.
We didn’t have time for me to play with spells.
I had to do something. The blond guy who’d warned about Grant rushed right past me into the side door, like running into fires was just something people did.
In the moment, I figured helping him was my best bet, so I concentrated on the flames in that part of the house, made them as low as I could, spending every bit of effort I could on it.
When he burst out of the door a few moments later carrying Maia, I was doubly grateful I’d done so.
That was everyone, I thought, repeating my previous head count. Everyone out of the house. Everyone safe.
As safe as they could be with an enemy pack hanging around.
Blond guy was coughing from smoke inhalation, his voice raspy as he assured Jax that Maia was alive, but before I could go try to help him, Grant stalked up and snarled at him. “Where is Giselle?”
Giselle? The monster who’d tried to force Gillian to sleep with a guy who could have been her grandfather?
The blond guy coughed some more while Grant screeched at him about how he was supposed to protect Giselle, and finally he looked up and shook his head. “Dead. She was trapped when center wall fell down. I didn’t get to her.”
Now, maybe it was the fact that we’d been working with a lot of fae lately. Or maybe it was the fact that I, myself had been looking for loopholes in laws that I could slide through.
But that was an interesting way of putting things, wasn’t it? Not “I couldn’t get to her.” No. “Ididn’tget to her.”
Those were very different things.
Grant had a meltdown right there in the middle of the group, screeching about how Giselle was the only loyal one of the bunch, and then he marched off.
I turned to Jax, but he wasn’t paying any attention at all, too busy assuring himself that his pack was safe and accounted for, counting everyone over and over while cradling Maia to his chest. Behind him, Seth stood, looking tortured.
He and Maia had a... a thing happening. He had to feel like utter dirt.
Still, Jax had broken off the attack to come save pack members. What did it mean for the challenge?
“It will happen on the next full moon,” the blonde woman I’d noticed before whispered, having come up behind me without me noticing. “The challenge.”
I turned to look at her, frowning. “Not just continued now?”
She shook her head. “An external threat to the packs involved takes precedence until all danger has passed. An easy escape, don’t you think?”
Of course.
Grant had arranged for the fire to happen, as a backup in case he’d bitten off more than he could chew. And in having to fight Jax, he certainly had. Now, he’d been given another month to come up with a better plan.
