I spin to face him, and the fury I’ve been holding back all day finally breaks loose. “Why? Because the lottery says we’re supposed to play happy mates? I don’t care what anyone expects. I don’t care what the magic thinks it knows. I’m leaving, and you can’t stop me.”
Bryan opens his mouth to respond, but something changes in his posture between one heartbeat and the next. His head snaps to the left, his nostrils flare, and every muscle in his body goes taut. The arrogance drains from his face, and in its place, something cold takes hold that I’ve never seen before.
“Get behind me.” His voice has changed, too. Suddenly, it’s stripped of everything except command.
“I’m not—”
“Skylar. Now.”
A branch snaps somewhere to my left. Then another, closer this time. The sounds multiply, spreading through the darkness in a pattern that makes my wolf go still beneath my skin.
We’re not alone out here.
More sounds in the trees. Movement through the underbrush, coming from multiple directions at once. The soft pad of paws against dirt. The rustle of bodies pushing through ferns.
Bryan grabs my arm and yanks me behind him before I can react. I stumble and nearly drop the duffel bag, and by the time I regain my balance, they’re already here.
Six wolves emerge from the shadows.
They’re massive—bigger than most Silvercreek wolves, with matted coats and eyes that glint red in the darkness. Something about the way they move sets off every alarm in myhead. These aren’t strays who wandered across the border by accident.
One of them has scars running down its face in parallel lines, like someone dragged claws through its muzzle years ago, and the wounds never quite healed. Another is missing half an ear. A third has patches of fur missing, revealing mottled skin that looks diseased beneath what little moonlight makes its way through the canopy.
My wolf whimpers inside my chest, pressing against my spine. She recognizes what these creatures are even before my conscious mind catches up.
Cheslem wolves. Or what’s left of them.
They fan out around us in a loose semicircle, cutting off any route back toward Silvercreek. The scarred one in front bares its teeth and releases a snarl that sounds through the quiet forest like a promise of violence to come.
Bryan’s hand finds mine and squeezes once, hard enough to hurt.
Then the wolves attack.
Chapter 5 - Bryan
The first wolf lunges for Skylar’s throat, and I catch it mid-air with my bare hands.
My fingers tangle into matted fur as I twist, using the creature’s own momentum to send it crashing into the nearest tree. Bones crack on impact, and the wolf crumples to the ground in a heap. It doesn’t get back up.
Five more are coming. My wolf comes darting forward, and I let him have control.
The change rips through me faster than thought. One second, I’m on two legs, and the next, I’m on four with my clothes nothing but shredded fabric somewhere behind me. Ten years of agency work has turned shifting into something as natural as breathing, so it’s just the seamless slide from man to beast that I’ve perfected through countless missions and more kills than I care to count.
The scarred wolf reaches me first. He’s big—probably a beta in whatever’s left of the Cheslem hierarchy—and he fights like someone who’s never tasted defeat. His jaws snap toward my neck, and I duck under them while raking my claws across his exposed belly. Blood sprays hot against my muzzle.
He howls and staggers back, but he doesn’t fall. These wolves are tough, corrupted by whatever dark magic the Cheslem pack used to enhance their fighters. Stronger, faster, and harder to kill than any normal shifter.
Good thing I’ve killed plenty of them before.
Two wolves circle to my left—One-Ear and a massive gray brute with a chunk missing from his shoulder—while two more flank me from the right. A mottled brown female and a rangymale, both smaller than the others but no less dangerous. The scarred wolf recovers enough to complete the formation and box me in from the front. Classic pack hunting strategy. They’re coordinating, communicating through some silent channel I can’t access.
I’ve seen this before. Studied it. Learned exactly how to break it apart.
I feint toward One-Ear, making him commit to the attack, then pivot at the last second and slam into the gray brute instead. My teeth find his throat before he can redirect, and I tear out a chunk of flesh and fur and cartilage that spatters across the forest floor. He goes down, gurgling with his legs kicking uselessly at the dirt as the life drains out of him.
One-Ear slams into my side while I’m still finishing off his packmate. The impact sends me rolling across the forest floor, and I barely get my feet under me before he’s on top of me again. His claws rake down my flank, leaving burning lines of pain in their wake that make my wolf snarl with fury.
I twist and bite, catching his foreleg between my jaws and clamping down until the bone snaps with a satisfying crunch. He yelps and stumbles backward, his movements suddenly clumsy and desperate. I don’t give him time to recover. I’m on him in an instant with my teeth at his throat, and then he’s not a problem anymore.
