I freeze in terror. How are they here? And if they’re here, who are Kain and Darius fighting?
Violet spins toward me, her eyes blazing as she shouts, “Anne! Run!”
One of the men rounds the top of the stairs behind her. She turns and drives her elbow into his jaw with a force that sends him into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. He slidesdown, groaning, but there are two more right behind him, and below us, the footsteps on the stairs are approaching fast.
I try to move, but there is nowhere to run. There are too many of them, and there is no corridor long enough to put any real space between us and them. No door thick enough to hide behind.
My wolf surges to the surface so hard, my vision goes white at the edges.
Violet catches my eye. Half a second is all it takes for me to understand.
“Now!” she orders.
I shift.
I haven’t done this in a while. There was a time when shifting felt like home, when running on four legs was the easiest thing in the world. But when I lost Kain, the grief was worse when I shifted, my wolf howling for a mate everyone said was dead. So, I stopped. It wasn’t a conscious decision. More of a slow withdrawal. Months between shifts. Then longer.
The transformation tears through me in a wave—bones cracking and reshaping, the floor dropping away and expanding as I come down on four legs, my clothes shredding and falling in scraps around me. The world opens up: sound and scent and detail flooding in with an immediacy that nothing in human form can match. I have not been in this form for years, but my wolf does not care. She lands, and she is ready.
Violet shifts, too.
I have never seen her do so before. I understand now why the Covenant wants her so badly, why Darius moves through the world with fury whenever anyone mentions a threat to her. She is stunning in this form, her coat a deep silver-gray that catches the light from the hall, her eyes burning amber and gold. She is larger than me and frankly terrifying—pure power radiates off her in waves that I can feel as I stand next to her.
Violet is the most dangerous thing in this building, and she does not wait.
She launches herself at the nearest man before he can even raise his weapon, and the sound of the impact echoes off the walls.
She goes through the other enemies at the top of the stairs like a storm: no charted path, just deadly force leaving destruction in her wake. She takes the first one and drives him into the wall so hard, the plaster caves in. The second tries to flank her, but she spins with pure hybrid speed, her jaws closing on his vest and throwing him backward over the railing to the floor below. He doesn’t get up.
I have no training for this. No techniques from drilled patterns or muscle memory beyond what my wolf herself knows. But she knows enough. Even an average wolf can attempt to fight.
I take the ones coming at us from the corridor now. A blade swings at my flank—silver tipped in wolfsbane, I can smell it—and I throw myself sideways. The knife catches air instead of flesh, and my jaws find the man’s wrist before he can recover. The satisfying crunch travels up through my jaw as he drops the weapon and screams.
We push the rest back toward the staircase. For a moment, I think we may actually hold our position.
Then, a silver chain wraps around my back leg.
The burn is immediate and total—not like ordinary pain but fire that skips the skin and goes straight to the bone. I snarl and spin, trying to wrench free, but the man at the other end is braced against a doorway, and the silver is biting deeper with every second I pull against it.
Another operative comes at me from the side while I’m fighting the chain. His boot connects with my ribs hard enough to knock the wind out of me. He follows it with a second blowto the side of my head, and the corridor tilts sideways for a moment.
I get my legs back under me through sheer stubbornness and rip the chain free with my jaws. The metal takes skin with it, leaving a burning stripe across my ankle. I snap the chain at the man’s face, and he falls backward.
Violet has cleared the top of the stairs. Four more men down.
But out of the blue, a dart embeds itself in the side of her neck. My eyes scan the area, looking for the culprit, and I find two men on the stairs, one with a small gun in his hand.
Violet doesn’t seem to feel any ill effects at first. She takes a step, stops, and shakes her head as if she has water in her ears.
Then, she takes another step, and her front leg folds awkwardly.
She catches herself. Stays up. But there’s an immediate change in her movements—the formidable, effortless strength is gone, every action suddenly costing something it didn’t cost before.
I put myself between her and the staircase. The two men below suddenly shed their human skin.
Why only now?
They’re obviously going to be more deadly in wolf form. Facing two trained shifter soldiers when I have never fought in my life is a death sentence, but I don’t care.
