I can hear Violet struggling to get to her feet, her breathing labored. There’s no way I’m letting them get to her.
One of the wolves jumps at me, and I avoid him, but the other sinks his teeth into my shoulder. I howl in pain and throw myself toward a wall, slamming him against it. He doesn’t manage to avoid the impact and goes down hard.
The first wolf leaps for me again, jaws open, and I duck before kicking him with my hind legs. He goes flying over the railing.
The silver burns from the chain are spreading through my system, slowing my healing. I can feel my body faltering due to the wounds; the warmth that should be closing them is flaring and dying like a fire that can’t catch. My shoulder is sluggish. The ankle is worse.
Three more men are rushing up the steps. The wolf I slammed against the wall is on his feet again. I’m the only one standing between all of them and Violet, and unfortunately, I’m not really a threat. Just a pest.
A knife flies toward me and lands in my uninjured shoulder. I yelp, and within seconds, I can feel that area going numb.
Damn it!
The wolf and the men have us almost cornered. Grabbing Violet by the scruff of her neck, I do the only thing that makes sense: I hurl us both out of the glass window behind us.
I can smell my blood and hers as we land among the dead guards in the grounds below. Dragging Violet with me, I try to run.
We have to get away from here. We have to—
A body barrels into me, and I lose my grip on Violet as I’m thrown to the side. Before I can react, teeth sink into my flank, and I fall to the ground under a massive wolf.
I shift back, figuring I’m small—maybe I can crawl out from under this behemoth.
He is taken aback momentarily, and I realize the knife that was thrown at me is still sticking out of my shoulder. Using my remaining strength, I rip it out and slice the wolf’s stomach with it in one vicious swoop. He falls away from me with a snarl. On my hands and knees, I crawl toward Violet, my heart pounding. She has shifted back, as well.
I pull her toward me, gasping for air. “Come on. Come on, get up. We have to run.”
But more wolves approach and surround us now. Hopelessness fills me. What do I do? How do I protect Violet? I feel my wolf rise again. She is battered, exhausted, bleeding, and completely unwilling to give up.
With no other choice, I shift again. Then, throwing my head back, I howl. It’s a warning howl, one that is aimed at the Alpha. It’s a sound we were all taught to make as children, but I’ve never heard of it actually being used.
Till now.
One of the wolves lunges at me, and I manage to bite his leg, using all I have left in me to try to fight him. He pins me down but stops attacking, as if he’s waiting…
The other wolves part, and a man walks through. He’s not wearing a mask like the other men. He has a long, silver blade in his right hand, coated in a yellow liquid that emits the unmistakable smell of wolfsbane. He looks at Violet on the ground and then at me. The wolf pinning me down releases me and steps away.
This man is dangerous. My wolf recognizes the threat, and as I frantically look around, I know both Violet and I are out of options. We’re far outnumbered, and there is nowhere to run.
I bare my teeth and brace myself as the man raises the knife and swings for my head.
The impact comes from the side.
A vast, black blur, moving with a speed that shouldn’t belong to anything that size, hits the man from the left and drives him sideways, off his feet. The blade skitters across the grass.
I cannot speak in my wolf form. I cannot say his name out loud.
But I know him. I would know him in any form, across any distance, without eyes or sound or scent. The mate bond blazes in my chest as if the door to it has been thrown wide, sudden and absolute and unmistakable.
Kain stands over the man he just saved me from. His wolf form is different than what I remember from ten years ago—bigger and clearly stronger but also terribly scarred. His chest heaves, and his eyes find mine. He notices the burns on my flank. The blood in my coat. The way I’m holding my back leg up at an odd angle.
His eyes turn cold and furious.
I hear the Alpha’s howl. Darius is coming for his mate.
Thunderous footsteps approach. Kain doesn’t look over his shoulder at the warriors piling into the grounds.
He looks only at the man trying to pull himself up from the ground.
