“It’s been an honor working with you, Veyne,” Jorn said quietly.
Wickett dipped his chin. “The honor was mine. I’ll send word when I know it’s clear, when it’s safe to regroup.”
When. Not if.
But I heard what he didn’t say. Unless we found and killed Vitoria or somehow broke this blood oath, Wickett would be dead. Just like me.
Jorn moved all the way to the edge of the large door, bracing himself as we stayed back, waiting for the trap to spring.
The front warehouse doors slammed open behind us.
Hunters poured in like a flood, six, eight, still more coming, all in black and silver that marked them as Tiberius’s personal soldiers. Enhanced. Deadly. Moving.
They fanned out immediately, cutting off escape routes. Three broke left. Two moved to flank. The rest advanced in formation, weapons drawn, a tiny hint of their magic crackling in the air.
My heart hammered against my ribs so hard I thought it might break bone. I forced myself to breathe, to remember that I was standing next to their commander, that I was supposed to be here, that this was all a performance.
It didn’t help. My hands shook. My magic stirred, reaching for the water in Widow’s Bay, looking for any weapon, any defense against the threat bearing down on us.
They spotted us immediately, one of them pointing with his blade. “The shifter! Commander, he’s?—”
“Do you think I’m blind?” Wickett’s voice cut through the chaos. “I’ve got this under control! That fucking smuggler is responsible for everything!”
He started running toward Jorn, and I moved with him because standing still might look suspicious. Maybe? I wasn’t sure what my damn role was. Stick with Wickett, that was all I could do. Mostly because they couldn’t kill me. The Hunter’s Promise had guaranteed it.
Jorn moved like the feline in his soul, already out the door.
“Catch him!” Wickett roared, his voice carrying across the docks with absolute authority. “Don’t let him reach the water!”
The hunters surged forward as a unit, a living weapon unleashed. Jorn was already shifting, his human form blurring and reshaping into the massive tiger, orange and black, built for speed and violence.
Furies, he was fast. Faster than anything that size had a right to be, paws barely touching the ground as he tore across the dock toward the ship anchored twenty feet out, roaring to the heavens all the while. The hunters tried, but even they couldn’t match a shifter running for his life.
Jorn reached the bay’s edge without slowing. The ship he was clearly aiming for bobbed in the harbor, twenty feet of open water between the dock and ship’s deck.
My breath caught. He was going to miss. He had to miss. No one could make that jump, not a shifter, not even?—
Jorn leaped.
For one impossible, suspended moment, he was airborne. Silhouetted against the sun with power and grace and desperate hope, his whole life riding on whether his muscles were strong enough, whether his aim was true enough, whether luck would hold for just one more heartbeat.
A hunter tried to follow. Launched himself after the tiger with enhanced strength and absolute confidence.
He fell short. Hit the water with a scream that cut off abruptly when the black surface swallowed him whole.
Meanwhile, Jorn landed on the deck with a thud I felt in my soul.
Then he turned back, and I swear—swear—he looked directly at me and winked.
Then he dropped to the deck, out of sight for less than a couple seconds before the whole world exploded.
It’d been too fast.
The ship disintegrated in a ball of flame so bright it seared itself into my vision. Heat slammed into us like a fist, and the shockwave threw me off my feet, sending me flying backward into Wickett.
His arms came up automatically, steadying me without looking, but his entire focus locked on the burning wreckage. Searching. Looking for any sign that his friend had survived.
I searched too, squinting through the flames and smoke, desperate for movement. Orange fur. A shift back to human. Anything that would mean Jorn had somehow made it, had somehow escaped the explosion he’d triggered himself.
