Guess we’re about to find out.
The coven raises their hands in unison, and the air fills with that annoying, crackling energy. Without Regina’s green forest scent softening it, the coven’s collective energy smells like a moldy jockstrap. Shields spring up, but they’re not expecting the sheer physical force of four pissed-off wolves slamming into them at full speed.
My claws slash against Kyle’s magical barrier, looking for a weakness. Behind me, I hear Regina shouting in rage. Green light explodes across the meadow as she unleashes something that makes the grass wither in a perfect circle around her feet.
Sick,Micah pants through the bond, even as he tears through some witch’s robe with his teeth.
The silver-haired woman throws a hex at Sean that makes him yelp and stumble, but he keeps coming. These people clearly expected a polite magical duel, not a pack of wolves who fight dirty and don’t give a shit about their fancy shields.
Regina’s magic hits three coven members at once, some kind of force wave that sends them flying backward. She’s not used to combat magic, I can tell from her stance, but she’s learning fast.
And she’spissed.
Good. I would never bring our mate to a battlefield willingly, but she’s already here and knowing she can hold her own makes it easier to focus on ripping these assholes new assholes.
It’s alsoinsanelyfucking hot.
Kyle’s shield cracks under my assault. I feel his magic slipping, so I guess he’s still weak from losing that arm. I bare my teeth in a wolf’s grin and prepare to clamp down on his other forearm when he uses a blast of bitch magic to teleport across the field.
“Rebecca,” he says urgently. “Now.”
The redhead who smells like Sephora fucked a Yankee Candle raises her hands and starts to chant. I’ve never hurt a woman before, but I think I’m about to make an exception when another portal tears open behind the coven, larger than the first. And darker.
Something’s wrong.
Veryfucking wrong.
The smell hits me stronger than any of the magic blasts. Blood. Old blood, blood that’s been spilled and spilled again until it’s soaked into flesh and bone. And the subtler scent layered beneath it makes my wolf recoil with instinctive terror and the rage that only comes in response to something that shouldn’t exist.
Werewolf.
Not a fucking wolf shifter.A godsdamned werewolf. The kind that doesn’t choose the change. The kind that’s been twisted by dark magic into a thing that’s not a human or a beast, but a nightmare wearing both their skins.
It emerges from the portal on all fours, massive and wrong. Its proportions are off. The arms are too long, spine curved at an unnatural angle, jaw hanging open to reveal rows of teeth that don’t fit together right. Patchy fur barely covers gray skin that’s scarred and mottled.
And its eyes…
Its eyes are mindless and hungry.
Behind me, Regina makes a sound. Like she just lost all the air in her lungs in a whoosh.
“No.”
I don’t need to ask. I feel her terror so strongly through our bond, it nearly takes me to my knees.
Images flash through the connection faster than I can process. That basement from before. This creature, thisexact fucking creature, lunging at her face.
The werewolf that scarred her.
They found it again somehow and they fucking kept it.
And now they’ve brought it here to drag her back.
But even these idiots should know there’s no controlling a werewolf. Not a single one of them looks as terrified as they should be, considering this mindless monster will tear into them as easily as the rest of us. Werewolves don’t have enough sentience to distinguish between friend and foe.
Except…
It’s not attacking. It’s just standing there, glowing yellow eyes fixed on nothing in particular.
