My mom’s wolf just looked up at me in shock, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. That’s when my wolf appeared. She nipped my mom on the neck like a mother would to a cub, and dragged her to the window where my dad was waiting.
Plumes of gray smoke swirled in the air and I spun. The entire hall had filled with smoke now. Oops. Didn’t think this through, but maybe it would force them to open the damn doors.
Screams rang throughout the space and I couldn’t tell if it was their people or ours. The dude in my arms was bucking with so much force that it rocked me backward. I started to run with him in my arms, wobbly and off balance, when I looked ahead of me and saw Sawyer and Walsh. They were tossing vampires into the bonfire like they were skipping rocks on a lake.
Horrifying and genius. I was so going to need therapy for this.
The fire alarm finally sounded, shrill and loud, and I winced, unable to hold the vampire much longer as my arms burned with fatigue.
“You’ll die for this, bitch! She’ll drain you, she’ll—” The vamp’s words were cut off when Sawyer appeared out of nowhere and throat punched the guy, collapsing his trachea. Sawyer grabbed his legs and I relaxed my hold on his ribs, letting him sink into my arms as I hooked my hands under his armpits.
‘Chuck him,’Sawyer growled as the vamp thrashed and coughed in our grip.
With one swing, we arced him back and then let him loose to fly through the air and land right on the flaming inferno. He hit the table and it cracked in half as he was consumed by the flames. His screams would haunt my dreams forever, but somehow I turned off that emotional part of me and stayed in battle mode as I scanned the crowd. Most of the guests were exiting through the window my dad had bashed out, but there were still a good hundred people to get out.
“How many more vamps are there? I need to carry more stakes. I need a gun, or a sword. We need…” I couldn’t think straight as the trauma of the night hit me dead on. My fists balled as I scanned dead body after dead body. Most were them. Some were us.
Oh God, Sawyer’s dad. A sob ripped through my throat, which turned to a cough as the smoke hit my face.
Sawyer was wearing torn pants and no shirt. He stepped forward then and took my cheeks into his palms, pressing his forehead to mine. “It’s over, Demi. That was the last one. We’re safe now.”
The sprinklers finally kicked on then and everything was drenched with a downpour of water that felt like someone had turned a garden hose on us. It pelted my skin in cold hard droplets that caused me to suck in a breath in shock.
“It’s over?” I whimpered, unable to meet his eyes.
His body shuddered and he pulled me into him, holding me as I cried. “Your dad, Sawyer. I’m so sorry.”
His chest shook as he tried to breathe, but it turned into a cough as more smoke wrapped around us.
Walsh appeared beside us suddenly. “Let’s get out of here.” He yanked us toward the window. Sage appeared by my side with my wolf and I nodded to them both.
When I looked to the corner where Sawyer’s dad’s body should have been, I saw that it was gone. I knew that my mom and dad had taken it; they wouldn’t leave him behind. I stood numbly at the back of the line while our guests crawled out a broken window of a multi-million-dollar hotel with a fire alarm blaring in the background. This wasn’t how this day was supposed to go. Holy shit, this was the worst engagement party in the history of parties.
“Why won’t the doors open? Can’t our people on the other side open them?” Sawyer growled as it was finally our turn to exit the building.
Eugene was here now, covered in black goopy blood and sporting a nasty gash on his arm. “They welded them shut with steel, sir. In a manner of seconds. This was highly coordinated. Looks like they had a tipoff.”
Sawyer frowned. “You think it was an inside job?”
Eugene nodded. “They knew the time, the place, the room.”
Sawyer and my eyes met at the same time. “I want you to detain Mrs. Pepper for questioning,” he growled.
Eugene nodded and leapt through the open window, scanning the crowd for Meredith’s mom.
When we finally got through the window and stepped onto the grass lawn, one by one our guests clapped. Not a joyous exuberant clap, just a slow, weird, I’m glad you’re not dead clap.
Walsh elbowed Sawyer who looked back at his best friend, confused.
Walsh puffed his chest up. “Your new alpha, Sawyer Hudson,” he said as if presenting him to a royal court or something.
Oh shit.
Sawyer was the alpha now. How did that work? One died and the other just…
It seemed to dawn on Sawyer at the same time it dawned on me.
‘You’re alpha. Say something,’I told him.
