Whoa. That got me listening. Brayden was more powerful than a fae lord? Why hadn’t he just killed them by now?
“Do you believe him? That I’m her?” I couldn’t even believe I was entertaining this craziness. But now it all made sense. Why he was so protective of me at the bar, why he seemed to go out of his way to be nice to me and buy me a bag of five burgers. He thought I was his dead mate?
She shook her head. “Lena has died and come back eight lifetimes. Each time she finds him before her twentieth birthday and every single time she remembers him. She remembers all of their lives together. You don’t. I think you’re great… but just a run-of-the-mill wolf with a gun,” she deadpanned.
Relief spread through my limbs at her assessment. I didn’t want to be some reincarnating mate wolf. I didn’t want to be special; being a werewolf was special enough. But still, I couldn’t discount the fact that Brayden needed our help right now. He’d looked out for me knowing I would die if he didn’t lick my bite; he held me through my first shift knowing I had a seventy-five percent chance of dying. It was time to repay the favor.
I placed my hands on either side of Maddy’s shoulders. “You’re right, I’m not Lena. And Brayden needs us. Let’s go.”
Dropping her shoulders, I spun and took off running down the hall. I didn’t have my gun, so this was about to get really interesting. The only plus was that if I threw myself between two fighting wolves again and got bitten, I couldn’t be turned into a werewolf twice.
“Wait, you crazy woman!” Maddy ran after me. When I reached the doors to the breakfast hall, I bypassed them and went right, following my intuition that they wouldn’t fight in public. Two double doors led to a banquet hall, and I heard something crash inside. A young bald man stood in front of the doors, arms crossed over his chest like a bouncer.
I inhaled his sharp scent through my nose.
Werewolf. That same snowy pine and gamey scent that Silas had. His packmate.
Without thinking, I made a fist and gave him an uppercut to the jaw just like in the movies. Pain exploded across my knuckles and the guy barely moved.
Crap.
There was a blur of blonde hair beside me and then Maddy was there, cracking the guy over the side of the temple until he fell into a heap at our feet.
She eye rolled me. “That’s not how you punch. You probably broke your thumb.”
“Noted.” I put the throbbing in my thumb to the back of my mind and pushed through the double doors with Maddy at my side.
Lord have mercy.
The two men were in wolf form, going at it like rabid dogs. Brayden’s grey wolf had a limp, and now that I knew Silas was trying to injure him before the fight next month, a protective need surged inside of me. I grabbed a dining chair, stalking across the room like a pro wrestler ready to knock someone out.
The sound of cracking bones sounded behind me and I knew Maddy was shifting. Anger built inside of my chest with each bite Silas took of Brayden. Silas was a bully. He tried to get people while they were down, and something about that made everything inside of me go red.
Lifting the chair above my head, I came down right on Silas’ wolf’s back, relishing in the crack it made.
Take that, you bastard.
Brayden used my distraction to wiggle out from under him. My joy lasted all of two seconds before Silas shook the chair off and lunged for me.
Okay, not smart.
Plan B?
A streak of golden and cinnamon fur sailed over my head and I ducked, protecting my jugular with my hands like I would if a cougar were attacking. Maddy’s wolf flew overhead and crashed into Silas as the two of them snipped at each other madly.
Brayden had rallied and now was lunging in on the fight to back his sister.
Relief settled over me. Two on one were good odds, I liked those odds.
“You bitch!” a male voice sneered behind me, and then something cracked into the back of my head.
Sharp pain laced through my skull and I was thrown forward onto my knees. Dizziness washed over me. I rolled on my back and the dude hovered over me. I recognized him as the one I’d punched by the front door. He held a brick in his hand, and blood dripped from it.
My blood?
Pulling my knees to my chest instinctively, I then kicked out just as the guy tried to pummel me again. My feet connected with his chest and he went flying. Like, he for real picked up into the air and sailed thirty feet across the room before hitting the wall and crashing down in a motionless heap. A giant dent of plaster was left in his wake and I sat up amazed at my super kicking skills.
Okay, if these were my new werewolf powers, I could get used to them.
