“You should heal faster than a human with your fae blood, but I don’t know exactly how fast. You can either get Rys and Talis to drive you back or stay here until reinforcements arrive. They’ll have a medical unit with them.”
“I’m staying,” Gabriel said, earning another growl from Calder, which he ignored.
Max nodded. “Okay, then.”
“Reinforcements?” I asked. “Can’t we just send them back with the teleportation stones?”
“Unfortunately not. The stones need reprogramming. And I’d rather not put them through that when they’re injured. Besides, we need some way to transport the hunters back to the police station for questioning. The safest way to do that is with them cuffed and locked in the back of a magically secured police van.”
I turned to Max. “Are we going back in?”
“Hang on.” Max tapped his earpiece and asked for another update. He turned to me. “All hunters are accounted for except for Yates.”
“And the witches?” I asked, already knowing what he was going to say.
“All but one.”
“Have they found the refinement building?” My magic stirred under my skin.
“Nope.”
They were all connected. I felt it. Find one, find them all.
Max handed the earpiece back to me. “You take this. Keep in contact with the others.”
“What about you—”
The air around Max shimmered, and the next moment I was looking at a huge light-brown wolf.
Addressing the rest of Max’s team, I said, “Max and I are going back into the compound to look for Yates and the missing witch.”
Cara answered. “There’s a swell of magic on the southeast side of the compound. I can feel it from here.”
“Then that’s where we’re headed. Tell Wyn to meet us there instead.”
I glanced at Max for confirmation, knowing he would’ve heard it all, and he nodded his head, pawing at the ground. He didn’t wait for me, turning and loping through the gates.
I hurried after him, daggers drawn.
NICK
I clungto Axel’s back as he turned sharply off the main road and onto the lane that headed into the trees.
He pointed a finger up ahead and I assumed that meant we were almost there. Sure enough, he rounded the next bend and came to a rumbling stop next to a familiar SUV.
I snorted. Of course Rys had beat us here.
It wasn’t until I dismounted that I saw Mase sat on the ground, a bloody T-shirt wrapped around his leg. Rys’s T-shirt, judging by the fact he was only wearing jeans. “What the fuck happened?” I hissed, jogging over to them and crouching down.
Mase waved away my concern. “I got nicked by a bullet. I’m fine. The bleeding’s almost stopped.”
“It has not,” Rys muttered, an edge to his voice that promised nothing good. “I can still smell it.”
“I saidalmost.” Mase reached a hand up and wrapped it around Rys’s thigh where he stood next to him, on guard.
I could help heal him a little if I had my magic.
Guilt would do me no good here, so I swallowed it back down and straightened. I realised Axel was slow to join me, and that’s when I noticed Talis, examining the ground at his feet and looking anywhere but at Axel as he walked up next to me.
