"If you want the omega in that room," Hayes growled, his voice an impossibly low vibration that defied the magical dampening, "you have to walk over my dead body."
The lead mercenary didn't hesitate. Didn't blink behind his tactical goggles.
He just pulled the trigger.
The suppressed rifle coughed three times in rapid succession. Heavy rubber kinetic slugs — designed to incapacitate a fully shifted raging beta wolf — slammed into Hayes's chest and shoulder.
He didn't go down.
He grunted — a sharp, pained exhalation — his jaw clenching against the trauma hitting his unwarded body. He took one slow, defiant step toward the black barrel of the rifle. The absolute devotion blazing in his golden eyes defied the mathematics of the armed extraction.
Both flanking mercenaries opened fire simultaneously.
Six more heavy slugs slammed into the Heir.
Hayes dropped to one knee, the concentrated fire overwhelming his dampened biological durability. Bright red blood bloomed rapidly across the dark fabric of his dress shirt. But he didn't fall over.
He stayed where he was — positioned between the mercenaries and the dark hallway — bracing himself against the bloody floor with one massive shaking hand, glaring up at the extraction team with unyielding feral rage.
"The Alpha is localized. Bypass him," the lead mercenary instructed calmly, gesturing toward the hallway.
Two armed men stepped fluidly around Hayes's bleeding form, coldly ignoring his desperate, bloodied attempt to grab their tactical ankles, and moved methodically down the corridor toward the closed, locked oak door.
I scrambled across the stone floor, vision blurring, limbs leaden and useless without my magical core supporting them. I couldn't reach them. I couldn't stop them. The nullification field had pinned me perfectly.
"Wren!" I screamed, the horrified sound tearing from my throat. A complete, devastating failure of the physical perimeter I'd sworn on my life to maintain. "Run! Get out of the house!"
But I knew there was nowhere for her to run. The safehouse wards Chris had designed to keep Trent out were now trapping her inside.
The sound of the heavy oak door splintering down the hall echoed through the ruined sitting room.
I had failed her. We had failed the perimeter.
The Pack-Heart was gone.
24
WREN
The combat pistol shook in my white-knuckled grip, the barrel dipping and swaying despite my desperate attempt to keep it aimed at the center of the heavy oak bedroom door.
The sitting room outside was chaotic.
Tristan's shotgun had been followed almost instantly by a massive, blinding silent flash of white light spilling under the crack of my door. The terrible silence was shattered by the rapid, suppressed sound of three heavy kinetic impacts striking solid flesh and bone.
I had heard Tristan scream my name in absolute horror. I had heard Hayes's body hit the stone floor.
They're dead. I killed them.
The realization hit with the physical force of an avalanche. No sharp burning pain from a magical severance — the Pack-Heart tether hadn't been permanently sealed, so I didn't feel the catastrophic trauma inflicted on the three alphas anchoring it — but the emotional devastation was total.
I had stopped Hayes from sealing the claim because I was terrified of being owned.
I had pushed him away because my unhealed trauma had overridden my survival logic. Because I had believed keeping myself technically free and unbonded was more important than securing the lethal physical perimeter that was literally dying to save me.
My pathetic, terrified freedom had cost them their lives.
The bedroom door didn't slowly open. It splintered explosively inward, sheared off the iron hinges by a armored tactical boot.
