“Tara.” I turn to my sister. “Stay with Iris. Don’t untie her. Don’t let anyone in this room.”
Tara’s expression is unreadable when she nods. “Go.”
Zeke is already moving. I follow him down the stairs, Cole meeting us at the front door, already pulling his shirt up over his head. We hit the tree line at a run, and the shift takes me mid-stride—clothes shredding, bones cracking, muscles reshaping, skin splitting into fur. The pain is brief and familiar, and then I’m on four legs, the ground blurring beneath me while the scent of the forest fills my lungs.
I can smell them before I see them. Exhaust fumes. Metal.
We come over the ridge and see them. Three armored vans, black, no plates, parked in a rough semicircle at the edge of our territory, where the tree line thins out near the north road. Men in tactical gear are fanning out into the trees, armed with rifles that don’t look like standard firearms. They’re bulkier, with oversized barrels. These men are organized. Professional.
This isn’t a search party. This is a strike team.
There are at least a dozen of them. Maybe more in the vans. This isn’t some group of mercenaries Moore scraped together overnight. These people have training. They’ve done this before.
I signal with a low growl before communicating with my brothers.Flank left, flank right, hold center.
I hold position behind a fallen oak, watching, waiting, letting them push deeper into the trees growing thick and dense enough to turn morning to night. Deeper into our territory. Farther from their vans. That’s where their advantage is. Their vehicles, their equipment. In the woods, in the dark? That’s ours.
Zeke hits first. He comes out of the trees to the left like a black blur, two hundred pounds of wolf moving faster than anything that size should move, and he takes down the nearest man before anyone can react. The guy goes down hard, his rifle flying, a strangled shout cut off by the impact.
Then Cole is there, flanking right, driving two more back toward a ravine. Panic spreads through their line. I can smell the sharp spike of adrenaline, the sudden sweat. They weren’t expecting us this fast. Good.
I hear Kyran’s bears crashing through the undergrowth behind us—late, but on their way. The ground shakes when the first one hits the clearing at a full charge, scattering a cluster of men who scramble away like startled rabbits.
I launch myself at the closest group. Three of them, turning toward me, raising their weapons. I take the first one at the chest, my full weight slamming him into the dirt, and I feel his body armor buckle under my jaws. He screams.
Good. Let them scream. Let them know what happens when they come onto our land.
The second one swings his rifle like a club. It catches me across the shoulder, but I shake off the brief flash of pain and lunge. My teeth find his arm above the elbow, and I wrenchsideways. He drops the weapon and sinks to his knees, clutching his arm, howling.
The third one backs up and raises his rifle. Not swinging it, but aiming it. He’s calm. His hands are steady.
He pulls the trigger.
A sharp sting in my hindquarter, a pressure and a hiss. I twist around and see it: a feathered dart embedded in the muscle of my back leg. Tranquilizer.
No.
I rip it out with my teeth, but it’s already too late. The compound is fast, faster than anything natural. Moore’s work. It has to be.
It spreads through me like ice water, numbing everything it touches. My back legs go first, buckling under me. I scramble, claws tearing at the dirt, trying to stay upright, but the ground is tilting and my muscles are turning to dead weight, and I can feel my wolf being shoved down, pushed away from me, like that gas at Moore’s house but worse.
Another dart. My shoulder this time. I didn’t even see who fired it.
The world goes sideways. I hit the ground hard, leaves and dirt in my face, my body seizing as the drug floods my system. I can hear the fight still happening around me, but it’s fading.
I try to get up. My legs won’t move. I try to shift back to human. My body won’t listen.
Iris. Her face flashes behind my eyes, vivid and clear, even as everything else goes dark. The way she looked up at me from the bathroom floor. The way she held her wrist out to be tied. The way she said her father would make it right, like she really believed it.
Her father sent these people. Her father made the drug that’s shutting me down. Her father knows exactly how to take us apart, because he’s been studying us for years.
I walked right into it.
That’s the last thought I have before the blackness swallows me whole.
8
IRIS
