Chapter Ten
The outskirts of Darwin were mostly deserted on the northern side. Gusts of wind blew a crumpled, yellowing newspaper down an empty street. Liam, Finn and Jose strode past the shells of burned-out buildings, lost in a fire a dozen years ago, and followed the sounds of deranged howls coming from the tree line. There was a wolf shifter there who’d been living in the woods by himself, and of course he’d gone feral. He’d attacked several people already and then fled into the woods; it was time to put him down.
Finn was in a foul mood. He was trying to keep his distance from Flora, working on the opposite side of the club from her, keeping his conversations with her short and polite and noncommittal.
It wasn’t working. His need for her burned through his veins like fire, distracting him, needling him like a thorn. He’d be standing in the bar watching her clean tables and just a glimpse of her sweet smile, the musical tinkle of her laugh, would make his heart race faster.
And then he’d see Jennifer looking at him with that expression of haunted sorrow on her face, and it would fill him with shame. What right did he have to be happy, to love someone else?
Jennifer seemed to be hovering near him everywhere he went in the club, these days. Just watching him, not talking to him. Was it because of the anniversary? She hadn’t acted like this last year.
“Mind if I offer you some advice?” Jose asked.
“Yes,” Finn answered shortly, hurrying ahead of him and Liam. He heard Liam shouting for him to wait, and ignored him.
As he ran, he shifted, sinking to all fours. He raced towards the thickly wooded area next to the houses.
The wolf came shooting out of the bushes at him, massive and maddened. Ropes of saliva dangled from its snarling jaws, and it lunged straight for him. Crazy. A wolf taking on a lion.
Finn wasn’t the kind of cat who played with his prey, especially not when his prey was a pathetic, slavering creature who’d fallen away to madness.
He leaped forward and grabbed the wolf’s neck in his jaws. With one mighty, violent shake he’d snapped its neck and it fell to the ground limply, eyes dull.
Finn spat out the creature’s blood and looked down at its pathetic corpse, lying in the dirt with its legs splayed out. And then the world came crashing down on him as memories flooded through his mind.
Finn grabbed his comm unit and tersely relayed his orders, then checked his equipment. He risked another glance around the building and saw the insurgents moving towards them in a loose but clearly well-disciplined formation that took full advantage of the available cover. He made brief eye contact with each of the soldiers hunkered down with him. He didn’t need any words, and wouldn’t have been able to find them anyway.
On his signal, the squad broke cover. Heavy boots hit the sand. Brown roared defiance, fur rippling over the massive swells of his biceps as he let his animal come to the fore. Bullets flew and screams of anger and pain cut through the air. Someone laughed, a horrible, hysterical sound of half-mad desperation.
Time seemed to slow down. Finn saw Jensen, his fox-shifter sergeant, cut down by automatic gunfire. His feet tangled and he tumbled to the ground, red-black blood gouting onto the sand. He died silently, a look of profound puzzlement on his face, as if he couldn’t understand why he was no longer on his feet. Brown shifted into his monstrous bear form and with a deafening roar tore out a man’s throat with a swipe of his massive paw before turning, snarling, on a pair of approaching insurgents, undeterred by the rounds slamming into his gigantic bulk. Blood and fur flew in gory arcs as he snarled his defiance.
Finn pounded forward, heart thundering in his chest, sand puffing up around his feet as he charged towards his target…before a metallic glint in the sunlight caught his eye, dazzling him. Carried forward by his momentum, he had one interminable second to realize it was a half-buried land mine.
A slight figure in desert camo darted in front of him, a brown and beige blur, and the world flashed white as an explosion rocked Finn off his feet. The roar of sound punched into his eardrums and all the air was driven from his body as he was thrown several feet through the air and landed hard. The world rang and swam, his brain buzzing with incoherent static as he groped for understanding through the receding thunder.
He struggled to his hands and knees, retching onto the sand, bringing up nothing but frothy drool from his empty stomach. Slowly and painfully, he raised his head, knowing deep in the bitterest depths of his heart what he would see. Praying he was wrong.
Marybeth lay sprawled on the ground like a broken doll, her arms and legs splayed, her flesh hideously torn in dozens of places. Shrapnel studded her body, gleaming silver in the unforgiving light of the midday sun.
“Marybeth,” he cried hoarsely. “Oh fuck, no. Please, no. What have you done?”
He belly-crawled to where she lay twitching slightly, her breathing shallow, greasy perspiration beading her pale brow. Where it wasn’t cut to ribbons, her face was ashen. Her lashes fluttered against her cheeks like butterflies with broken wings.
Finn gritted his teeth as he dragged her into a sheltered area between a tumbledown wall and a low stone well that had long ago run dry. The pain of the silver shot that had blown past and through Marybeth to puncture his flesh was nothing to the shards of pain that stabbed into his heart at the sound of his friend keening with pain. It was a high, helpless, animal sound.
He laid her back as gently as he could, supporting her with his arm. Her thin face was set in hard lines of agony, her dry lips stained a shocking, heart-stopping scarlet.
“Those bastards,” he growled. “IEDs loaded with silver. Those sons of bitches.”
“Rex…” Marybeth’s voice was thready, and bright red arterial blood bubbled between her lips with each labored exhalation. He could see a weak, rapid pulse fluttering in her throat. “Finn, I…”
He shook his head, stroking her damp hair back from her forehead. “Hush, Marybeth,” he murmured. “Don’t try to speak. You’re going to be fine.”
But she wasn’t. He didn’t need a medic to tell him that she was all broken inside, torn by shrapnel, bones cracked and organs ruptured by the hellish force of the blast. The blast she’d taken instead of him, throwing herself in front of his body to save him.
“I love you,” she whispered. “I always have.”
He gripped her hand in his. Even though the heat beat down on them like a hammer, her fingers were cold. They felt so tiny against his rough palm.
