“Damnit, Knox, move out of the way,” Ryker hisses. “You know better than to stand in front of a portal when it’s in use.”
It was just an illusion that the portal was gone. Someone is here fucking with us, and that doesn’t bode well.Who’s powerful enough to mess with the portals during The Gauntlet?
I spin around so fast, slamming my hand to his mouth, forcing him off to the side enough that his eyes go wide in fear.
“We’re in a trap,” I whisper, and Ryker immediately grabs for his knives.
I turn back to the portal, and my heart sinks as it flashes with the rest of our party filtering out too fast for me to warn them. Chester and Moni come tumbling out in laughter. Zeke and JP both come out together, but it’s Zeke who notices something is wrong.
He’s always been one to notice the small details, and when he sees Ryker’s daggers, he activates his rings and tries to warn JP, but it’s too late. There’s movement behind the tree that’s less than five feet behind them.
The portal sizzles, blocking out any of the sound I was tracking, and I turn to tell Ryker my senses are blocked to find him with a sword at his neck already, and one pointed at my chest.
“Hello, Knox,” Yarn, one of Father’s pack members, says from the end of the sword centered on my heart. “Fancy meeting you here.” He smiles widely, showing off the gap in his mouth from the tooth I knocked out the last time we fought. “That peppermint oil didn’t help you at all, did it?”
Fuck those hidden cameras broadcasting this Gauntlet.Anger flashes through my body as I barely hold back from shifting.
I don’t have to see when Knots and Lynx come through; their language is enough to tell when they get here.
“See what you did?” Knots growls.
“How is them getting captured by the defected hillbillies, my fucking fault?” Lynx raises his voice.
“Defected?” someone growls out.
“Should I add in dumb and deaf?”
There’s another flash signaling Rez and Reaper coming through behind me. There’s a break in the commotion as I hear multiple things flying into the air, and I hold my breath, not knowing what to do. A split second later, I watch as Yarn slaps his neck where there are visible puncture holes, leaving blood pouring out of him and darkening his shirt.Rez’s PMS needles?
“No one fucking threatens my Alpha like that,” Rez growls.
‘I love our fucking mate. Take her, mount her now,’Slayer urges me.
‘Wish I could, but we’re still surrounded and overmanned,’I argue with Slayer.
‘Let them watch.’
Someone steps out of the woods, snapping branches, purposely to let me know they are there, so I turn, only to see shadows.
“Your Alpha?” someone asks, hidden in the shadows.
My senses are still muted, and I can’t smell who it is, but since this portal sent us here and it’smyold pack that’s right here, this isn’t spine-chilling at all.
“Yes, he’s my mate, and I will not allow someone to hurt him.” Rez stands firm and tall, her chin held high.
I start to move, to get closer to her and warn her to watch what she says, but—if I’m guessing by his rancid breath—Eddie, a hyena shifter, steps behind me and clucks his tongue.
“Nah ah, Knox,” he whispers as I feel his claws poke into my back.
“You? A lowly human, and you think you can follow the ways of the pack? Think you’ve earned the right to protect your mate?”
Rez, no!
Fear spikes through me, and I try to send it down our link to warn her of what she’s getting herself into, but I don’t think she’s getting it.Damnit.
“Yes,” she says simply, and my heart plummets as I hear the next words out of the shadows.
“Oh, this should be good,” the person walking out of the shadow says. “Then I challenge you to a special meeting at the Blood Matches. Now.”
