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Wade went left, his massive bear form crashing through a second line of shields like they were made of paper. Soldiers scattered, some firing wildly, their rounds chewing into his flank. He roared, a sound that shook the windows of every house on the street, and kept going, swatting rifles from hands, shoving soldiers into one another like bowling pins.

Phelps shouted orders, but beneath the screams and gunfire, I couldn’t make out a single word.

Ezra took the right flank, all teeth and dark fury. He was faster than anything that size had any right to be, weaving between soldiers, snapping rifles in half with a single bite, herding them toward the BearCats. Blood matted his fur, and I worried they’d resort to larger artillery if they got into the vehicles.

Bobby stayed low, moving like smoke through the chaos. His vampiric form slipped past the soldier’s defenses, fangs glinting, hands closing around wrists and forcing barrels down. He didn’t feed. He didn’t kill. He just disabled, a twist here, a crack there, and another soldier hit the ground, unconscious or simply unable to fight.

I followed them off the porch, the Bastion’s strength carrying me forward, my body a fortress of hardened hide and barely contained fury. The first bullet hit my flank. I felt it, a sharp sting, but kept moving. The second grazed my thigh. The third punched through my shoulder, the one that had just healed, and I stumbled, just for a second.

They were aiming for me. Of course they were. I was the target. The rest of them were just obstacles. Take out the leader and the whole team falls. I knew enough of that to aim for Phelps myself, though he had an array of guards between him and the battle.

I slunk around a cluster of fallen soldiers, swiping at the practitioners as I passed. My claws caught one’s arm. He screamed, stumbling back, his chalk scattering across the asphalt. The spell fractured, runes dissolving into useless smears. Good. One less thing to worry about.

We could have used Remi out here, countering their magic. But I prayed he was still with Jude, protecting him from whatever was clawing at him from the other side of the Veil.

The gunfire hesitated, just for a breath, as if someone had finally realized that shooting wild meant catching their own. A practitioner crumpled nearby, hit by friendly fire, permanently out of the battle. I snarled and launched myself at the shooter who’d pulled the trigger, driving him into the ground with my weight.

Then another spray of bullets hit me. Peppering my back, my shoulders, my legs, each round a dagger punch, sharp and hot and relentless.

I tried to push through the pain. But my legs gave out. I hit the ground in a half-skid, pavement tearing at my face, my arms unable to catch me in time.

Heal, I commanded myself. Heal, dammit.

But the wounds were stacking up faster than the Bastion could mend them as another onslaught of bullets sliced into me with stuttered jolts.

This was the protocol, wasn’t it? Standard military doctrine for facing variant shifters on the battlefield. Whatever it took to stop them from moving.

A cold dread coiled in my chest. If I fell here, they’d use my corpse. Turn me into a weapon against my own team. Phelps had done it before, raised dead shifters, puppeted their broken bodies into battle, and I’d seen what he’d made of them. Hollow shells filled with nothing but obedience.

My pack was still fighting. Victor, bleeding from a half-dozen wounds. Wade, limping, one leg dragging, but still swinging. Ezra, slower now, his golden eyes dim but unyielding. Bobby, flickering at the edges of visibility, barely holding his form together.

They were slowing. Dying.

And while Phelps’s force was scattered and broken, there were still too many of them.

I rolled onto my side, trying to push myself up. Another bullet caught me in the ribs. Then another. Half a dozen more punched through the Bastion’s shadow-armor, fissures spreading across my chest like cracked porcelain. The magic that held me together was fraying, and the wounds beneath, too deep to close. I couldn’t heal fast enough.

I looked up past the muzzle flashes and the screaming, and found Phelps at the center of it all. That slight, satisfied set to his mouth, the look of a man who’d already written the ending to this story and was simply waiting for the last page to turn.

I had a heartbeat to wonder if he was even human anymore. A strange shadow clung to him, pooling at his feet like something alive. As a pleased smile crossed his lips, the shadow stretched toward me like a hungry thing.

He’d been using the military all along to craft more powerful soldiers, ripping the magic and life out of others to fuel his own ascension. I was just another monster in his path.

The thought burned through the pain and darkness creeping at the edges of my vision. I lurched off the ground, desperate and broken, needing to reach him before he could destroy everything I loved.

Like the monster he was.

Jude had been right all along. He’d spent years as a homicide detective, staring into the eyes of killers who looked just like everyone else. He’d told me once that variants weren’t monsters, that we were just people. The true monsters were the ones who wore human faces and chose cruelty anyway.

I saw that truth now, written in Phelps’s satisfied smile.

And I threw myself at him, determined to end him by any means I had left.

A wall of gunfire met me mid-leap, impact after impact lifting me off my feet.

Then darkness swallowed everything.

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