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Time seemed to slow to a crawl as everything happened next. Donovan staggered back a step just as Jared threw himself in front of the High Alpha. The crack of a gun firing made me cry out as a spray of Jared’s blood coated the grass.
I pitched forward, wrenching myself from Hayden’s grip and falling to my knees. Looking up through a tangle of red hair, I saw one of the council lift their gun and aim it at Morris… whose focus was still trained on Donovan.
“Watch—” I tried to warn Morris, but another shot was fired. My heart juddered at the look of shock, then rage, on Morris’s face a second before he stumbled backward. The gun slipped from his hand as blood bloomed crimson against his gray shirt.
“High Alpha!”
The sharp shout wrenched my attention to the men crowded around their leader, his aging face ashen as blood seeped steadily from his neck.
Shit. The bullet had gone through Jared and into Donovan.
Talk about best case scenario.
Well, for me.
Scrambling forward, I raced for Morris.
“O-omega,” Donovan wheezed, pointing at me. The entire council turned, ready to do his bidding, but it was cut off when two more bodies hurtled through the back door, firing at the council.
With a collective roar, the council started shooting back, and I did the only thing I could—I crawled to Morris and shielded his body with mine as best as I could.
He’d saved my life. Been shot saving me. He’d come for me. I knew it in my bones. Fire licked across my arm, and I cried out, my body curling around Morris.
He was so still, but I could feel his breath on my neck. The fresh cotton and lavender scent he carried calmed my nerves. It was the only thing that seemed to make sense in the chaos, and I clung to it like a lifeline as I prayed for the shooting to stop.
The armory beside the meeting house exploded into a ball of flames, splinters of wood becoming shrapnel that pierced my legs, arms, and back. Hot black smoke rolled through the air around us, and I started shaking as I held Morris tighter.
“H-Haze?” He whispered my name with uncertainty.
I drew back enough to see his green eyes open, slightly glassy. “Hang on,” I begged, pressing my hands against the bullet wound to his shoulder. The acrid, copper stench of his blood made my stomach roil.
I didn’t know a damn thing about bullets or treating people who’d been shot by them, but the amount of blood he was losing didn’t seem like a good thing. He grunted as I pressed my hands harder, trying to stop the bleeding by sheer force and happy thoughts.
“Please don’t die, Morris,” I whispered, realizing that the shooting had stopped.
“Jude,” he growled, the low word barely audible.
“What?” Puzzled, I tried to figure out what he meant.
A body muscled me out of the way with a snarl. “His name is Jude,” the massive man spat at me, not even sparing me a glance as he grabbed a cloth from his back pocket and pressed it to the injury. With his free hand, he slid it behind Jude’s neck, lifting his head. “Don’t you dare shut those gorgeous eyes.”
His dark hair was disheveled, stubble not even hiding the hard cut of his jaw. His muscles flexed with each heavy breath, and stress rolled off him in cloying waves, scorching his warm, woodsy scent into something rotten and bitter.
I reached out, wanting help, but he spun and snapped at me, “Don’t touch him!”
Stunned, I reeled back, pulling the gaping pieces of my dress together as another man crouched on the other side. “Shit, he’s bleeding like a bitch.”
“Then fucking do something,” the first man roared.
It was my fault. This was all my fault. Morris had been hurt protecting me and if he died…
I choked on a sob, the noise coming out distorted and strangled, but still audible.
Both men turned to me; a pair of icy gray eyes from my left and dark chocolate ones across from me.
The man with the dark eyes was massive, even by alpha standards. His muscles had muscles, and his long blond hair was twisted up into a bun that somehow made him seem even more masculine. Tattoos wrapped around his wrists, up his forearms, and disappeared into the sleeves of a black t-shirt stretched so tight over muscle that it looked ready to rip apart at the seams. The lines of ink reappeared at the neck of the shirt and crawled up to his jaw where they disappeared into a heavy beard that made him look one flannel jacket away from a full blown lumberjack.
He was terrifying and beautiful in a breathtaking sort of way.
