“Ice Bear!” Chase whooped, breathless and half-hysterical, “Fucking brilliant!”
Arthur didn’t look back.
Dani.
He found her in the chaos. She’d dropped when he screamed, but she was up again now, swaying a little, eyes bright, hair wild.
She looked at him and didn’t flinch.
Her mouth curved, fierce and satisfied. “About time!” she yelled, and flung out a hand.
Fire answered.
Not the great tearing wall from before. This was a controlled burn, ribbons of flame weaving between wolves and vampires, licking at hybrid legs, driving them inward, away from the witches and toward Arthur’s waiting claws.
They fell into step as if they’d practiced it.
Dani burned gaps, and he charged through them. A hybrid lunged for her blind side, and Arthur barreled in and broke its back. Flame washed over his fur and slid off, more heat than pain. He cleared space; she filled it with more fire.
Witch and monster-wolf, fire and ice, fighting in tandem.
Fenred finally moved.
He’d watched his creatures die from the fringe, saving himself. Now his eyes burned brighter; his shape warped, boneslengthening, mouth stretching too wide, hands twisting into claws.
He blurred.
One heartbeat, he was at the edge of the hollow, shrieking orders. The next thing he was in front of Dani, his hand closing around her throat, dragging her up onto her toes.
Arthur roared.
Sound shook the air, his own ears ringing. He thundered toward them, but there were bodies everywhere, hybrids, wolves, witches ducking, vampires snarling. Too many moving pieces.
Fenred bared his teeth in Dani’s face. “He came,” he rasped, voice distorted. “Good little alpha.”
Dani’s fingers scrabbled at his wrist, sparks sputtering uselessly. She’d burned herself near dry.
Arthur smashed a hybrid aside, trampled another, flung a third. Snow and blood sprayed. Leonid swore as Arthur’s bulk barely missed him.
Fenred hauled Dani in front of him, claws dimpling the skin at her throat. “One more step,” he snarled, “and I rip her apart.”
Arthur dug his claws in, stopping so fast his joints screamed. His heart slammed against his ribs hard enough to hurt.
The battlefield stuttered.
“Let her go,” Dominic said, human again now, bare-chested, blood-slicked, eyes murder-cold. “You die quick.”
Fenred laughed, jagged and breathless. “I die either way,” he said. “But I can take a witch with me.”
Arthur could barely see anything except the line of Fenred’s arm, the fragile column of Dani’s throat, her eyes on his.
Through the bond, a flare that wasn’t fear, exactly. Fierce. Steady.
He moved.
Not straight at them.
Sideways.
