Arthur lunged for the rock shoulder of the mine instead, claws biting into frozen stone. His new weight dragged him half up the face in a spray of shattered rock.
For one stunned heartbeat, everyone simply stared.
Then he kicked off.
He dropped like a felled tree.
Not on Dani.
On Fenred’s legs.
Bone crunched like dry twigs. Fenred screamed, grip snapping open. Dani dropped, rolling instinctively. Fire burst from her hands on reflex, searing up Fenred’s arms and across his face. Flesh blistered; he howled, thrashing, one leg a ruined mess beneath Arthur’s bulk.
Arthur shifted his weight, slamming his massive forepaw across Fenred’s hips, pinning him. Hybrids lunged to help their master; wolves hit them from the sides, Dominic a dark blur, Leonid laughing like a madman, Rory’s wolves pale flashes of teeth.
“Alive!” Lavinia shouted hoarsely from the witches’ line. “We need him alive!”
Arthur heard the snarl Leonid bit back at that. Felt Dominic’s urge to tear Fenred’s head off like a physical thing.
He didn’t give them the chance.
He slid his paw up, crushing Fenred’s arms to his sides, and lowered his head until his jaws closed around the bastard’s throat.
Not biting.
Yet.
Fenred panted wetly, eyes wild, lips peeling back from his teeth. Smoke curled from the burns along his jaw. “Do it,” he spat, voice bubbling through blood. “Kill me. You think it matters? We’ll make more.”
Arthur squeezed, just enough to cut his breath, not enough to crush.
“You die,” he rumbled around Fenred’s neck, low and lethal, “when I say.”
Hybrids still standing shrieked and broke, some bolting into the trees, some trying to scramble back into the mine. Severney and Volnoye peeled off in pursuit, Leonid hunting after a fleeing pair, expression rapt.
Rory’s voice cut through the din. “Let them run! We have what we came for!”
Wolves closed in around Fenred’s pinned form, wary of Arthur’s claws and teeth.
Chains came out, iron, wolfsbane-soaked. Chase and Theodore worked fast, hands shaking with adrenaline, looping them around Fenred’s wrists, his one good ankle, his chest. One coil settled snug just behind Arthur’s teeth.
“Got him,” Chase panted. “You can…probably stop crushing his pelvis now.”
Arthur huffed, a sound half growl, half exhausted laugh, and eased a fraction of his weight off Fenred’s torn legs without lifting his paw from the hybrid’s chest or his jaws from his throat.
Fenred wheezed, bound and broken, and finally, blessedly, contained.
Around them, the last of the hybrids fell. Wolves dragged bodies into heaps. Witches who could stand moved among their own, healing where they could, closing eyes where they couldn’t.
Dani limped into Arthur’s line of sight.
Soot streaked her skin, burns mottled her arms. Her hair was a wild halo, her voice shredded, but she was upright. Alive. The bond hummed between them, battered and bright.
Her gaze traveled from his massive shoulders down to his paws, then up to his jaws at Fenred’s throat.
Her mouth quirked, tired and fierce. “Nice upgrade,” she rasped.
Relief hit him so hard his legs almost gave out.
