I sweep him aside, barely noticing as he flies across the cab, and grab her.
My arm goes around her waist, and I pull her against my chest. She’s saying something—”wait, stop, listen to me”—and I hear the word, I hearwait, the same word that stopped me before. But the wolf won’t let it through because the threat is still here, the sealed air is still here, and the only thing that matters is getting her out of this box.
The rear door. Locked from the inside. It’s in the way, blocking our path. The shouting is getting louder. Metal scraping as weapons are drawn.
The door needs to go. It needs to go.
Something creaks, groans, and then the back of the vehicle explodes outward.
“Jesus!” someone yells. “What the fuck did he do?”
“Doesn’t matter. Stop him!”
But I’m not listening. We’re out.
Cold air. Mountain air. Pine and earth and wet rock and open sky. The smell of it hits me so hard my knees almost buckle, because it’s the first air I’ve breathed in weeks that doesn’t come through a vent.
The vehicle is still crawling over the rough ground. I don’t wait for it to stop.
We hit the dirt hard. I take the impact on my shoulder, rolling, keeping her against my chest so the rocks don’t get her. We come up in loose soil and pine needles, and she’s gasping. Behind us, someone is shouting orders.
I run. Into the trees. Away from the metal, the straps, the sealed air, the hum. My bare feet slam against packed earth, roots, and stone, and every step clears my head a little more. Pine branches whip past. The slope climbs. My legs are weak and wrong, but my wolf is stronger than the drug, and the wolf knows one thing with a clarity that doesn’t need language.
Someone put their hands on her and hurt her.
She’s struggling against my arm. She’s not afraid; her scent doesn’t spike the way others’ do. Her fists push against my chest, and her voice is muffled but fierce.
“Stop! Don’t do this!”
My chest is on fire. The place where the hum tore loose is raw and pulsing, and each breath costs more than the last. My vision grays. The trees blur. But my legs keep moving because the wolf won’t let them stop.
The trees close in around us. The voices fade behind us. The slope steepens, and the pine canopy thickens until the sky is just pieces between branches.
I run until the engine noise is gone. Until the shouting is gone. Until the only sounds are wind through the trees and her breathing against my chest and my own heartbeat filling my skull.
Then I slow.
I stop.
I set her down on a flat piece of rock between two pines. She stumbles, catches herself, turns on me. Her face is flushed. There are pine needles in her hair. Her sleeve is torn where the handler grabbed her.
I blink as my breathing eases and I take her in properly for the first time without a fog of sedation. Her hair has come loose, and it’s a wild, dark tangle around her face. She’s breathing hard, lips parted, her chest heaving. She’s tall. It’s something I’d never thought about, but I’m aware of it now.
She’s looking at me the way no one at the facility ever looked at me. Not cold and clinical. Her jaw is set, her eyes are blazing, and her hands are shaking at her sides.
“You,” she says, pointing a finger at me, “have just made everything significantly worse.”
I stand in the pine-filtered light with the mountain dropping away behind me and cold air filling my lungs for the first time in I don’t know how long. My chest is burning. My legs are about to give. Something warm runs down my side…blood, though I’m not sure when I injured myself.
I don’t have words to answer her. I don’t know if I have words at all.
But my wolf is standing between her and the direction of the road, and he has no intention of moving.
Chapter 12
Sable
He’s swaying. That’s the first thing I notice after the anger clears enough to let me see. He’s standing barefoot on pine needles, his chest heaving, and he’s swaying. The half-shift is still on him, jaw too heavy, shoulders humped, the tendons in his neck standing like cable. His hands hang at his sides, and the claws extend and retract in a rhythm that matches his breathing.
