Chapter 1
Reid
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The storm’s turnedthe ground into a muddy mess, water pooling around me as I lay stretched out on my stomach on the hill overlooking the back of the decimated Alodia mansion, currently engulfed in flames. Swiping water off of my glasses, I line up my next shot, saving Kaige from getting his head torn off by one of those lycan abominations. Though we’ve only been dealing with this hell for a little over an hour, with the way adrenaline’s flooded my body, keeping me constantly on edge, it feels like days.
There are finally more corpses than active threats, but still, I can’t breathe. I keep waiting for them to rise from the dead, struggling to wrap my head around the fact that all of these broken humans were mindless beasts moments ago. If it weren’t for the fact that I witnessed the transition with my own eyes, killed several of the lycans myself, I never would have believed that these things existed.
Now, if we slip for even a moment, if I blink at the wrong time, some of us might not walk away from this. And rather than let us protect her, Sabrina’s in the thick of it, fighting for my brothers as hard as they are for her. Of course she is. Why would she trust us to handle things when we’ve proven time and time again that we’re going to let her down?
A dark blur rushes past my scope, Slade tackling the monster straddling Boden’s back, its teeth sunk into his shoulder. They go tumbling out of sight around the far side of the building, out of range for me to do anything about it, so I focus my efforts on scanning the yard for my next target. Flashes of lightning help illuminate what the chemical fire doesn’t, but the toxic smoke overlaying everything in a dark haze is thick enough that it’s making everything far more difficult than it already is.
Out of nowhere, this bright orange splash of color flies across the dark landscape, darting between bodies. Zeroing in on it through my scope, I track the small fox weaving around the battlefield. And as a violent lurching in my chest steals the breath from my lungs, Iknow.Wild animals run away from danger; not straight towards a fire surrounded by lethal predators. Which means this fox is somethingother.
Someone like us.
My shot misses by millimeters, and it darts to the side immediately, leaping over a lifeless body. Firing again, the recoil never comes, the gun clicking empty. Cursing, I quickly reach into my pocket, but I’m met with emptiness, the ground around me littered with several empty boxes of ammunition.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Pulling out my phone, I run down the short list of potentials to warn the others while seeking the fox out again. Neither Kaige nor Hunter are picking up, and the rest are currently using necks as chew toys, so there’s no point even attempting to call them. I could try shouting and pray someone will hear me, but it’ll tip off the-
My stomach sinks as I finally spot the fox again, scaling a pile of rubble and heading directly for what remains of the wrap-around balcony on the second story, like a man on a mission. The balcony that Sabrina’s currently dragging Hunter out of the burning house onto, the white coat of her hellhound streaked with ash and wavering on her feet, on the verge of collapse.
Before I even register making the decision, I’m shoving myself upright, sprinting down the hill with my feet skidding on the wet grass and mud. Scanning the bodies ahead of me, I ignore the naked ones; those would be the lycans that shifted back upon their deaths, like the one that mauled Sabrina not so long ago. We thought she was exaggerating, watching a dying man shift into a wolf in slow motion with fear and adrenaline coursing through her veins, not that he was an actual monster.
We are, though. Monsters for expecting her to accept what we are and then not giving credit to her claim like it was impossible. For being so self-absorbed in our misery that we never considered there were worse fates out there than the one we were living.
Searching for those that remained human during the fight, I frantically look for whatever gun they had on them when they were killed. I’m too far away, never going to make it in time before that fox reaches her, but I’m a damn good shot. I can do this, save her before it’s too late, before I lose her, if I can just get my hands on a weapon. One bullet and an opening, that’s all I need. I won’t miss a second time; I can't. I can’t go back to a life without her in it.
Sliding to my knees in the mud, I shove a dismembered arm off of the gun peeking out from beneath it, only to find part of it smashed. Growling in frustration, I move to the next, but when I check the magazine, it’s empty.
Risking a glance up, I watch the orange blur leap towards the balcony, scrabbling up the ledge between the gaps in the railing. The oppressive weight of the invisible clock counting down makes each breath harder to draw in than the last, my panicked thoughts blurring into a useless jumble as I scramble for another plan. When the next strike of lightning comes, the flash glinting off of a metal sliver in the loose fist of the body in front of me, my internal screaming cuts off abruptly. Hope surges through me as I stumble forward, prying the corpse’s fingers open, but it’s not a gun.
It’s a syringe.
With a trembling hand, I reach for it, heart thundering in my chest. It’s not capped, but there’s no blood on the needle, as if he were struck down before he could inject himself. A small bead of clear liquid is pooled on the tip already, the plunger partially depressed in the fall.
About to be sick even contemplating it, I look past the sea of bodies between me and the house, still far too much distance to have a hope of making it in time. And then what? I have no weapon. How am I even supposed to climb up there? I’ll need to run into a burning house and pray a staircase is still intact, or that I can find one of the others before it's too late.
A blurred human figure forms through the smoke as the fox begins to shift and my heart plummets into my stomach. I'm out of time, and out of options. Taking a deep breath, I snatch up the syringe and drive the needle into the vein in my neck.
It doesn’t matter what happens to me at this point. If I lose Sabrina, there’s no life waiting for me that’s worth living.
