His hand went to his belt. Not for a knife.
“The bitch is so big. Taller than any of us.” He let the words hang. “I want to see if her cunt’s any good. If it’s tight.”
Dark rage gathered in me. The demon stirred. Not because I’d asked. But because whatever lived inside me had its own threshold for what it would tolerate.
We were ready to slaughter them all. Brutally. Utterly without mercy.
Then a howl pierced the night. And it didn’t come from the demon in me.
Power punched the air like a concussion wave. The hair on my neck stood rigid.
Kevin’s hand froze. The whole gang froze. Terror bleached their eyes.
From my angle—flat on my back, pinned to the dirt—I could see the sky. Black. Scattered with stars.
Another howl. The sound of the worst predator pounding the earth and moving fast through the camp.
And it was here.
27
MAX
The men who held me down flew into the air before my power had a chance to erupt.
The wolf came.The demon sighed in satisfaction.About time.It sounded entitled, as if the wolf were merely doing us a service.
A massive gray wolf stood before me, the size of a warhorse and twice as terrifying. His fur was silver-tipped, bristling along his ridged spine. The muscles beneath his coat rippled with each rumbling snarl, a vibration that traveled through the ground and up into the soles of my feet. Golden rings burned around green irises as the wolf surveyed the men collapsed on the ground. Every single one of them was prey.
The wolf fixed his fiery gaze on me as I shot to my feet, fists raised, pulse hammering in my throat. Rage rolled off the beautiful, powerful beast in heat waves that pressed against me. But my fists weren’t for him. Facing the beast. I didn’t feel the blind terror I’d feltwhen the mutants tracked me through the Scorched Wastes.
I knew he was Caspian.
Something deeper than instinct recognized him before my brain caught up—a pull in my blood, a frequency my body was already tuned to.
The attackers tried to scramble up. A couple of them still groaned in pain. Fear flooded their eyes now that something far worse than them had arrived. One of them shifted into a fox and dropped prone on his belly in submission, ears flat, trembling.
The wolf leapt in a blur. Pouncing. In one fluid sequence, he tore out the throats of two cadets before they could even stand straight. Blood sprayed hot across the dirt. He disemboweled the fox on the follow-through.
Every time I’d seen Caspian, he’d been playful. Easy smiles, lazy charm, the prince who flirted his way through life and made everything look like icing on the cake. I’d never seen this. This was brutality without hesitation, violence without warning. The apex predator beneath the pretty face, finally unmasked.
The cadet who’d cornered Bryn turned and ran. But a group of shifters, some in wolf form, others mid-shift, blocked his escape. The next biggest wolf thrust its clawed hand into the runner’s chest and tore out his heart. The body dropped. The heart steamed in the cold night air.
I swallowed hard but didn’t look away. I’d killed people myself. This was wartime, and I’d set myself on the soldier’s path. But I hadn’t expected to fightthis battle in our own camp, surrounded by the bodies of men who wore the same uniform I did.
Only the ringleader, Kevin, was left alive. He knelt on the ground, shaking like a leaf in a storm. He was no longer the baddest predator in the alley, as he’d fancied. He never had been, not even when he’d been riding high, leading a pack of jackals.
“Your Highness.” Bryn bowed to the gray wolf. Blood was smeared across her lips from her own fight.
But the wolf only gazed at me.
I knew what he wanted to know. “I’m okay,” I said. My throat was parched, my voice rough. I could feel my eyes blazing from the rush of adrenaline that still hadn’t burned off. My blood ran so hot my skin prickled.
The wolf grew larger—if that was even possible. Bones cracked and reformed with pops. Limbs stretched. The lupine frame reshaped itself upward. Fur receded from the face, retreating to the shoulders and arms. The beast rose from four legs to two and kept rising. Seven feet. Eight. Nine. Until a warrior stood where the wolf had been: half-human, half-beast.
Caspian’s hybrid form was massive. His face was a blend of human features and lupine angles. Fangs filled his mouth, and his claws could have gutted a wyvern. His eyes still burned gold-rimmed green, locking on me.
I’d read about supernaturals in my spare time from the textbooks. I wanted to understand the heirs, their powers, and the armies they led. For shifters, only the most powerful could achieve the warrior form—the state between man and beast. In their hybrid form, they could even speak.
