Page 106 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

And then the screaming.

Aidan thundered ahead of her, trying to shield her in his usual way. His eyes glinted gold as he caught some scent or a thread of magic. “This way.”

He led them down a side street, through the back door of a shop selling cauldrons and out the front to where the screaming had stopped in favor of the kind of stunned silence that choked the throat. Evil-eye beads spun madly. A gargoyle swooped down from the roof but there was little it could do, no errant spells to gobble up.

Even a gargoyle was no match for a moon-mad wolf.

The street had cleared, but there were a few pedestrians trapped between the thick stone wall of the shop and the wolf. They were frozen, whispering for help.

She was huge, with wild eyes burning like coals and saliva dripping from her powerful jaws. Her fur was white, streaked with mud and blood.

“Orla,” Sorcha said, stunned.

Orla’s ears twitched and she snapped her teeth upon hearing her name. A woman lay crumpled in front of her, unconscious. There was blood on her temple, under the auburn hair. A man with thick whiskers held his umbrella like a sword. His familiar, a glowing toad, crouched on his shoe.

When Sorcha tried to inch closer, Aidan’s arm snapped across her torso. “No sudden movements.”

“I know that.”

Someone threw apples from an upper window. Orla snarled when one of them caught her on the shoulder. Her lips peeled further back, teeth sharp and gleaming.

“Kill her!” someone yelled. “Before she takes one of the children!”

Someone else threw a butter knife.

“Stop it,” Sorcha shouted. “That’s not helping. Everyone, stay calm. Orla. Orla.”

The wolf only continued to growl.

“I thought saying a Lycan’s name three times made them release the wolf,” Sorcha said, desperately. Orla was a danger, there was no questioning that. But someone was going to provoke her into attacking when she might still be stopped. And then they would kill her. It wasn’t her fault she’d been taken by the Collector. If they could stop her from hurting anyone, she could still be saved.

“Orla,” Aidan said, the command of an Alpha wrapping around his tone like iron.

She tensed. Her growl muted, but did not stop.

The man with the umbrella jabbed her in the snout. She snapped, breaking it in two. He yelped, cowering back.

“Orla,” Aidan snapped. Everyone stood a little straighter, as if he had spoken their name instead. The power that rolled off him was palpable, recognized by some forgotten, primal part of the mind.

“Everyone, stay calm,” Sorcha all but begged. “Lord Coventry works for the Museum of Magic. He knows how to bind baneful magic. Let him help.”

“Shoot that beast already! Someone must have a pistol.”

“She’s under a spell,” Sorcha insisted.

“She’s a monster!”

That was enough.

Sorcha whistled, one long blast, three short.

Pigeons and sparrows and little brown wrens flew from chimney stacks and roof ridges and treetops. Crows darkened the sky. The spaces between the shops, over the street, around the wolf filled with feathers and beaks and claws. It was difficult to see anything else, certainly too difficult to shoot a pistol with any degree of accuracy.

The raven added his call, another warning.

“The Order is nearly here,” Sorcha translated.

They would trap Orla with iron chains, with jet to drain her magic, a collar to trap her. They would treat her like a warlock, when she was a wolf. And she might be able to help them stop the Collector. She deserved the chance, surely.