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The beast ignored me, too excited about seeing our human, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. The sounds were unfamiliar. Quinn owned a small car, not heavy enough for the crunching I could hear.

My worry grew when I heard a strange male voice asking Quinn if he was alright. It instantly set the beast on edge, too.

"I'll be fine. Thank you for the ride."

Romulus immediately got up and ran around the side of the house to greet his master, but we couldn't reveal ourselves to whoever was here. We were stuck waiting, helpless, until the car finally drove away. I could hear Quinn approaching, accompanied by his dog, but I needed to see him. We needed to see him.

Limping down the stairs as quickly as we could, we rounded the back corner of the house.

The smell hit us first.

Chemical. An astringent scent that burned our nostrils and sent me stumbling into a jumbled pit of disconnected, fragmented memories. A blue room. A white table. Silver tools. Red eyes and red blood spilling onto the floor, disappearing into rust-colored stains. The feeling of skin parting beneath a sharp blade, fire burning through my veins, and a voice in my head that wasn't my own, but was a part of me all the same. A collar around our throat, shackles around our legs.

Why was this scent on our human?

Then we saw the bruises.

A perfect handprint around Quinn's throat, already mottling and turning dark. Someone hurt him.

Someone hurt him.

Something inside me snapped.

The beast's fury fueled my own, and we roared, lunging forward to get to him. Our skin burned, stretching, a fiery pain searing through every bone in our body. The dog barked in alarm, and Quinn's soft green eyes, now reddened by tears, widened. He didn't back away from us, though, not even as our claws reached for him. Agony whited out our vision and when we could see again, the dark fur and scaled talons melted away, changing, shifting into flesh. Human skin, human blood and bones.

My center of gravity shifted and I stumbled, gravel biting into my knees as I fell. Pain shot through my legs, high up my thighs where the bullets had entered, and my right arm hung useless at my side, but none of that stopped me.

Someone touched our Quinn. Bruised him. Made him cry.

Staggering to my feet, I reached for him again and this time, he staggered back a step, his face bone white with shock.

"Typhon..?" It came out a choked whisper, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

I couldn't think. Couldn't focus. Couldn't stop to think about what I'd just done or even how I'd done something impossible. Only one thing mattered. I locked eyes with my human and, in a voice raspy and broken from long disuse, asked the only thing that mattered.

"Who?"

Chapter 15

Quinn

Shock stole the air from my lungs and the words from my mind, leaving me gaping like a landed fish, staring blankly at the man in front of me.

At Typhon.

Because somehow, the monster I'd been hiding at my house was gone, and in his place was a man. A very naked, semi-feral human.

Only an inch or two taller than my own 5'8", he still seemed to tower over me. Heavy muscles corded his body, particularly in his arms and shoulders. A wild tangle of hair fell past his shoulders, a deep chestnut brown that curled around an unfairly gorgeous face. Even hidden behind an unkempt beard, his strong jaw and aquiline nose were easy to see.

It was his eyes that captured me, though. Unlike the rest of him, they were distinctly inhuman. Glowing a pale golden yellow, they were the same eyes I'd seen watching me from the trees the first time I caught sight of the creature.

"Who. Hurt. You?"

I blinked, dazed. Each word came out a harsh snarl, his voice rough as though he hadn't spoken in ages.

"You're shaking," I blurted, my voice little more than a ragged whisper. I couldn't think about the bookstore and what had happened, not when this man was standing in front of me. His right arm hung limp at his side, the same limb Lain had dug a bullet out of just a few days ago. Matching wounds dotted the man's left thigh, and blood dripped down his tan skin, the scabs torn away by whatever he'd just done.

Growling, he came closer, stopping only because Romulus lunged forward, snarling viciously, fangs bared.