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Kian puts a hand against the broken front door. “We secured it. If they want in, they’ll have to bust through.”
Malix gestures at the living room window. “They’re in a pitchfork mob mental space, brother. They’re gonna bust in. The question is only a matter of when.”
“What do we do?” I ask, shaking out the nervous tingles in my hands. “I’m not going to kill humans.”
Kian scoffs. “You will if they try to kill you.”
I snatch at the front of his shirt and clench my fists in the fabric, going up on my tiptoes to stare him in the eye. “They’re scared. We are not going to kill them.”
“You’re a pain in my ass, Amora.” He grabs my wrists, and his fingers dig into my bones painfully, but I don’t release him.
“Likewise,” I snap, even as the sound of my name on his lips sends a flood of warmth through my chest. “Kill a human, and I’ll kill you. Got it?”
Kian tightens his fingers even more, cutting off my circulation. “I dare you.”
Frost takes a single step, sliding his leg between us like a mountaineer trying to get through a too-thin crevice. As his muscular torso passes between us, I let go of Kian’s shirt and step away before he can touch me.
Frost nods, seemingly satisfied that he’s broken up the imminent fight, then glances at Kian over his shoulder. “We’ll shift to shadow form. That alone should scare away some of them. Then we work from there.”
Kian doesn’t reply except to strip off his shirt and reach for his pants, his gaze leveled on me and still full of venom. And a little something else, maybe.
Something like… respect?
Nah. Can’t be.
Frost and Malix follow suit, shucking off their clothes for the shift. Then black smoky magic swirls around them, and they begin to morph. Those long, creepy limbs lengthening, their bulk growing substantially larger until I have to back away to give them more room in the suddenly too-small space. Their snouts elongate and fill with razor-sharp teeth, while their eyes begin to glow like blue flames in their dark visages.
I kick off my boots and start undressing myself as Kian slams through the broken front door, shattering it to pieces. All three shadow wolves race into the yard to the sound of terrifying screams.
Shit.
I swear to fuck, if they kill those people, there will be hell to pay.
Leaving my clothes in a pile on the floor, I shift quickly, then bound out the door, trying to formulate some kind of logical plan in my head. Luckily, half a dozen flashlight carrying humans are fleeing the scene as I exit the house. So at least Frost’s plan has a little merit.
A gunshot cracks nearby, and I fall to the ground in a roll as I sense the bullet on the air. It whizzes past over my head, then hits the dirt a few feet away in a geyser of rocks and sand. My heart leaps into my throat at how close I came to tasting a damn bullet.
The gunman is to my right, and when I leap to my feet and race for him, he stumbles back, frightened of me. He remembers he’s holding a gun too late—I leap for him, my teeth latching onto the sour metal barrel. He pulls the trigger, and the blast makes me feel like I’ve been punched in the teeth. My teeth and brain rattle around in my head. Rattled or not though, I rip the gun from his hands and toss it away, then I leap up and headbutt him.
Hard.
His entire body stiffens, and he keels over backward. Out cold before he hits the ground.
Not dead though, which is my goal. These aren’t trained fighters. They’re men—scared men, and that’s a pretty terrifying creature all on its own. But I don’t want their deaths on my conscience.
Good thing my wolf head is big and thick like a fucking battering ram.
I leap over the unconscious man and run for the next silhouette on the lawn. His flashlight dances across my line of sight, nearly blinding me, but I duck away into the darkness just as his gun cracks. The bullet slams into the ground way wide, and I circle back around, my claws skittering on the dry dirt.
I slam into his side before he realizes I’m coming. This time, I don’t have to take a blow to the head. He lands on his back beneath my bulk, and his skull bounces like a basketball on the hard ground. The poor man goes limp, and I nudge his gun away from him, well out of his reach in case he decides to wake up anytime soon.
I take a minute to check on the feral shifters, since I don’t trust them not to kill. They have a much darker moral compass than me, and I know their inclination is to fight to kill. The little verbal shoot-out Kian and I had isn’t enough to calm my fears.
But nearby, Frost whips his paw across a man’s face, knocking him out cold. Not a kill shot, thank god.
I guess paws can do that when you’re the size of a goddamn Clydesdale, I think to myself.
Am I bitter? Maybe. I never felt like a small wolf until these assholes showed up with their weird-ass shadow forms.
