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Chapter Thirty-Four
Grady—Brandon—had to know he could never outrun his Prime. Niko watched as he gained on his prey, lips peeling back from his teeth in feral anticipation.
We can’t kill him, he reminded the wolf. We can’t kill him.
The cat, he didn’t have to remind and argue with so much. A cat understood that sometimes it was best to let prey run itself down.
The two beasts inside him were rarely so in sync as they were now. Catch. Hurt. And when the time was right, kill. His powerful form flew over pavement and grass, the space between them and their prey shrinking.
Movement ahead had him jerking his eyes from Brandon’s hindquarters. He saw the woman, saw her grow aware of the advancing threat even as her daughter squealed in delight and pointed at the two Therians.
“Mommy!” Clapping her hands together, she started toward them and that put her directly in Brandon’s line of sight.
Her mom screamed and reached out.
But human reflexes are nothing compared to a Therian’s. Brandon lunged, snapping out with powerful jaws to close them around the girl’s hood, hanging down off her head with a shiny, glittery fluffy fringe rimming the edge. Her thin, high-pitched cry pierced the rage wrapping around Niko and he shifted to human form in another lunge, putting himself between the terrified mother and Brandon who was slowly backing away, teeth buried in the girl’s silly, cute hood.
“You don’t want to do this.” Niko put every ounce of his will into his voice and slammed the full force of his dominance into Brandon.
The weaker wolf whined in his throat, eyes rolling as he fought to obey. But the man’s fear was strong and Brandon continued to slink away with his tiny human shield, teeth mere inches from her delicate throat, from her skull. His jaws were big enough to crush the girl.
Brandon was a caged animal now and his hindbrain, the wolf’s instincts to obey his Prime, all of it had been overridden by the man’s panic instincts to survive and fight in any way possible.
“Shift,” Niko ordered, the word barely above a growl.
“Please—”
He held up a hand to the woman behind him. Fear and desperation oozed from her pores, souring them but he couldn’t worry about her if he was going to save the child.
Brandon remained in his wolf form, cowering. Eyes on the ground, he scraped another few inches backward, his belly into the dirt as the little girl kicked and sobbed, her blue jeans now damp with urine.
“Shift!” It tore out of Niko in a growl this time, so loud everything went silent, the birds in nearby trees, the mother choking back a sob. Even the crying child went quiet.
But it wasn’t just authority Niko punched into his voice. The primal, aggressively protective instincts that forged a Prime echoed in the order.
The effect was immediate.
Brandon yelped in pain as his wolf reacted to his Prime and forced the shift on him. It was painfully slow as wolf and man struggled against each other.
A flash of black light appeared at the corner of his eye, the magic snapping around them tearing another yelp from Brandon.
Then Saint was there, emerging from that mist of black and grabbing the girl before retreating right back into that strange void.
The young mother whimpered.
Brandon, now on his knees and covered in a thick, viscous film too rancid to be called sweat, jerked his eyes from his Prime to the woman.
Niko changed position subtly, hiding her behind him and forcing the Therian in front of him to meet his gaze.
“On your feet,” he said in a low, tight voice.
Everything in him cried for blood. His claws tore at the ends of his fingers from inside his skin, a brutal pain as he fought back the urge to shift into his beast and rip out the man’s throat here and now.
“Niko.”
Zee’s voice called to him and pulled him from the icy-cold grip of the killing rage now centered on Brandon.
“You can’t kill him here,” she said and she touched him, her hand on his bare arm.
