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There. A gray-haired man hunkered down in a crevice on the other side of the road, not a pistol but a rifle poised against the dark rock. I swung towardhim.
He proved himself an even bigger coward. Dropping the gun, he shifted into a black-and-gray-speckled weasel and darted away up themountain.
I sped after the weasel shifter, but he dove into a deeper crevice. I blasted it with fire and then spun around. My gaze narrowed on a man with shaggy black hair who was leaping to snatch up therifle.
“Keep at them, keep at them!” he hollered down the slope in the same guttural voice I’d heard demanding that my alphas hand me over. His scent laced the air with a wolfish tang. It was him. The rogue who’d left me marked all over with the slashes of his claws. Who’d led his followers to savage Kylietoo.
Anger surged up inside me. I was never letting him get a chance like thatagain.
The wolf shifter swung toward me, yanking the rifle upward, as if he thought he might catch me by surprise. A hot, heavy blast of dragon-fire was already searing up my throat. I opened my jaws and let itflow.
My fury blasted over the rogue’s leader, leaving nothing but a charred heap and the molten lump of the rifle where he’d been. A twist of brutal satisfaction filled mychest.
I wheeled toward the road. A few of the other rogues were already fleeing, racing up the mountainside the way they’d come. The young man who’d stopped our SUV sprawled on the pavement, his chest torn and his throat gashed open. My wolf and my eagle had pinned a black bear to the ground between them. My grizzly was cuffing a mountain lion across the head. It bolted away as my shadow swept over them. I couldn’t seeMarco.
I turned again, meaning to give chase, and a prickling sensation raced through my muscles. They were clenching, condensing, the effort of the shift catching up with me. I strained to hold my shape, but exhaustion grippedme.
It was my first time. I had no storedendurance.
Gritting my teeth, I plummeted to theground.
Chapter 21
Aaron
Serenity!
The shout echoed in my head as I saw her brilliant body fall from the sky. My eagle’s throat couldn’t form the name. My talons loosened where I gripped the bear’s shoulder, the urge to fly to her rushing throughme.
The black bear had gone limp in my and West’s grasp, but now it lashed out its paw in one last desperate smack. Its claws raked across one of my wings. A lance of pain joined the other aches already radiating through mybody.
I bobbed to the side and slashed at the bear, torn between two duties. Nate lumbered over, baring his teeth threateningly at the rogue that could have been his kin. He swung his head toward me as if to say,Goon.
My wounded wing faltered as I pushed myself backward. I landed awkwardly on my clawed feet and shifted back into human form. Bleeding claw marks scored my right arm, and a burning gash ran across my ribs. Clenching my jaw against the discomfort, I pushed myself toward mymate.
Serenity had hit the pavement on her hands and knees, somewhere between human and dragon form. The dragon side of her had saved her from the worst of the impact. She was slumped a few feet from the SUV when my eyes found her, and my pulselurched.
Before I’d even dashed two steps, she raised her head. A bullet wound was leaking blood down her forearm and a scrape marked her chin from the impact, but her amber eyes glinted with a deeper fire than I’d ever seen before. It took my breathaway.
I dropped to my knees beside her and pulled her to me. She sagged into my embrace, her cheek against my collarbone. Her chest was still heaving with raggedbreaths.
“You were fantastic,” I said, stroking my hand over her dark hair. “The most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen.” My heart swelled with the memory of her bright red scales flashing against thesky.
My mate. My dragon shifter. And she’d accepted me as her own last night. The awe of it filled mythroat.
Serenity’s hand brushed over my wounded arm and stilled. She pushed herself upright. Her eyes widened. “You’re hurt. We have to get you bandaged up. Is everyone elseokay?”
“We all survived,” I said. “And I’ll heal.” But she was right. I’d lost more than enough blood already. I heaved myself to my feet, reluctant to leave her. Moving to the car, I grabbed my pants and tossed my shirt to her, since her own had ripped apart with her transformation. The shreds of it lay on the road by the opendoor.
There was a roll of sterile gauze in the glove compartment for exactly this eventuality. I wrapped up my arm and knelt beside Serenity to tend to her own wound. She winced as I coveredit.
“Fucking bullets. That’s how they came after my family before. I heard the shots in one of my memories, just didn’t realize what they were untilnow.”
The set of my mouth hardened. “It’s a stark line for them to cross. Any shifter who’s broken that law, used a weapon against their own kind, can never join a kin-group infuture.”
“I get the impression that lot is more interested in tearing apart our groups than joining them,” Marco said, propping himself against the hood of the car. He’d balled his own shirt against the bullet hole on his upper chest. The wound hadn’t stopped him from shifting into jaguar form and taking care of the bobcat shifter who’d tricked us and then attacked him. Nate had shoved him toward the shelter of the SUV afterthat.
“Rogues don’t usually like to completely throw away their other options,” I muttered. Serenity moved to stand, and I straightened up withher.
