AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When I woke up next to Nate, my eyelids protested, too heavy to comfortably lift. I blinked blearily at the dark room. It was still night outside thewindow.
But a tremor of unease had passed over me. My pulse was thumpingfaster.
Something was wrong. My mates wereupset.
I tried to slip out from under the blanket without waking Nate, but he stirred as soon as I moved. “Ren?” hemurmured.
“I just want to make sure everything’s all right,” I said. “You can stay rightthere.”
Fat chance of that. The bear shifter shoved back the blankets to join me. He grabbed a housecoat from a hook on his wardrobe. My dress was wrinkled, but I didn’t really care. Everyone in this house had seen me looking a lotworse.
We came out into the hall to find West striding toward us. He stopped, taking in the two of us with a twitch of amusement at the corner of his mouth. Otherwise his expression was grim. My stomach balledtighter.
“I was just coming to get both of you,” he said. “Looks like it’s an easyjob.”
He turned to head back the way he’d come with a motion for us to follow. I caught up with him. “What’s going on?” I said. “Have the vampires made anotherattack?”
“Of course they have,” he muttered, his voice as grim as his face. “They’ve been experimenting with different tactics to counteract the fires. Water tanks with hoses to spray them down, mostly. Around the estates our kin added extra gasoline to the wood so it wouldn’t burn out so easily, but there were a couple of villages hit that hadn’t evacuated… They weren’t preparedenough.”
My heart sank. “Did anyone make itout?”
He shook his head, his jaw clenched. Behind me, Nate swore. “None of my lieutenants have contactedme.”
“They might still be busy fighting the vamps off,” I pointed out. And no matter what was happening out there, there was nothing he or the rest of us could do about it right now. By the time we made it to any village, it’d be morning, the vampires gone—and whatever wreckage they’d left behind alreadysettled.
“That’s not all,” West said as we strode into the private common room meant for just the five of us. “I had a couple of my people watching the only highway that comes close to this estate. A truck stinking of vamps passed by not long ago, heading our way. Maybe they’re hoping they’ll catch us by surprise, coming this deep into our territory, like the rogues did before. The speed they were going, they’ll be here in the next halfhour.”
My pulse stuttered. “We haven’t put up any defenses.” The dragon shifter estate boasted a stone wall around its inner boundaries much like the one at the canine estate, but that wouldn’t stop the vampires by itself. We hadn’t brought enough kin with us to fully defend it. We hadn’t laid down wood for a fire. We’d assumed the vampires wouldn’t be prepared to venture this far—and wouldn’t see any reason to. “How do they even know we’re here? We left in the middle of theday.”
“They might not,” Aaron said. He was standing at the end of the dining table, looking at a map he’d spread out there. “They might just want to do whatever damage they can to the property—as a show of force, to lower our general morale. It doesn’t sound as if there are a lot of them on their wayhere.”
Marco folded his arms where he was leaning against the table’s edge. “Or one of those last few rogues who’ve thrown in with the bloodsuckers decided to play spy. They might have heard something from outside the walls of the canine estate, the kin there talking about our trip, or simply guessed from the direction the jet headedin.”
I gritted my teeth at the thought of those traitors. What had the vampires offered them to make them think they were better off siding with creatures who wanted to exterminate the rest of us? Or did they think the vamps would be satisfied once they’d taken out me and my alphas and leave the rest of us alone? Hadn’t theyseenwhat those monsters weredoing?
Of course, from what Timothy had reported… maybe they weren’t thinking very much at all. Sixteen years was a long time to be carrying that much rage. I’d bet some of the losers from the battle at Marco’s estate had faded back into the wilderness to live their lives apart from us in peace. The ones who’d run to the vampires—they were too far gone to reasonwith.
“So what’s the plan?” Isaid.
Aaron tapped the map. I came over to stand beside him. “There’s only one road that can support a truck that comes into the lands around the estate,” he said. “Here, between two of the lower hills. So we know where they’ll be comingfrom.”
Looking at the lines on the paper, it all seemed very clear. “I go out there and blast them to bits,then.”
Marco’s lips curled up. “Sounds simpleenough.”
West, on the other hand, frowned. “You’re tired, Ren. How late were you up in that records room?” I pressed my mouth flat against an honest answer, and he glowered at me. “That’s what I thought. I don’t like the idea of you going out there alone. What if there are more of them than we expect? If they shoot you down, you might be too far from the estate to make itback.”
“We have a few vehicles in the garage,” Natestarted.
I could read the answer to that suggestion in Aaron’s eyes. “None of them is solid enough to withstand automatic gunfire, though, right?” I said. “You guys are a lot more vulnerable out there than I am. And they’ll be just as happy to kill you.” My hands clenched. “Look, I’ll just fly up and keep watch. If I see them stopping and getting ready to come out with the guns, I’ll fry them before they have the chance. Otherwise I’ll wait them out here. Okay? We can’t donothing.”
West didn’t look happy, but he didn’t argue either. Aaron nodded. “That sounds like the best we can make of thesituation.”
“Then I’d better get out there before it’s too late to stop themanyway.”
We loped together through the halls to the main entrance. I glanced toward the guest wing, but I didn’t want to wake up Kylie for this. I had the feeling there’d be plenty more fighting where she could pitchin.
On the front steps, I undressed and shifted as smoothly as if I’d been doing this my entire life. My body expanded up into the air. With a heave of my taloned hind feet, I was swooping up toward thesky.
