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“Well, isn’t this sweet,” Zacal jeered. “The newblood is trying to protect our shamed alpha from the real wolves of this city.”
Real wolves?Something told me this male was spewing bullshit. At least I knew what they were now. “Got a blade?” I whispered to Kade as I eyed the wolf monsters who had moved to surround us.
“No,” Kade replied.
I licked my lips nervously. “Not to worry, I’ll figure something out.”
“Let them have me. I’m not worth it.”
“As much as I shouldn’t care whether they cut you to ribbons, leaving a damsel in distress isn’t something I do anymore.” After Cara, I’d vowed I’d never hide from monsters again. That if it came to it, I’d always try to save my loved ones, no matter the cost. Kade wasn’t a loved one. Hell, I didn’t even like the ass, but I couldn’t watch while monsters cut him down. It brought the painful memory of Cara being taken too close to the surface of my mind. I still didn’t know where she was, but I knew Kade needed my help now, whether he wanted it or not. It felt right to bedoingsomething. I’d felt powerless since coming to this place, but now was my chance to help. To fight. Someone had to.
“Damsel?”
Using my peripheral vision, I eyed the wall of blades and weaponry to the left side of the cavern. There was no way I’d make it. Not with the reflexes of these monsters. If they were as fast as Kade had been when his wolf had chased me, I’d be torn apart before I reached the closest sword.
“Last chance, newblood. You’re new here, so I can excuse you for speaking out of step. Let us have our fun with Kade here, and we’ll leave you be. You can think of this as your first lesson on how our world works.” Zacal smiled, though it looked more like a grimace, his lips tight and teeth bared.
“If this is how your world works, I’d rather make my own rules,” I responded, giving him a twisted smile of my own.
Zacal’s eyes darkened, and he turned to his followers. “Let’s show this newblood how wolves from the House of Worzel treat traitors of the pack, shall we?” He paused and stared me down. “And those who stand with them,” he added. “Kasey, the newblood is yours. The rest of us will take care of the traitor.”
The female wolf monster fixed her pale-gray eyes on me, and she smiled, a cold sadistic smile. “Yes, boss.”
Right. So Kade’s too weak to be an alpha, but all three of the males are going to fight him while he’s already bleeding out? Sounds fair.I wanted to laugh at the irony of it, but if anything, I knew this was going to work in my favor. They underestimated me. Probably thought I was the typical newblood with no combat training.
Howls erupted from the wolf monsters, and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. This was nothing like fighting my makeshift monsters, the trees back on the island.
Shit was about to get real.I’d spent my whole life training to fight the Katakin monsters, and here I was, about to find out if my training was good enough. I had the brief thought that I might die, but I dismissed it, clearing my mind and focusing on the movements and sounds of the monsters around me. I could feel the wolves coming closer, Zacal and the other males moving toward Kade while the female, Kasey, stared at me with an assessing gaze.
My heart thudded wildly in my chest and sweat beaded on my brow. Zacal’s feet shifted slightly, and then he lunged, his sword arching through the air and his face contorted into an angry scowl. As if that was a signal, the other wolves moved into action, shooting forward as well.
I darted out of the way as Kasey’s blade sliced the air where my side had just been.
A grunt sounded behind me, and I turned to see Kade had dodged Zacal’s blade only to step into the path of another of the male’s swords. The blade cleaved deep into his arm. Kade was fighting, but he was moving too sluggishly, reacting too slowly. Pain haunted his eyes.
“Fight!” I shouted at him as I dodged Kasey’s sword again. Spinning around, I shot my foot out, kicking her wrist and sending her blade clattering to the floor to our right. Her eyes narrowed to slits as she glared at me, anger burning in her gaze.
As I watched in horror, her face shifted, elongating to a snout, bared fangs protruding from her mouth and her ears becoming pointed. She bent over as gray fur sprouted over her skin, and her clothes tore as her limbs and torso began to shift, a growl ripping from her throat.
I didn’t wait to see the end result. Turning from her, I sprinted toward her blade and jumped to the ground, falling to my belly on the cold stone floor. The scrape of claws on stone sounded behind me, and I knew she was close. The moment my fingers wrapped around the steel hilt of the sword, I flipped onto my back and lifted the blade with a cry of my own.
My arms nearly buckled at the weight of the gray wolf as she impaled herself on the sword, the blade going through her furry neck and a sharp whine escaping her mouth. Blood spurted onto my face, and I heaved, using all my strength to push the wolf off me to fall onto the ground beside me.
Climbing to my feet while still holding the hilt of the sword, I drove the blade in deeper, swallowing the bile that began to rise in my throat. The wolf continued snapping her jaws despite the blood leaking from her and spilling onto the ground. Her powerful paws scraped at the floor, leaving deep grooves in the stone.
The wound would have killed any ordinary animal, but nothing about these monsters was normal. My face blanched at the thought of what I had to do. Surely the monsters would die if they had no head.
I rested my booted foot on the wolf’s side and yanked the blade out. Lifting the sword above my head, I brought it down, aiming for the wolf’s neck as all the hurt, the guilt, and the anger that had grown inside me since Cara had been taken rose to the surface, consuming me until all I saw was a monster and all I felt was justice.
“Raine, DON’T!” Kade roared behind me.
Seconds flew by as my sword came down, and my arm muscles screamed at the effort as I diverted my blade, bringing it down beside the wolf’s head. Jarring pain shot up my arms as the sword connected with stone instead of soft wolf flesh.
The air burned as I sucked it into my lungs, staring at the wolf beneath me. But I didn’t question Kade.
“Kasey!” howled one of the males behind me, but I didn’t look to see who it was. Kasey had stopped moving. A dark pool of blood covered the floor around her wolf body, and her pale-gray eyes had closed.
I stared as I realized what I’d almost done.But she’d tried to kill Kade.I didn’t feel guilty, but peering at the silent wolf made me feel colder somehow. Like something inside me had died.
