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My fingers tingle with the urgency to reach over and tell her she isn’t alone. But a surge of electricity dances down my arms. She groans with pain before falling to the ground, transforming.
We watch over her, and each one of us would do anything to keep her protected. She means everything to me, and if she’s going to be what Bardhyl coined, the Zombie Queen, then I’ll adore her even more.
Seconds later, she’s in her stunning tawny fur, her ears pointy, and her long tail behind her. Pain rages behind those beautiful eyes, and I hope she listens to me and releases her wolf once we find the herd.
She lifts her head, inhaling the air, then she nudges past Lucien and trots into the woods.
“We stay close,” I say, and we’re off. Meira takes the lead, and we three watch her back. The six zombies trail behind us. I won’t deny it still unnerves me to have them so close.
We travel deeper into the woods, farther from the Ash Wolves compound, which puts me at ease. This area is less likely to be occupied by wolves hunting us down. But it doesn’t take us long before the moaning sound of the undead finds us.
Enormous fir and oak trees surround us, trees exploding with green leaves. The place would be beautiful, if it weren’t for the lurching shadows amid the trees. Disfigured silhouettes in the distance are exactly what we’re here for, yet a shiver crawls up my spine.
Meira hurries forward, and we’re running to keep up.
When the first zombie emerges, a barrel of a man with a shirt hanging off his body and ripped jeans, his eyes lock on to us.
A guttural growl shatters the air, and suddenly, the thumping of feet on the ground grows louder… closer.
Meira wastes no time and jumps at the hulking man, taking him down quickly, tearing half his arm off. Blood gushes from the wound staining the Earth.
“We need to hide now,” Lucien whispers, his hand on my back.
That’s when I spot the wave of the soulless emerging from the shadows. Several dozen at least. Fright shakes me to the core to be out here with so many of them.
I turn and follow Lucien’s choice of a tree with low-hanging branches. Bardhyl is already up there. I jump up and snatch one, then swing myself up. Hastily, I make my way to a thick, sturdy branch to easily take my weight. Close to fifteen feet off the ground, I sit close to the trunk with a clear vantage point of the grounds below.
Lucien is above me, while Bardhyl is on a branch facing me.
“If this works, how do we get all the zombies into the compound?” Bardhyl asks. “It’s not like we can ask Kinley to not mind us while we drag dozens of zombies through her home. She’ll die of fright.”
“Plus,” Lucien adds, “it might cause a bottleneck once others spot zombies coming out of her house and start shooting at them.”
The thoughts plague my mind. “The only option I see is getting them through one of the main entries to the compound.”
I turn my attention to Meira. She’s already taken down three creatures, but as I watch her calculate every move on whom to attack next, worry creeps across my mind. She hesitates as she looks around, and I sigh. She’s still holding on to her wolf, instead of giving it free rein.Dammit, Meira.
This makes her slower to kill these while battling her own chaotic war in her mind.
Coldness seeps into my bones at the thought that I didn’t realize earlier how much she struggled with her wolf. She will forever lose the ability to control her wolf if she keeps pushing it away.
I tense, fingers clenching the branch beneath me, and I pray to the moon the damage she’s done to herself so far isn’t too far gone.
But as those thoughts tumble through my mind, a tsunami of zombies breach the shadows of the forest.
Next thing I know, there are close to a hundred of them pouring out.
My heart slams into my ribcage as I wrench my gaze from them and to Meira, who leaves a bloody trail in her path.
Fuck!Please don’t let me have made a mistake by letting her handle this alone.
