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Not tonight, they won’t.
Leo stumbles to his feet and bellows out a roar that weakens me. I would drop to my knees if I weren’t pinned to the siding by the two shifters, who also cower.
“Enough!” Leo roars. “You will let us leave, or you will die trying to keep what’s left of your pack together.”
“Death before traitors escape!” Jerusha shouts, pumping her fist into the air.
Fine by me. Death for them, it is.
But before I can snap another neck, the front door pops open. Terror flashes through me. I told Ivy to lock the door and stay inside.
My sharp inhale steals my protest when a curious and deadly violet-hued flame arches through the doorway and into the night air.
Amaranthine flame,I realize. It’s a witch’s fire.
Ivy can’t conjure that. She doesn’t have enough magic in her for it to be possible, yet there it is.
“Let them go!” Ivy yells, and I can hear the fear in her voice. Another light purple ball of fire flings itself out through the front door, landing on a bear near Leo, who was poised to pounce. His fur catches fire, but even with the rolling on the dirt the bear does in an attempt to smother the blaze, it does not quickly go out.
One of the bears pinning me runs off, but Mark is on his heels, chomping into the flank and knocking the wicked pack member off balance. Mark might be young, but he is ready to defend his Alpha to the death, which he proves when he rips out the throat of his conquest.
I have to get to Ivy before they get to her. But the bear pinning me to the wall is stronger and manages to swing their head so violently that I can’t get a grip on it to snap its neck.
The beast bites down hard on my shoulder, forcing a pained grunt from me that I don’t want to give voice to. I know a shifter can’t break my skin, but that doesn’t make it less painful.
Leo is at my side, thrusting the shifter off me—choosing a vampire over his brethren. It’s a significant choice, and not one I demanded he make.
I decide to return his kindness by rushing to the next shifter who’s got Leo in their crosshairs, leaping onto the beast and wrestling it on the grass.
It doesn’t take long for my witch to set another shifter ablaze with her violet flames. She shrieks in terror at her own prowess. I’m guessing she’s just now realizing in real time that she is capable of true carnage when the people she loves are threatened.
In the end, Jerusha is the only attacker left. She kneels over a felled shifter, trying frantically to put out the flame that seems to have no end in sight. Angry tears prick her cheeks as she snarls up at us when her friend dies, his body still burning after he breathes his last.
“You will never escape me!” she promises Leo with all the venom in her soul, looking positively deranged. “You murdered my mate, so I will not rest until the witch who did this to you is dead, too!”
I can tell Jerusha believes Ivy is behind this.
Jerusha stands, her fingers spread like she’s ready to claw out his eyes, but Leo doesn’t back down. She fixes her focus on Ivy, and it is clear that she believes Leo is attached to our witch.
Leo’s bloody chest barrels when he takes in the threat to Ivy that this woman is bold enough to make. “You come near her, and you’ll wish I’d buried you with Hamish.”
Jerusha stands over the deceased bear, tears pricking her eyes. “Don’t you dare say his name!”
Leo and Mark lock eyes, and the two of them bolt after the woman.
She abandons the body of her mate in lieu of losing her life. While Leo and Mark are fast, she is faster as they disappear into the woods.
I keel over, catching my breath until discomfort slices through my right arm. “Ah!” I cup my bicep as Ivy does the same, rushing out of the house toward the woods.
“It’s the tether!” she calls to me.
That may be true for her, but why amIfeeling it? Is this how it’s going to be now? I’m not only tethered to her, but to the shifter as well?
My stomach hollows as I try to get a grip on myself. I should be running after them, but instead I drop to my knees, adrenaline coursing through me.
I haven’t murdered a shifter in quite some time. I’ve never been this worked up about defending anything other than my own home, yet I murdered not for blood or my own safety; I killed them because they came after Leo and were a threat to Ivy.
My pack.
