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Sariel was moving towards him when the squealing of tires alerted us to even more company.
Sariel glanced at me, mouth open to give me instructions, and paused. “Holy shit,” he breathed, momentarily distracted. “Your claws are out, little wolf.”
I looked down at my hands, which were clutching my wallet, and blinked. My clawswereout.
The lone wolf finally came to his senses just as Sariel leapt over the fallen shelves—I didn’t see him move until it was too late. A scream built in my throat when he threw himself at Sariel, with something unknown glinting as they went down.
I stumbled back, tripped over something, and fell onto my ass while Sariel wrestled with him. Shouting sounded off outside; I caught a glimpse of at least six other huge men circling the door.
Sariel hissed, making my gut clench. I couldn’t see exactly what had happened, but the sound sent my wolf into another frenzy. My vision blurred, my head going light, and the next thing I knew, I was standing over a panting Sariel, a fire extinguisher in my hands, as he pushed the wolf off him.
“Time to go,” he said, wincing as he pulled himself upright. He snatched the extinguisher from me and dragged me over to the window closest to his car. “Cover your head.”
He swung the extinguisher at the glass, shattering it into thousands of tiny pieces. Glass crunched as we maneuvered over it, and Sariel hustled me into the car.
A gunshot went off, ricocheting off the side of Sariel’s car as he slid over the hood and climbed into the driver's seat.
My wolf hadn’t entirely retreated, but she also hadn’t taken over completely. She’d deferred to Sariel as soon as he’d stepped in, so when he barked at me to put my seatbelt on as he reversed out of the gas station, I jumped to obey him. My claws hadn’t retracted, and I could taste blood from where my elongated fangs had torn into my lip due to my trembling.
I was so hopped on adrenaline as Sariel skidded onto the hallway, his tires smoking, that it took me a minute to smell the blood.
It wasn’t coming from me. I snapped my head in Sariel’s direction when he swerved around someone in our lane.
Blood coated his entire right side from a long gash. It wasn’t just trickling out, either; he was bleeding rivulets.
“You’re bleeding,” I observed.
Sariel, his eyes bouncing between the rearview mirror and the road, made an offhanded grunt. “It'll heal.”
“Oh my God, you’re bleeding,” I repeated like I didn't hear him, a shriller note to my voice. “Sariel, you’re bleeding a lot, it’s— that cut is too deep, you needstitches, Sariel. Oh my God, you’re going to bleed out—I can’t do stitches. I’ve never done stitches before…”
A bullet bounced off the side of the car, and the sound startled a scream from me.
“Get down!” Sariel commanded.
Once again, my body reacted before I could even process his words. I grabbed the seat adjuster on the side of the chair and dropped the seat all the way back.
Sariel jerked the car, and I slid a little on the seat. “Fuck,” he swore, his hand on the gear shift. “I need you to crawl into the backseat. Just undo your seatbelt, crawl in there, get down, and stay down—“
He was interrupted by the loud smashing sound of the rear windshield getting shot out. I didn’t have time to process whatwas happening before Sariel lost control of the car—I don’t know what the fuck kind of weapon they were firing, but another glass shattered, and we went skidding off the highway.
My wolf pounced. I felt the shift come over me right before I lost consciousness.
When I came to, my wolf had hauled Sariel by his shirt—with her teeth— through the woods. I couldn’t see the wreckage or hear any cars, so we must have gotten pretty far from the highway.
Sariel groaned, and I released him from my jaws long enough to shift.
He was in rough shape. His eyes were closed, and there was so much blood; the deep cut on the side of his body still bled, but there were many new bruises to deal with, too.
While his injurieswerean issue, an even bigger one arose for me. I was naked—an unfortunate side effect of changing into an animal that was not humanoid in nature and ripped human clothes easily.
Sariel grunted as I endeavored to take his shirt. I knew that moving him was a bad idea since I hadn’t assessed his injuries, but I couldn’t do so while naked. I also had no idea where we were, where the fallen-blood wolves after us were, or what I was going to do at sunset.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “I need your shirt.”
I knelt on the forest floor, twigs and rocks digging into my knees, and turned him on his side as gently as possible. His back was a mangled mess of black and blue, no doubt from being dragged across the forest for who knows how long. I lifted one side of his shirt off, then the other.
I slipped into the torn material. It gaped on one side from where Sariel had been cut and there were holes all in the back, but it hung down to the middle of my thighs and covered all the essential bits of me.
