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The smoke solidified at the rhino’s side and seemed to be pushing it to its feet.
“It’s getting up,” Keelan reported because I was clearly blind.
“Thank you. I can see that.”
The rhino would get up. And when it did, it would go after Owen or the gate. If we were really unlucky, it would go after Kate.
This wasn’t a natural animal. It wasn’t an animal god—I’d seen enough of them to recognize them on sight—but it wasn’t a normal rhino either. That bone armor sat on it as if it were welded to its hide, and the magic boiling around it was thick enough to cut with claws.
Everyone who had been in the house was already on the wall beside me.
“Elk Hunt One,” I ordered. “Keelan, Da-Eun, and I are the takers, the rest of you are drivers. Spin it around. Any direction except for the gate.”
“Yes, Alpha,” they answered in unison.
I leaped off the wall. By the time I hit the ground, I was in half form and roaring. The wall rained shapeshifters in warrior forms. We sprinted forward in a tight formation, howling and snarling.
The smoke picked the rhino up and set it back on its feet. It shook its head and roared. It was a sound filled with rage and hate.
“You owe me a dollar, my lord!” Keelan snarled on my right.
“I never bet you anything.”
“Being stingy is unbecoming of an alpha!” Da-Eun laughed on my left.
Keelan howled, a long triumphant battle cry, calling for blood.
The rhino started forward and was picking up speed, moving from a walk into a sort of trot. The ground started to shake.
Gods, he was massive. This was going to suck.
The drivers shot in front of the rhino, snarling and snapping.
I veered right, while Keelan and Da-Eun darted left. We circled the rhino. Those plates had to be held in place by something—chains, a harness—and I would find it and break it.
There was no harness. The rhino wasn’t wearing the bone plates. They hadn’t been placed on him. They’d been placed in him, embedded in the creature’s flesh and fused together by the same golden metal we saw on the collars. The hide in the narrow gaps between the plates was inflamed and bleeding. Pus wet the metal and bone. This beast had to be in tremendous pain.
The stench was the worst. It smelled like acid, burned flesh, and blood. And a hint of decay, just setting in. The rhino was dying.
I would kill it. I would make it as fast and as painless as I could. And then I would find the person who did that atrocity to it and kill them slowly.
I circled behind the beast, passing Keelan and Da-Eun running in the opposite direction. They hadn’t found a weakness either.
At the front end of the rhino, the shapeshifters baited the beast, leaping in and out before it could gore them, clawing, snapping, and snarling. The huge beast tried to press forward, but the chaos was too much. It couldn’t ignore the shapeshifters harassing it. Too many bodies, too much noise.
Andre lunged in and bit the rhino on the lip, the only exposed part of its head. For a moment the werewolf hung there like a terrier. That was the last straw.
The rhino rolled his head and flung Andre to the side. Andre landed on his feet. The beast screamed and pounded toward him.
Good. We’d turned him. Now we just had to bring him down.
I closed in on the rhino.
Could I pry a plate off?
The rhino kept going, totally focused on Andre. Trying to run him down.
Keelan and Da-Eun leaped onto its back, scrambling up.
Good plan. The spine was a solid target.
Keelan struck with his claymore, plunging it straight down, but didn’t seem to be doing any serious damage. The bone armor was too thick.
I grabbed the edge of one of the plates along the flanks, dug my feet in, and pulled. I could yank the door off a car. I’d done it before.
The rhino didn’t stop. The plate didn’t come off. Instead, I was dragged off my feet and pulled along. I let it drag me for a couple of seconds, let go, landed on my feet, and ran to keep pace.
A bird swung around the rhino and tried to hammer me with its giant beak. I slapped its head and broke its neck.
“Jynx, thin the flock!”
The bouda peeled off from the pack ahead with an eerie giggle.
On the rhino’s back, Da-Eun planted her feet and pulled at one of the plates along the beast’s back. The weretiger strained, her muscles swelling under her striped hide. She shook with effort, cried out…
The plate didn’t budge. Yeah, I already tried that.
Andre turned left, drawing a wide U. The rhino followed him, never noticing we were now running in the opposite direction. I caught a glimpse of Kate swinging her sword at the female mage.
