AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As I rushed to the porch doors, they opened for me. Gena stood in the doorway, arms outstretched. I passed her one of the boys as I slid inside.
“What’s going on?” She scanned the yard behind me, her eyes wide.
“Wolves,” I said. What else? “I think we’re under attack.”
The color drained from her face.
I sent Connell out, like Xander had asked. With a surprising speed for a man his age, he rushed for the door. Kingston tried to follow, but I stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“We need you here,” I whispered, nodding to Gena. She was withdrawing into the lounge in a slow, backward walk, her shoulders visibly trembling as she clutched Ryder, her eyes locked on the windows. “She’s scared. Help me keep her calm.”
Kingston held my gaze for a second, then wheeled over to her. Whether he believed me or thought I was just trying to placate him with something to do other than joining the fight, it was immaterial now.
A sharp, pained sound burst from the woods as Connell opened the door.
Please let it be the other guys, I thought when the cry was followed by ferocious snarls and then a soft, heartbreaking whimper.Let them be the ones hurting. Let our people be safe.
“Is it ready?” I heard Xander shout to Dylan.
“Only one way to find out,” Dylan replied, tossing him the dart gun, then the door slammed shut again.
I took Rylan into the kitchen and passed him off to Nana, though not before relieving her of the butcher’s knife she was wielding.
“Are they going to hurt us?” Nadia asked, her knuckles white as she twisted a kitchen towel in her fists. “Are we going to die?”
“No one’s going to die. The pack will protect us. That’s what a pack does.” I took the kitchen towel from her, and after a moment of consideration, handed her a cast iron skillet from the drying rack near the sink. With the way her hands were shaking, I wasn’t sure I trusted her with the knife.
To Nana, I cocked my head toward the stairs. “Gena has Ryder. Take her and Nadia upstairs with the boys.”
When they were gone, I posted up at the base of the stairs with Kingston. It was only then that I remembered I should be afraid as well. Through the windows to the backyard, we could see the others lined in front of the door. Denny, Connell, and Dylan had already stripped down and shifted. They crouched low to the ground, ready to pounce at the first sign of attack, in a crescent around Xander, who stood scanning the tree line with Dylan’s gun tucked under his arm.
Save for Nadia and her skillet, if the other wolves broke through and managed to get inside, Kingston and I would be the last line of defense.
That was when the fear finally took hold.
If our enemies made it inside, I knew it would only be because Xander was already dead. Dylan, Connell, and Denny, too.
I held my breath and gripped the knife so tightly my knuckles turned white. The moments passed like time was suddenly moving through quicksand. Every second seemed to stretch on and on while we waited for the attack to hit, as though a dozen secret bonus seconds had been shoved into the space between each.
When the stillness at the tree line finally broke, the opposite occurred. Everything moved so quickly, I barely had time to process it all until it was done.
If I’d blinked, I would have missed it. A massive gray wolf pounced from the cover of the brush. Three quick cracks as Xander fired the gun.
The wolf hit the earth hard, bouncing once, then rolling to a stop. Xander’s darts had caught it in the middle of its leap. It tried to rise but faltered. Tried again and fell.
It didn’t get back up.
“Stay here,” I told Kingston and ventured back toward the door.
“Hey, no!” Kingston called after me. “If there’s any more of them out there—”
“There aren’t. Denny said he only smelled one. I’ll keep my distance,” I promised. “I just want to see if the darts worked.”
Outside, Xander and the others were already approaching the fallen gray wolf. It must have been the intruder Denny had smelled. A lone wolf. A scout, maybe? The howls we’d heard suggested that there had been a skirmish. I spied a ragged wound along the wolf’s hind leg, which stained its rump red.
But where were Luke and Mandy? If this wolf had made it to us…
A sudden chill coiled tightly in my stomach.
