Where Wild Things Roam

Disaster

Ian    

Locating Jack talking up a couple of his previous conquests, I drag Darby toward him as quickly as I can without making her run. Stopping near a tree under a light where she’s easily visible to Jack’s security group, I tell her, “Call Tessa and wait here. I’ll let Jack know we’re taking our leave.”

Nodding, she leans her back against the tree, staring down at Kassandra’s strange gift on her finger.

Interrupting Jack as politely as I can, I pull him aside to tell him our plan.

Before I can speak, both of us flinch hard, exhaling sharply and clutching at the vicious sledgehammer blow landing near our lower ribs. Though we practiced this using metal—recognizing when a ward is breached—practice felt nothing like reality.

Through the pack link, Jack blasts his commands— Vamp attack! Protect the Luna! —and his eyes follow mine in Darby’s direction.

She still waits, alone and unprotected, by the tree, only just seeming to recognize the alarm of the ward.

“Darby!” I shout and her startled eyes turn to me, her fingers instinctively fanning toward the ground, summoning magic. Backing towards the tree, she stumbles, knocking herself to her knees and I hear her cry out in pain.

A few feet away, I see the waver in the air, like heat rolling off asphalt in the hot sun, and the tell-tale red-black smoke as a cloaked vampire ports in. Inside my head, the magical alert screams maddeningly, exponentially compounding the confusion.

But beside me, Jack—every-ready warrior general— is already shifting. I pray that his few seconds faster shift and my warning to Darby is enough because I know already that the vamp is too close to her.

I won’t get there in time.

Muscles bunching, Jack’s great gray wolf leaps towards the vampire, but I can see it still won’t be fast enough to keep him from getting a hand on her. Our last hope is that he’s slow to port.

The thought infuriates me and the surge of adrenaline into my bloodstream fuels my transformation, my hulking black wolf half emerging more quickly than he ever has.

Terrified screams erupt around the packed plaza as Jack’s team starts shifting and pandemonium explodes around us. People scatter in every direction, tripping over one another and falling, calling in panicked voices and frightened cries to separated family members, and other shifters start transitioning in bewildered response to our alarm.

Launched like a missile from somewhere behind Darby, a large black and white blur flies towards the greasy vampire without warning. Catching the filthy skeletal monster by the throat, the force of it knocks them away from Darby and there’s a loud smack and a shrill screech as the vampire’s body hits the ground. Jack’s wolf wrenches his body violently to follow his target.

As the black and white wolf gives a hard shake of its head, I hear the sickening snap as the vamp’s neck breaks and an instant later, the wet popping of ribs as hundreds of pounds of gravity-boosted solid muscle timber wolf smashes down on the vile creature’s chest like a piano dropped from ten stories, driving the splintered bones into its vital organs.

Leaping towards Darby, I land between her and Jack just as two lanky Mexican wolves, hackles raised and teeth bared, their golden eyes searching for new danger, box her in against the tree.

 Sean’s question rattles in my head.

Struggling to her feet, Darby limps towards me. Burying her fingers tightly in my ruff, she pulls herself onto me and I smell blood.

“I’m cut—I fell on something sharp and with metal. The vampire didn’t touch me.”

 Jack roars.

 I surge towards the packhouse, the MacOmb brothers’ wolves flanking me and, as we pass him near the pavilion, David’s wolf covers our retreat.

We’re passing the hotel when the small black and white wolf catches up to me.

**

Jack    

With a sound of revulsion, she drops the vampire’s body, its neck bent at a stomach-turning angle.

 **

Sean    

I know it’s incensing Silas, but I can’t stop myself following her. In a matter of minutes, the fae Luna, Darby, has bewitched me more than any woman ever has.

It’s not merely that she’s gorgeous, though she is. She’s got kickin’ curves and the face of an angel, with the most startling golden-green eyes that tip up at the corners and seem to suck you into their bottomless depths.

But her lips—I can’t tear my eyes from them. They’re so full, rouged a dark pink and glossed so they shine like someone’s kissed her senseless.

Which is exactly what I’d like to do to her. Among other things.

She smells like the superblooms that come to the desert when years of drought break after regular steady rains. As temperatures rise, decades old latent seeds under the desert floor burst open, producing a spectacular display and perfuming the air with their rare and intoxicating fragrances.

Supposedly, she’s mated to the Candlewood Alpha, but possessive as he is, she bears no mate scar, and neither does he.

Not that I know what to do with that information. Alpha Ian is a beast of a man, built taller and more powerful than any I’ve ever seen. If he says that she’s his, without her rejecting him, there isn’t much hope that that’s likely to change. And she doesn’t seem at all inclined to reject him.

As I follow her around the plaza with him, I know she feels my presence—when she looks about, unerringly, those wide fae eyes of hers fall on me, but I keep my distance, just watching.

A part of me clenches, murky and raging, when the Alpha pulls her delicate body into a dark portico and pins her, ravaging her beautiful mouth. It’s a deliberate display, both public and private with me as its object. But if anything, the scent of her arousal at his rough treatment fuels me more.

As it happens, I’m watching Alpha Ian and his Triumvir from near the pavilion when Silas finds me in the crowd again. “Where have you been?”

“I—uh. Well, I—uh—I was—was talking to someone.”

There’s an insistent tickle in a vague, brotherly corner of my mind—that it should interest me that my normally smooth, subtle brother is stuttering and stumbling with words when asked to account for his whereabouts—but that’s when the attack begins. My senses hit high alert seeing both Ian and Jack bend, wincing hard, and clutch at their abdomens like they’ve been gut punched simultaneously.

“What the hell?” Silas’ eyes dart about the plaza. “Something’s struck a bunch of them at the same time!”

“The Luna!”

He faces her as I do. “s**t! She’s unprotected!”

As brothers, our shifts happen similarly, and nothing like the blazing speed of the Candlewood Triumvir’s. But I’m pleased to see my rate’s comparable to the Alpha’s, even if the enormous black wolf of his dwarfs each of us by probably two hundred pounds.

The plaza is mayhem, people screaming and crashing into one another and shifters all over it transforming without really knowing why. Silas and I sprint towards the Luna, heads down and long legs eating up the ground.

 I reply as we barrel towards her, parting in sync to box her in where she struggles at the tree. The alpha turns menacing yellow and green eyes upon us for a second, quickly discerning we aren’t part of the threat.

Forcing herself to her feet, the faery staggers towards Alpha Ian, dark blood staining her dress and pouring down her leg from a gash near her knee.

Silas seeks direction.

As the two of us surge forward flanking him carrying Darby, a she-wolf with unusual black and white markings catches up with us, keeping pace with our larger wolves until we reach the pack house.