Pale flecks of blue shimmered in his silver irises as he slowly inhaled. Like he got off on the smell of my fear. And loved playing with his food. “You’re going to die in the dark in a cell. Utterly forgotten and alone.”
“That’s the thing about being in a wolf pack.” I bared my teeth. “You’re never really alone.”
Now, August.
The world went supernova. At the top of the hill, the army of halogen floodlights surrounding the barn exploded into life, searing into my retinas with the force of a thousand burning suns. Behind me, the vampire screamed.
Point for the engineering geeks of the world.
By then I was already charging for the fence at a dead run. I felt the air swirl behind me as he pursued, the cold wrongness of his human smell sending my instincts screaming, my muscles burning as my legs fought to pump faster. I threw myself airborne with all that was left of my strength, leaving the ground a hairsbreadth before he did. The change tore me from my human skin, flesh and sinew splitting to form fur and bone. The wind shrieked in my wolf ears, the world a dizzying swirl of gray, yellow and blue, my vision sharpening just in time to see that I’d cleared the twisted strands of barbed wire below my hind paws. I came down hard on the far side of the fence, tumbling paw over tail across the frozen ground—
—and shifted back to human.
If I’d miscalculated, if I’d failed to bring anything back with me—
I came to rest flat on my back in the snow. The night sky vanished, a dark figure descending over me like Death incarnate, knife outstretched to slit my throat. Raw terror froze the blood in my veins, my vision blurring as the wolf tried desperately to force me to shift back, to lie down quietly and wait to die against every instinct our beast side possessed. Dallas roared in the back of my mind, his mental scream threatening to drown out my own.
But it was Sofia’s calm voice that overrode them all, the clarion memory of every grueling time she’d forced me through the change under the mercy of her power. Sick, shaking and bleeding, I’d transformed my bones, concentrated on the fiber in my clothes, memorized every weapon I would ever need to use by sight, by smell, by weight, and even by taste until I could come back through to the other side with blades, strapped in a vest, loaded down with ammo, and armed to the teeth just like any Tracer. Until I could have performed this task half dead.
Light roared back into the world. My lungs filled with air.
The Glock reformed in my hand.
I fired.
Crows scattered from nearby trees, scything up into the onyx night. The vampire fell to the ground. I drew a silver-tipped stake and stabbed him through the heart. Breathing hard, I scrambled for my phone.
“I wouldn’t do that,” said a cool voice from behind me.
One by one they emerged from behind the trees. The last five vampires. Three males. Two females.
And they had Hayden.
13
Dallas
“WILL YOU SLOW THE HELL DOWN?” West shouted over the howl of the wind.
Flattening my wolf ears in my brother’s direction, not that he could see, or for that matter, cared, I charged up the rocky embankment bordering a steep ravine. A frigid gust slammed into me from the north, pelting my coat with ice and sleet. The temperature was dropping steadily, and we had no cell reception. Once again, I reached out through the bond, feeling for Lacey. Her heartrate was elevated, the fractured images superimposing themselves across my field of vision revealing a nightmarish world of swirling snow and looming shadows. I growled. I never should have let us get separated. If anything happened to her—
A rangy black wolf cut me off at the top of the rise. I bared my teeth. Cal stared me down, eyes flaring amber in the dark, a reminder that even if we were brothers, he was still the pack second. Glowering, I looked away. Footsteps snarled up behind us in the freshly fallen snow.
“We need to regroup.” West gestured to an ice-encrusted live oak with a wicked scar from an old lightning strike. “We’ve passed this same tree three times now.”
Shifting to human, I grabbed a fallen branch and hurled it off into a ravine where it shattered in a spray of ice shards. “This is pointless. We’ve been out here for nearly an hour. There’s a vampire hunting party scouring the woods. And Hayden and Lacey—”
“I can stay here. Keep looking for Topher.”
My fingertips found the edge of Lacey’s claiming mark, the faintest brush opening the bond. Forked branches clawed at the night sky. Fog shrouded the cold black woods, distorting dark from light. A crow shrieked out in the empty void. Lacey gasped, whirling to scan a landscape where every distinguishing feature had been blurred by snow and ice. Through our synched breathing, I felt her begin to run.
“He’s chasing her. He’s… shit. It’s a vamp.” I staggered sideways, images of a fight slamming into my skull. The alcohol was burning off, but even after an hour it still felt like the forest was spinning every time I looked up too fast. My fault. All my goddamn fault. If I hadn’t gotten trashed—
“We’re still in a dead spot.” West cursed, typing furiously on his phone. “August won’t be able to send us coordinates.”
Beside me, Cal shifted to human. “How far are they?”
“I can’t tell. A mile, at least. Due north. Maybe more.”
“Let’s go. West can track Topher. He’s more likely to come to West if he’s alone.”
Lacey’s terror screamed through my blood. Gunshots rang out across the valley. One. Two.
The bond went dark.
“No.” My vision greyed out. The wolf fought to escape from my human skin, rage and grief splitting me in two. I made it twenty feet before Cal slammed me back into the nearest tree, jamming a wiry forearm into my chest. I fought like an animal, kicking and clawing, both of my brothers fighting to hold me down.
Shoving them away, I released a roar of anguish. Desperately, I searched for Lacey in the bond, for some faint phantom whisper of her presence, an echo, no matter how tiny, that would let me know she was safe. Alive.
Nothing. And I realized with a start as Ethan’s rage and grief screamed through our connection that I could no longer feel Hayden, either. My brothers had backed off, standing silently by.
Chest heaving, I lowered my head, addressing West. “You said Topher’s bonded to you.”
West gave me the same look he had the one time I’d suggested he shoehorn a dragon into this really lame, angsty break-up scene he’d been rewriting all night in one of his fics. Like he wanted to set me and my stupid ass hypothetical dragon on fire. “Come again?”
“You’re an Omega. Topher is bonded to you. He’ll come if you call him.”
“Dallas—” Cal started.
“Un-fucking-believable.” West let out a brittle laugh.
“Lacey and Hayden are in danger and we’re out here chasing a ghost. Topher’s the one they’re after. We all know it. If you get him to come to you, the vamps will follow.”
“If I slave him to my will, you mean? Twist my way into his head by force and manipulate every last shred of free agency and emotion he possesses so that he’s a fucking zombie, drooling at my every command? That’s your brilliant idea?”