“What the hell are you doing?” Ethan demanded from where he was hanging out of the driver’s side open window.
After the girls scrambled into the back, Trina pulled the tailgate closed. She looked through the suicide window, daring any one of those boys to say something.
They all looked defeated, so no arguments from them. Trina crossed her arms and sat between Baily and Leah against the cab of the truck.
As they headed up the road, Leah broke the silence. “Trina, I think this is a very bad idea.”
“Why?”
Leah sighed. “Because you aren’t wearing any pants.”
Trina looked down at her long bare legs splayed out in the bed of the truck. Leah was right. No pants. “Well, that is unfortunate.”
“Now we really can’t get donuts,” Baily muttered.
Trina snorted at the ridiculousness of the last few minutes. She looked over at Bailey who was biting back a smile, too. When Leah cackled, Bailey lost it, and Trina cracked up, too. Everything was a mess. “Okay, maybe I didn’t think this through, but in my defense,” she punched out between her laughter, “it was a very long day and a very long night and I haven’t had my coffee and I got mad at Kade and the boys and…and…”
“You turned into a wrecking ball?” Bailey asked.
“Yes. But I really love how you two crawled right in the back of the truck with me.”
“I didn’t,” Leah piped up between giggling. “You dragged me in here. I wanted to go back to bed. Clearly, one of us is a better friend than the other.” She pointed her finger at Bailey.
The window slid open right behind Trina’s head, and Kade’s hand rested onto her shoulder comfortingly. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
With a sigh, Trina laid her cheek against his warm hand, holding it tight.
Through the window, Kade told her, “Darius has your dad.”
Those four words…she couldn’t make sense of them.
Darius.
Has.
Your.
Dad.
She just sat there, frozen like some stone statue, staring out at the road behind them illuminated by the taillights.
“I was gonna bring him back to you before you woke up,” he murmured.
“Is he okay?” she squeaked out.
“They won’t hurt him,” Bailey murmured. “It’s just one of their plays. They’re weak. They’ve been making decisions that have crippled them little by little. Dad—Darius—he’s not a good Alpha anymore. He hasn’t been for a while. But if they have Cooper, and they’re letting you know? It means he’s the only chess piece they have in position.”
Bailey frowned and sniffed the air. “It also means he’s a diversion. Look.” She pointed into the dark woods. A set of glowing eyes stared back at them.
The truck sputtered, coughed, and eased to a stop.
A single howl pierced the air, and Bailey whispered, “Oh, shit.”
Ethan tried the engine again, but the truck was barely responding. Rike and Kade got out, rushed to the front and popped the hood.
“It has to be the gas line, right?” Kade asked.
“Feels like it,” Rike answered.
“Look,” Leah said low from where she was standing in the bed, staring out over the top of the truck. She was pointing to something on the road ahead.
Trina scrambled up beside her, heart pounding out of her chest.
Just on the edge of the headlight beams, two more sets of glowing eyes appeared.
“Kaaaade,” she warned.
“I hear them,” her mate said solemnly. “Fuck. I bet they cut a notch in all the gas lines in the motorcycles, too. They just needed us to get out here in the middle of nowhere for an ambush. Fuckin’ wolves.” His voice was a snarl by the end, and he slammed the hood of the truck down.
“How many do they have?” Trina asked Bailey as the she-wolf jumped out of the bed of the truck with a snarl in her throat.
She muttered off names. “Mick’s dead, so eight left if Darius’s shit ideas haven’t run more of the Clan off. Picking a fight with the goddamn Blackwoods. Lost his mind.”
“There’s two wolves tied up in the woodshop,” Trina said. Why was she shaking? Oh, right. Because she’d been in a shifter war before, and her entire damn Clan got themselves killed.
“Then six, but look,” Kade said, coming to stand beside Trina. The woods were alive with glowing eyes now. “There’s way more than six wolves hunting us.”
“They must’ve called in more wolf Clans to boost their numbers,” Bailey murmured in an inhuman voice. “Maybe the Kill Jumpers and the Hell Bringer Clans. They both owe the Wulfe Clan blood favors.” Her eyes were glowing like the ones in the woods. Kade’s, too, and Leah’s.
“Hey, Ramsey,” Ethan said into his phone. “The Wulfe Clan has Cooper up at their clubhouse. How fast can you—”
A huge brown wolf slammed into Ethan, and they crashed against the side of the truck so hard the back end skidded to the side.
A white wolf exploded out of Bailey, and Leah pitched forward and fell to all fours before a black wolf tore out of her. Ethan threw the wolf into a tree, but the others were coming now.
“My phone,” Ethan said, searching frantically.
But there wasn’t time to search the dark woods for where it had landed because Ethan and Rike took the full force of three wolves just as they stepped out of the glow of the headlights.
Trina closed her eyes and searched for the mountain lion. She just felt empty, though. There was nothing there. No power, no teeth, no claws, no snarl in her throat… She felt…human.
“Trina, Change!” Kade said, standing between her and two approaching wolves. Bailey and Leah were already in snarling, violent fights of their own. She could barely see them in the dark. Only hear them and see a flash of white fur every second or so.
Lion, where are you? The bullet that had ripped through Kade was sitting in her pocket in his room. She imagined it, imagined holding the bloody thing that had almost taken her mate’s life. But still…no mountain lion.
“Kade,” she said, panicking. “I can’t Change.”
“Baby, you have to,” he murmured, backing her up against the truck as the two mottled black and brown wolves approached, their heads lowered, muzzles wrinkled, gold eyes glowing, teeth gnashing as they growled. “Right now. There’s no more time.”
“I don’t have the lion!”
When Kade glanced over his shoulder for just a split second, his eyes were bone-white. His face was twisted with rage and looked different, looked terrifying, as if he’d already begun his Change. Half man, half monster. Her monster.
“There’s a shotgun under the seat.”
Kade tensed and dove for the wolves. And right before he hit them, his own gray wolf ripped out of him.
And for a moment, Trina was awed into stillness. He latched onto one wolf’s neck and jerked his head back and forth with such power the thing yelped and went limp in his jaws. The other wolf was attacking his back, but if Kade felt it, he showed no signs of pain. He spun and latched onto the wolf’s front leg. Snap.
Three more sets of eyes were running at them fast from the woods.
She’d never been so terrified. She had no weapons. No way to protect herself, no way to protect her friends. No way to help her mate.
“Rike, get help!” Ethan yelled from under two wolves, and with a series of pops, Rike and Ethan Changed into their crows and took to the skies. The crow with a noose of white feathers around its neck returned, diving for the wolves, but the pure black one flew away and didn’t come back. God speed to the crow, because they were grossly outnumbered out here and unprepared. The woods were deafening with the sounds of a snarling, growling, ripping war.
There’s a shotgun under the seat. “Okay,” she whispered, bolting the three steps to the door. She reached for the handle and yanked it open, but it slammed shut again as a wolf blasted against it. The thing landed on the ground and jumped at her, latched onto her arm the second she went to defend her face.
And God, did it hurt.