A crow with a circle of white feathers around his neck came flying through the window pane, and after him sailed a black wolf. Aw, mother fucker! There went Trina’s one request.
Well, the cavalry had arrived. Like he needed help. Kade grunted under a blow and then spun, pummeled the guy’s face a few times before he dropped like a sack of stones. Ethan, his stepbrother and Alpha was probably, he didn’t know, pecking someone’s eyes out like crows did, and he could see Leah clear as day, her black wolf ripping into the shoulder of that blond chode who had pulled him away from Trina’s lips. Ha. She looked like she was gonna kill him. And by the bar, a massive, lethal mountain lion had her front claws wrapped around a guy who was screaming bloody murder as she sank her teeth into him. He Changed into a giant gray wolf, but Trina didn’t back down a bit. The wolf bit into her and shook hard, but she slapped him with one powerful paw, and he went sprawling into a row of bar stools like she was bowling. Holy shit, this was awesome. Kade stood there looking from one shifter fight to another. He got blasted across the jaw by some short guy built like a tank, but he just laughed and spat blood onto the floor. Another wolf Changed, and inside of him, a snarl rattled his entire body. Uh oh.
He couldn’t Change. Couldn’t. No one in here would survive, Trina included. His wolf wasn’t okay.
Kade backed toward the door just as two mottled brown wolves charged him. The snapping of his own bones sounded, and he hunched against the pain in his hands as the Change began. No, no, no!
The wolves leapt, and he gritted his teeth as he was thrown backward into the door. The barrier became nothing but splinters exploding around them.
There were red and blue lights blinding him, and sirens that hurt his ears, but it wasn’t louder than the roaring of his animal in his head. Everything was overwhelming his senses. Everything hurt as he fought to slow the Change down. “Trina,” he choked out to the gorgeous, sandy-colored cougar stalking out of the bar toward him. Her ears were flattened, and her lips were pulled away from long, curved canines in a hiss as she zeroed in one of the wolves Kade was fighting.
She hadn’t seen his wolf yet though, and he didn’t want her to. Not ever. “Trina, run,” he choked out in the seconds before the monster tore out of him.
Pain burned through his neck where a cream-colored wolf, Darius, latched on and was shaking him. He didn’t know where the other two were now, nor did he care. One wolf at a time. One death at a time. Kade went to work, and he wouldn’t stop until there was only a pile of bodies left.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Fire burned from stabbing pain at his ribs and hind quarters. Someone was shooting him with something…needles? Fire, fire…fire. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think straight, and his body was going numb.
He fought as long as he could, put his teeth on that wolf as much as he could because he was determined to take him down with him…
The second he lost feeling in his paws, Kade hit the ground hard, his jaws still latched onto Darius’s throat. The Alpha wasn’t dying fast enough…but if Kade could just hold on…
But as the wolf drew a a long, ragged breath, Kade’s body seized…and he died first.
Chapter Four
Trina’s head was killing her. Must’ve been the tranquilizers that were giving her one gnarly hangover. She buried her face in her hands and squeezed her eyes tightly closed, but that didn’t help the stabbing pain behind her eyes. Not even a little.
Animal control had apparently been training the cops in Darby, but she was pretty sure they’d damn near overdosed Kade with those tranquilizers.
In the cell beside her, which was really a metal-barred cage underneath the precinct, lay a massive gray and white wolf. He was facing away from her and lying in a crimson puddle on the concrete floor of his cage. She checked to make sure he was breathing every few seconds. She wanted to kill whoever shot him with three tranqs. But then, maybe that’s what it took for a shifter like him. Kade had still damn near killed that other wolf, even drugged up. She’d never seen anything like him. He was the definition of power and violence. Of bloodlust. His silver eyes had gone empty the second after he’d told her to run.
Kade really was crazy.
Being a rogue did that to some animals, especially dominants.
And Kade was a beast. The wolf he’d been fighting was none other than Darius Wulfe, Alpha of the Wulfe Clan. And Kade had bested him. If he had wanted to take the Clan, he’d won that right tonight with almost no effort.
She’d never seen a monster like Kade, and that was saying something. Her New Darby Clan was allied with the Two Claws Clan, and they were bear shifters with very little control.
Another breath. Thank God.
“What happened?” Ethan Blackwood said in a raspy voice from the cell on the other side of her.
His long hair on top was mussed, and he was on hands and knees, his fists clenched on the concrete as he swayed. Beside him, a very naked Leah stretched and said, “Good morniiiiing,” like she was in a bed and breakfast instead of jail.
Another breath from Kade. Thank God.
“Morning,” she said to Leah, wincing as the volume of her own voice made her head hurt worse.
Leah stopped stroking Ethan’s full beard long enough to look over at Trina and smile. “Are we in prison?”
“We’re under the Darby Precinct in the shifter containment room—”
“Owooooooo,” came a muffled howl through the walls.
“Or,” she corrected herself, “one of the shifter containment rooms.” She frowned at the closed metal door on the other side of the room. Apparently, the Darby Police Department had been expanding their shifter retention area. How many of the Wulfe Clan had they arrested? She couldn’t remember in the chaos who got tranquilized. She hadn’t been able to take her eyes off Kade until she’d blacked out.
“Babe!” Leah exclaimed, sitting up straight with a smile bright enough to light up the whole room. “I’m an official outlaw now! I’m a rebel! I have a rap sheet!”
Ethan drawled, “It’s equivalent to spending a night in the drunk tank but—”
“It counts! I’m bad to the bone now,” Leah murmured. “I need leather pants, and a tattoo.”
Ethan snorted and pulled her close, hugged her up tight. “Woman, what am I gonna do with you?”
“Reverse cowboy?”
Oh God, Trina’s head hurt even worse now. “Okay, well you two are gross,” Trina murmured, rubbing her forehead. “There is a pile of clothes over there.” She gestured to her own orange jumpsuit. “Not the most fashionable, but it’ll hide your nethers.”
“Why would we hide those?” Leah asked. “Being a nudist is the best part of being a shifter.”
Ethan was chuckling now. It was weird seeing such a stoic man look…happy. While in jail. Outlaws were some crazy motherfuckers.
Another breath. Thank God.
“You should probably move away from the bars,” Ethan warned her as he made his way to the neatly folded garments by his cell door.
Trina was leaning her face against the cold metal, watching Kade’s wolf. “Why?”
“Because he’s hunting you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he ain’t asleep anymore. Move!” Ethan yelled, his voice echoing through the dim room.
Trina gasped as Kade’s wolf flew into motion and charged her bars. She scooted out of the way just as his muzzle made it through and one of his canines left the faintest scratch on her arm.
Crab crawling backward, Trina didn’t stop until her shoulder blades hit the cell bars that connected her cage to Ethan and Leah’s. On the other side of the cage, Kade was going insane, eyes almost white and empty, gnashing his sharp teeth, his snarls filling the basement space, his dominance permeating every air molecule until it became hard to drag in a breath.
Panting in horror, she asked Ethan, “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s a killer,” the new Alpha of the Blackwood Crow Clan answered simply.
“But…he kissed me,” she murmured, feeling slapped by the hatred in his eyes.