I’m not even embarrassed or mad. I’ve switched to automatic pilot. I just want to get up off the floor.
I flick a chunk of potato off my calf and push up until I’m sitting upright. The aisle’s narrow, and the table top is too high to use for leverage. There’s not enough room to do my usual sitting to standing routine. It’s gonna be awkward as hell getting back on my feet. Good thing my feelings are switched to off.
I’ll feel the humiliation later.
Maybe I can grab a chair leg?
“Lochlan, what the fuck? She’s got a bad leg, asshole.” Gael abandons the fight and trots over. He elbows past a gawking Cheryl and bends over, grabbing me under the arms and hoisting me up with zero finesse.
For a second, I feel a flash of gratitude. And then Killian howls so loud that the plates rattle on the tables. He leaps from his chair, transforming into the wolf mid-air, and Haisley goes flying, landing on her butt a few feet away.
I don’t have time to do more than tense before Killian’s silver wolf bowls into Gael. Everyone scrambles for distance.
Gael flings me out of the way as Killian’s wolf smashes him into the B-roster table. Laminate cracks. People scream and scatter. Half of B-roster, including Conor, shifts. The other half freezes, cowers, and shows their necks.
The past and present collide. Snarls, cries, shouts, and blood. I freeze, too.
And then Ashlynn Kelly—who I hadn’t even noticed tonight—seizes my forearm and uses her whole weight to drag me across the floor, out of the way.
Gael somehow manages to shift. His wolf is big, but he’s nowhere near Killian’s weight class. Gael is so out-matched, he might as well be another species. A cat fighting a lion. Blood spurts, fur flies. Screams and howls fill the lodge.
“He’s gonna kill him,” Ashlynn pants.
We’re huddled behind an overturned table, stuck between a wall and the fight. Packmates in human form have clustered along the far wall. The lieutenants have all shifted. They’re circling, darting forward, trying to distract Killian’s wolf from Gael’s flagging body, but they’re uncertain, and the wolf pays them no mind.
Killian is mauling the smaller male. Gael’s wolf is limp, head bent to show his neck, his flanks rising and falling rapidly as blood pools around him. The fight was over before it began, but Killian’s wolf is unsatisfied. He growls ferociously, shaking the rafters, and then he paces, taking lazy swipes at Gael’s prone carcass.
“Do something,” Ashlynn hisses at me. Like what? Like a rodeo clown or those guys who distract the bull from a matador?
Killian’s wolf plants a paw on Gael’s bloody haunch and howls. It’s a warning. Everyone bends the neck.
He bares his fangs, and I can see clear as day what he’s going to do next. He’s going to rip out Gael’s throat.
Gael helped me.
Out. My wolf paws at her walls.
This is wrong. This is bad.
“I can’t watch.” Ashlynn buries her face in my shoulder.
Let me out.
I don’t know what else to do, so I let my wolf come, bracing myself. She’s so small. There’s nothing she can do against a giant.
My bones crack, my muscles tear, and there’s the strange pulsation as my heightened senses come online. The shift is over more quickly this time, and it hurts less.
At first, my wolf does nothing. She’s totally calm. She sniffs the air a few times, and then she trots out from behind the overturned table as if she doesn’t have a care in the world.
She’s trembling inside. We’re trembling. But she isn’t afraid. Not of him. She’s terrified of what he’ll do. She’s also kind of—irritated with him.
She stands at the edge of the open floor, careful not to get blood splatter on her paws. She’s panting. Despite it all, she’s happy to be out. She’s happy to see him.
Mate.
Inside, I steel myself. My breath stills.
Killian’s wolf falls silent. He glares at her, every inch bristling with righteous indignation, and then he surveys the pack through narrowed, golden slits, reveling in his dominion over all of us. He raises his muzzle to the ceiling and howls, a ferocious bellow of power and command.
Submit.
Every packmate bends lower. The reek of piss and terror assails my nose.
My wolf kind of checks out what’s going on behind her, and then she sits, careful of her bad back leg. She doesn’t cower or run. The happy idiot plops down on her rump and begins to lick herself.
I like her. We’re gonna die, but she does not care. She’s not gonna let Killian’s wolf see her sweat.
Killian’s wolf howls again, louder, the command now an imperative.
Submit.
She blinks up at him and lets out a snippy little yip, the kind of bark a dam gives her pup when he’s testing her nerves.
Killian’s wolf growls in the back of his throat, and then he bounds off Gael’s prostrate form and stalks toward us, fur bristling, the tips tinted red.
My wolf better know what she’s doing. She’s not as cool as she’s acting. Our heart’s racing, and butterflies are zooming in our belly. Butterflies is a weird reaction to imminent death. I hold my breath.
Killian’s wolf butts our shoulder with his muzzle. Mine snaps her teeth, barely missing him on purpose. Oh, my sweet Fate. He could kill us with a swipe of his paw. He could literally bite our head off, and my wolf is nipping at him. She is moon mad.
Behind us, Ivo and Tye dart forward and drag Gael’s wolf away. Gael is young, and his shifter healing is at its peak. His injuries aren’t fatal, but it looks horrible. A few feet away, Gael shifts, shrugging the other males off so he can walk away under his own steam.
Killian’s wolf butts me again. I can’t understand what he wants. My wolf licks herself and ignores him, although she’s—we’re—amped up almost past our endurance.
I don’t know what to do.
Killian’s wolf butts us a third time, harder. My wolf huffs and grazes his side with her teeth. It’s a brief nip. Perfunctory. Irritated and indulgent.
And the air changes. The big wolf’s golden eyes fade to dusky blue. There’s a crack of bones, and Killian’s movements are masked by the weird fast-forwarding effect as he flip-shifts. In a split second, he’s looming above my wolf, buck naked, fists balled, every muscle tight and cast in sharp relief.
His teeth are bared. He’s furious.
He doesn’t waste a second. He scoops my wolf up in his arms like a naughty pup and strides toward the doors.
“Shift!” Killian commands.
My wolf instantly abandons our body. I barely stifle a scream as our spine breaks and reforms. It’s over in less than a minute this time, and the hardest adjustment is the return of color vision and the dulling of my sense of smell. I have to blink and sneeze a few times before the world comes back into focus.