“We need to get her. Now.” Ryder took a shallow breath. “If she’s unconscious, she can’t protect herself.”
“That’s probably one reason they used the damn drug in the first place,” Brandon added. “That and getting her here so quietly. You saw Leah when she woke up in our medical bay. She fought back. She’d fight now if she could. Damn bastards.”
Ryder let out a breath through his nose. “Bram, you go left, Brandon, you go right. I’ll go down the damn center since they’re not watching the tents. We get Leah out and find out whatever information we can about them from their uniforms or spare notebooks, and all of that. Then we get out of here. I don’t trust this.”
“Got it,” Bram said. “We meet at the Talon den if we get separated? It’s closer than the Redwoods.”
“Deal.”
The three prowled toward the camp in human form. He knew they’d shift if things went to shit, but he hoped they wouldn’t have to. Ever since the Unveiling, they’d been careful not to become their wolves outside the den wards. They couldn’t trust the human factions that wanted their deaths, nor could they trust the merely curious ones that got too close. There might be humans who thought the wolves should be left alone, but they weren’t the ones in this camp. They weren’t the ones with his mate tied to a damn pole about to be burnt at the stake.
“Luis said this one needed to die. That she would be an example for all witches,” one of the humans said. “So we’ll kill her now and live stream it so the others know not to fuck with Humans First. She’s not human. She doesn’t deserve to breathe our air.” He let out a breath. “And when we’re done here, we’ll find that arrogant prick of a witch and kill him, too. We might be doing his bidding now because it’s easy, but our doing anything he wants won’t last.”
Ryder held back a growl even though his wolf raged. He wanted to kill them all. That fucking Coven leader. Leah’s father had orchestrated all of this. What the fuck? He shouldn’t have been surprised, but hell. This was too much. And Ryder had heard of Humans First before. He knew it was a small group of humans who wanted everyone different to die. It seemed their propaganda was working because this was a lot more organized than it had been in the past. He’d tell Gideon all of this, of course, but first, he needed to get Leah down.
He couldn’t risk them lighting the fire.
He could hear Bram in one tent, hopefully gaining any intelligence he could. Ryder knew the others couldn’t hear it because they hadn’t looked over. Bram was being damn quiet, but Ryder was wolf.
He hoped Brandon was on the other side, doing something similar. However, Ryder couldn’t take on eight armed men at once and save Leah at the same time. Things were about to get tricky.
“Burn! Let the witch burn!”
Ryder let out a growl then. Low. Deadly. The humans turned to him, and he sprinted toward them. He was so fast that they hadn’t had a chance to shoot at him before he had two of the men down. He didn’t kill them, not with the live stream they’d spoken about going, but he did knock them out. Bram and Brandon came forward, knocking out a couple more before the guns began firing.
Ryder cursed as a bullet grazed his side. It burned, but he ignored it. He was about to hit another human when the man closest to Leah held up a match and grinned.
“Too fucking late, asshole!” He let the match fall, and the wood beneath Leah’s feet caught flame. She remained unconscious, the ropes around her chest and waist keeping her upright though her head lolled.
Ryder did the only thing he could do and shifted. He tore through his clothes, his bones breaking, tendons snapping. He’d never shifted this fast in his life, and he didn’t know why he could at that moment, but he’d take it. He knew he might have fucked over his family by becoming wolf on camera, but he didn’t care. Not right then. He couldn’t cut through the ropes without fangs and claws, and Leah needed him.
His body screamed in agony as he continued the shift even as he kept moving toward her. He’d never moved like this while shifting before and it only made the pain worse, but he pulled through it. As soon as he could, he leapt up on the burning pile and bit through the ropes, clawing at them at the same time. Bram and Brandon yelled from behind him and he trusted them to take care of the humans while he did this. As soon as Leah was free, she fell forward and he caught her on his back.
“Ryder?” she coughed, her voice sounding drugged.
Thank the goddess.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and climbed on top of him as much as she could. As soon as she was secured as much as possible, he leapt off the pile and landed on burnt paws. He growled but kept running with Leah on his back. He got as far as the trees before she fell off of him. He stopped and shifted back, just as painfully as before. As soon as he was able, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her temple.
“Ryder…”