Chapter 37 Aiden
AIDEN
With a wild swing of my saber, I removed the third Ripper’s head. “That’s the last one!” I shouted.
None of us were unscathed, either, but as I took stock of my brother’s wolf, Wyatt’s bear, and our basilisk, I was satisfied nothing appeared to be life threatening. Their lacerations, bruises, and broken bones would heal rapidly if they remained in animal form.
A guttural, terrifying roar sounded from deep in the forest.
Beast ears perked up immediately, and we all stared into the darkness of the trees.
“That sounded like a shifter,” I said. “Not a wraith.”
Heath’s wolf bobbed his huge head.
Another ground-shaking roar sounded—this one the unnatural pitch of a wraith.
Heath snarled.
I swore. “That’s another Giant. And it’s coming from the direction that’s closer to campus.”
Why the fuck hadn’t it come straight for us—a regular smorgasbord of powerful Prime shifter souls—like the rest of the infestation that’d made it over the walls?
My stomach bottomed out as a frigid jolt of fear hit me.
“Avery,” I whispered.
Elijah took off, his powerful serpent body winding through the trees with the ease of a gazelle.
Wyatt and Heath bolted after him.
I set my sword down and stripped off my clothes. I’d move faster as my jaguar, and I could use even the short stint in beast form to heal the gouges I’d taken to the stomach when a Ripper had caught me with its claws. I also suspected I had several broken ribs.
My jaguar pressed to the surface, and the sharp pinch of the shift was over in a blink. My beast was bloodthirsty and ready to kill.
I clamped my jaws around my sheathed blade, and then I sprinted after my quad, my beast’s powerful stride eating up the distance between us in no time at all.
We ran for half a mile, Elijah in the lead, Heath and I side by side behind him, and Wyatt bringing up the rear. We drew closer to the screeching and bellowing of the Giant, my beast brain growing excited with the anticipation of the fight.
My human brain was consumed by terror.
What if it went after her? What if she’s hurt?
The four of us burst into a clearing—a clearing that hadn’t been here an hour ago. Trees had been torn out at their roots and tossed to the ground.
There, among the fallen logs and branches smeared with both the disgusting gray matter of wraith guts and the deep-red blood of a living, breathing beast, was a hideous jackal-headed wraith. A Giant even larger than the one we’d just put down.
Fighting valiantly against it with teeth and claws was the most beautiful beast I had ever seen.
A silver tiger.
Huge—as big as my jaguar and even more muscular.
Ethereal eyes, glowing electric blue as they brimmed with power.
Eyes I knew intimately.
A wave of euphoria broke through the terror.
Mate, my jaguar said.
I felt it with every fiber of my beastly soul. That tiger was my Moon-blessed mate.
My Fated.
The perfect bond I’d been so desperately searching for.
Heath’s wolf howled, his eyes glowing gold. Wyatt met my gaze, and his bear eyes, usually tinged red with rage in a fight, were lit up the brightest emerald.
He roared. Heath howled again.
Elijah’s beast was frozen, almost as if he was in shock—a thing I didn’t know was possible for the basilisk.
They’d felt it too.
That was our mate.
But she was hurt.
Deep red gashes marred her perfect fur. Her muscle was exposed where there was a tear in her shoulder. She limped on a broken hind leg even as she expertly dodged a blow from the wraith’s wicked curved claws.
The wraith limped, too, its movements slow and jerky. My mate had taken an enormous chunk out of its neck, but now she was doing the only thing she could by herself.
Wearing it down. Trying to survive.
We did this to her. I did this to her. I left her because I assumed the beast soul she’d so annoyingly kept hidden wouldn’t compare to any one of ours—that we were enough to draw every wraith in the vicinity to us.
Instead, we left this majestic creature alone.
The tiger rolled sluggishly to her feet. She finally glanced our way, bright blue eyes weary, fading.
She froze.
No!
The wraith slashed at her, its claws aimed at her beautiful tiger face.
Elijah shot at the wraith like a sidewinding bullet.
His basilisk was as tall as the Giant but had only half the body mass.
It didn’t matter. Elijah struck at the wraith, his terrifying jaws locked on the mass of neck the tiger hadn’t taken, and then he wrapped his long body around it, constricting as he took it to the ground and rolling clear of our mate.
The tiger collapsed to the forest floor.
Heath shifted back into a man. “Aiden! We need your blade!”
My jaguar resisted. He wanted to go to his mate.
We have to kill the wraith so she can be safe.
He relented. Fur and claws retracted in an instant, and I was naked and human again. I grabbed my saber from where the jaguar had dropped it on the ground and sprinted for the wraith, which was still thrashing and screeching in Elijah’s clutches.
Heath and Wyatt, both human now, ran for the tiger.
For Avery. Our fucking Fated bond.
Who we’d left alone in a wraith-infested forest when she should’ve been with us, fighting side by side the way she had during our last run against the SWIM. Despite Elijah’s absence, nothing had ever felt so right as that.
And we’d taken that gift and tried to throw it away.
My jaguar yowled, his despair permeating every inch of me.
We had to get her back.
But first, we had to save her life.