Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
Ryan
My claws tore through flesh and bone, the satisfying resistance giving way as I ripped through another attacker.
Blood sprayed across my fur, hot and viscous, but I ignored it.
My entire being was focused on one thing: eliminating these fuckers as quickly as possible.
I needed to get back to that barrier. Back to Mai.
Our mate bond flared through me—another contraction, harder, longer.
My vision whitened at the edges. A growl ripped loose, and I hurled the next wolf into a tree so hard that bark exploded.
I had never been this fucking angry. They’d invaded our territory, threatened my Pack, and now stood between me and my mate. Me and my pups.
I would tear apart every last one of them.
Derek and Sofia had found each other in the chaos, positioning themselves back-to-back in the center of the yard.
They moved as if they shared a single mind—Sofia ducking as Derek spun to punch an attacker over her head, Derek dropping to one knee as Sofia pivoted over his shoulder to deliver a roundhouse kick to an attacker’s temple.
Carlito patrolled the fringe, keeping attackers away from the barrier, his movement calculated, cold, and ruthlessly efficient. I heard the wet crack of a collapsing windpipe as he threw a throat punch at an attacker.
Another flare of pain from Mai, and for a split second, I lost focus. It was like I could feel every muscle in her body tightening, could hear her heartbeat racing alongside my own.
That moment of distraction cost me. A heavy body crashed into my side, claws raking across my ribs. I roared, twisting to grab my attacker. A tall male with a scarred face.
He laughed, like I was missing the joke. “You can’t stop what has been set in motion.”
I didn’t bother responding. My claws disemboweled him as I shook him like a rag doll until his body went limp in my grasp.
Jase flashed across my periphery. He feinted right, then spun left, dropping into a baseball slide between an attacker’s legs.
As he came up behind them, he launched himself onto their back, wrapping his arms around their throat in the sleeper hold I’d seen Carlito drill into him a thousand times.
The attacker went limp, and Jase dropped him, already hunting his next target before the body hit the ground, that eager light in his eyes I’d seen since he was a kid—half-excited, half-terrified, but completely committed.
At the seam of the barrier, the earth shivered. Esme was on one knee, palms pressed to the ground. The lawn trembled—then split. Fissures shot out in jagged lines, swallowing wolves to the waist while thick roots punched up and cinched around shins. Anyone who tried to wrench free just sank deeper.
Jem stood over her. No wasted motion. He snapped a wrist with a twist, collapsed a knee with a heel, chopped a throat.
A wolf leaped at Esme, teeth bared; Jem met it midair, caught its jaw with one hand, and drove his fist into its stomach.
Then Jem spiked it into the dirt hard enough to rattle teeth.
Esme didn’t look up; the earth kept answering her—cracks skittering, sod hardening to stone wherever she flicked two fingers, trusting Jem to protect her.
“Ryan! I think we’re making progress!” Wally called.
Thomas had found a sledgehammer somewhere and was bringing it down against the barrier with all his strength. Wally, arm still in its silk sling, was throwing rocks at the fracture with grim determination.
I sprinted toward them; we had to get this barrier down. Now.
“RYAN! BEHIND YOU!” Derek’s warning shout had me spinning round, muscles tensed for another attack, but what I saw froze me in place.
The bodies of our enemies—the ones we’d just killed—were moving. Twitching. Rising.
The woman whose spine I’d shattered crawled upright, vertebrae snapping back into place one by one. A male I’d split open across the ribs exhaled a wet rattle as bone pushed skin back out from the inside.
“You can’t stop what’s been set in motion,” he coughed, grinning.
“What. The. Fuck?” Carlito breathed, his voice tight with disbelief.
“They’re regenerating,” Derek said.
I went still, locking the panic down. We couldn’t kill them. “We need a new strategy,” I growled.
“Ryan.” Thomas’s voice was urgent from where he stood by the barrier. “We need to get back in there. Now. She could be delivering any minute.”
I could feel it through our bond—another contraction ripped through Mai, longer and more intense than the last. Time was running out.
Fuck! I had to get to her.
I spun back to the barrier, my eyes scanning the yard, and my gut twisted. We were already surrounded again. At least thirty of them had regrouped.
I looked at my brother, at Sofia, Wally, Thomas, and the others. If they all turned to fight, maybe they could hold the line long enough for me to break through. I mapped the deaths in a heartbeat—Wally first if the line broke, then Thomas when he stayed to cover him, Jase bleeding out.
Derek’s expression went calculating. “Ryan, get through the barrier. Get to Mai. We’ll hold them off for as long as we can.”
“They’ll overwhelm you,” I said, the admission rough in my throat.
The choice crystallized with brutal clarity: I could save my mate and children, or I could save my Pack. Either way, people I loved would die.
Then I heard it—engines approaching. Cars screeched into the yard, headlights throwing a spotlight across us all.
Doors slammed open as Pack members poured out—not just enforcers, but shopkeepers, mechanics, office workers.
Ordinary Pack members who’d come to fight for Mai and our pups.
Maxine from the grocery store charged with a cast-iron skillet and dropped an attacker to a knee with the first swing.
Old Pete flashed a kitchen knife he probably picked up from his own hardware store.
Even Julie and Brian, who worked at the Bottley Bar with Sofia, were there, yelling as they sprinted into the fray.
A pickup fishtailed into the yard, high beams washing the regenerating bastards blue-white.
Mason vaulted from the driver’s seat as one of the corpses finished knitting itself together.
Mason stared at the body as it rose to its feet, head tilting back into position with a sickening crack.
His eyes widened for just a fraction of a second before he casually backhanded the creature, sending it flying into a shrub.
“I leave this Pack for five minutes and you’ve got zombie werewolves,” he drawled, Shya ghosting out the other side. “Typical.” Behind them, more cars arrived with a dozen of their enforcers.
Hope flared in my chest. I don’t think I’d ever been more glad to see my brother.
We were the Three Rivers Pack; we’d take down anyone who came against us.
“Ryan!” Esme called from where she kneeled by the barrier, her hands tracing its outline. “Strike now. All together.”
“Go!” yelled Shya as she and Mason turned to the regenerating corpses. “We’ve got this.”
“NOW!” I roared.
We struck as one—my claws, Derek’s fists, Sofia’s knives, Thomas’s sledgehammer, all hitting the barrier as Esme’s magic slammed into it at the same time.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the barrier cracked. The fracture lines spread rapidly, racing across the dome’s surface like lightning.
“Again!”
We hit it again, and the barrier shuddered violently.
Through our bond, I felt Mai’s determination, her fear, her fierce protective instinct for our unborn children. I channeled all of it into my next blow.
The barrier shattered.
Fragments of magic shot up into the air as I charged through the opening.
The house, the stairs were a blur; the hallway narrowed to a tunnel.
Behind me, Derek and Sofia’s footsteps. But all that mattered was ahead.
Mai’s scent grew stronger as I raced down the hallway to our bedroom.
I could smell her pain, her fear, but more than anything, her defiance.
I hit the bedroom door with my shoulder—wood exploded—and Jonas staggered back as I filled the frame. There. Glenn. Sian. Mai, bent over, one hand clasped protectively over her stomach, a scalpel in her other fist.
“Get the fuck away from my mate and my children.”