Chapter 22
Gunner
There’s a unique flavor to a crowd just before a storm.
The gallery’s air was thick with perfume, cologne, paint fumes, and anticipation.
People milled around, drifting from canvas to canvas, pretending to admire the art while searching for someone more important to notice them doing it.
I’d posted up by the bar, careful to nurse a single whiskey so nobody would talk my ear off and ask who the hell I was supposed to be.
In the corner, Harper fielded questions from a woman in a pantsuit who looked like she sold more real estate than God.
Juliet—eight months pregnant and radiant as the full moon—was locked in a deep, animated conversation with Ms. Pearl and half the Dairyville Chamber of Commerce.
Wrecker hovered up in Harper’s office, his “civilian” shirt straining against his biceps, scanning for threats with all the subtlety of a gun turret.
I should have felt invincible. Instead, I was pacing inside my own skin, hands jammed deep in my pockets, doing math in my head.
I watched Brie as she spun through the room, a comet in that sage-green dress, the blue streaks in her hair catching the spotlights every time she turned her head.
She was in her element, and the mate bond hummed low and content through the marrow of my bones.
Every time I checked, there she was—sometimes talking to a buyer, sometimes holding court with Inez and Lysander, sometimes just drifting with a glass of champagne and that proud, nervous smile.
Nothing out of the ordinary, just the slow orbit of a woman finally seeing her dreams catch up.
The string quartet shifted into something baroque and odd, and the crowd started to migrate toward this room for the “curated bites.” She had told me she needed to head up to her private restroom for a moment.
It was the first time all night she’d been out of my sight.
A few minutes later, I glanced over to see Lysander heading up the stairs toward Brie’s office behind her.
I felt a tingle up my spine telling me something was off.
The situation just seemed wrong. I set my whiskey glass on a table and made my way across the gallery.
A local woman stopped me as I was making my way to Brie.
She wanted to ask about beef prices. I gently told her I was only there tonight to support Brie and not talk shop.
She graciously said she understood and hurried away.
One more step and I felt the bond flare white-hot, so suddenly my knees almost buckled.
The wolf in me roared awake. It was pain, raw and unfiltered, not physical but somewhere between a panic attack and being struck by lightning.
My whole body went rigid, and the only thing I could see—burned into the backs of my eyes—was the image of Brie upstairs, terrified, her breath coming in silent, shallow gasps.
The world snapped into a new kind of focus.
I looked up and saw through the smoked glass wall of the mezzanine office, two silhouettes locked together.
I froze just for a moment when Lysander’s form shifted and I saw a hint of something unnatural.
I moved quickly to the stairs with what could be described as inhuman speed.
I shouldered past a pack mom without even registering the yelp.
I took the stairs two at a time, boots skidding across the landing.
I could see through the glass door the two of them in a tight embrace; Brie struggling against Lysander, who had her pinned tight.
His face was turned, blocking hers, but the way he held her was all wrong.
Not like a lover or friend, but like a snake coiling for the kill.
My palms hit the door, but it didn’t budge. The handle was locked, so I braced a shoulder and slammed into it. The cheap hardware popped, and the door flew open with a crack.
“Let her go!” My voice was a snarl, thick with wolf.
Lysander didn’t even look up. His hands were on either side of Brie’s face, thumbs pressed to her cheeks.
Brie’s eyes were rolling, her legs kicking out blindly.
I saw then, in a split second, that Lysander’s lips were moving.
He was whispering something, words slick and venomous.
Her fingers clawed at his suit, desperate to pry him off.
I barreled forward, but Lysander whirled, dragging Brie’s body in front of him as a human shield. He smiled at me, and for the first time that night, there was nothing pretty about him. His eyes were black, not blue, and his skin rippled as if something inside him wanted out.
He tsked, his fingers tightening until Brie whimpered.
Then, impossibly, Lysander’s features began to unravel.
His skin grayed, his lips curled back, and his smile went wider, then wider still, until it split the whole bottom half of his face in a leering crescent.
Horns pushed out through his platinum hair, curving around his skull like a ram.
The suit tore as his body swelled, stretching into something inhuman and terrible, but the hands—those beautiful, manicured hands—never let Brie go.
Brie gasped, found my eyes, and mouthed, “Finn, I’m sorry—”
Lysander jerked her head back, baring her throat.
“You won’t find us,” the demon hissed, voice now a rasp of old coal and fire. “But by all means, try.”
I dove for him, claws out, but the demon king had already started to fade, his whole outline collapsing in on itself like a dying star. There was a shockwave of pressure—heat, the smell of sulfur and burnt roses—and then Lysander, Brie, and every trace of their struggle vanished into thin air.
I hit the floor where they’d been, hands grasping at nothing. I bellowed, a howl so full of pain and rage it rattled the walls. The office was soundproof, but the wolves below heard my cry. Arsenal was already on his way.
I stood shaking, the mate bond a ragged, torn string in my chest. I’d lost her. Not to a rival, not to a bullet, but to a fucking nightmare that wore a pretty boy’s face.
I wanted to run after him, but there was nothing left to chase.
My hands curled into fists. I saw on the desk, Brie’s little box—her gift for Inez, wrapped so neat and perfect. I seized it, hurled it at the wall, and watched it burst open in a cloud of ribbon and shredded cardboard.
Somewhere behind me, footsteps pounded up the stairs. Arsenal, Bronc closing in, their voices tumbling over each other.
But I barely heard them. All I could hear was the echo of the demon’s promise: You won’t find us.
I planted my fist through the drywall, splintering it to the stud, and let the pain burn the rage down to something I could use.
She was alive. The bond still throbbed, faint and far, but unbroken.
So long as she breathed, I would find her.
Even if it meant following the bastard straight into hell.
I was halfway down the stairs, hands slick with drywall dust and the tang of my own blood, when my wolf tried to rise up.
My vision tunneled gold and black. The world slowed—every sound, every motion warped by that predatory clarity that only came when a shift was right behind your ribs.
I heard my boots hitting hardwood, the string quartet below playing on, and somewhere behind it all, the thin, echoing voice of Parker.
“He got her, he took her!” Her voice was a saw blade, chewing through the hush like a coyote through bone.
I kept my head down so no humans would notice my blazing gold lupine eyes as I all but staggard over to the security office on Harper’s side.
My mind couldn’t let go of what I’d just seen.
His demon claws on my mate. Touching her.
I wanted to rage, to destroy everything in my path.
It was the worst time to be surrounded by humans.
I zeroed in on the security booth. Wrecker was hunched over the monitors, his face ghost-pale, sweat dripping down his neck even though he never sweated in the worst firefights.
His fingers hammered the keyboard with a precision I’d never seen, his eyes flicking back and forth between feeds as he muttered, “Gotta save this, gotta save this, he’ll try to nuke it from the inside, fuck—” He didn’t look up when I came up behind him, but Parker did.
Her face was bloodless, lips drawn back in a snarl that would have been funny if I weren’t seconds from tearing someone’s throat out.
“Gunner,” she panted, “it’s all over the screens. Maltraz, he just…he just…” She gulped air, shaking.
Wrecker cut her off, still not looking. “She’s alive, Finn. I had eyes on her for three more seconds after the blink. But then the camera goes dead. Black. Nothing.”
I leaned in, every muscle shaking, and watched the replay.
It was clear, the angle from the corner, but there it was—Brie’s body going limp as Lysander’s face opened up and the horns split out from his skull.
The air shimmered, the glass warped, and then both of them blinked out, leaving a shimmer of smoke and a little rolling box on the desk.
Wrecker saved the two minutes to four different flash drives, shoving one into his pocket, another into the lining of his laptop bag, then a third to Parker with a curt, “Go.” She snatched it and ran, already dialing her phone as she sprinted to her car.
I dropped to my hands and knees, crippled by the loss of my mate and the press of my wolf. I fought it, teeth grinding, the taste of iron thick on my tongue.
Then a pair of hands seized my shoulders. Not rough, but heavy as a mountain. Bronc.
He leaned down, putting his mouth right at my ear. “Look at me.”
I snarled, twisting, but his grip didn’t budge. “Look at me, Finn.”
I looked. Bronc’s blue eyes were ice, and the wolf in him was so close to the surface I could smell the danger, the authority. He locked my gaze, his Alpha voice rolling out in a wave that crashed over the chaos and rooted me to the floor.