22. Apollo #2
Helpless as we ran, I pictured Kedi’s smile, always so sexy and mischievous.
Fuck, I missed him so much, with his vibrant hair and glinting piercings, and the way he took care of me in every way.
I’d been so focused on my responsibility to the other hunters that I’d neglected the man that meant more to me than anyone.
I hated so much that I hadn’t even seen him round with our child.
As soon as this was over, I was going to make it up to him.
I was going to lavish so much attention on him that he’d be begging me to leave him alone for five minutes.
Lost in my thoughts, when I caught a whiff of his crisp scent of apples and sap, I thought I was imagining it. But then my wolf whined, and I knew he’d smelled him too. We were close.
But the hunters were closer…
And then, the eerie stillness of the forest was broken with a sharp crack of gunfire and a cry of pain. No!
My wolf dug into his energy reserves and put on a final burst of speed, built from the purest love the universe could’ve gifted me.
We erupted from the trees into a scene of utter chaos.
Shouting, growling, no clear lines drawn in battle.
The peaceful scents of the forest were overwhelmed by gunpowder and the copper tang of blood.
No matter how many hunters there were, the shifters weren’t going down without a fight.
Before my eyes, a massive jaguar pounced on Elder Robert, razor-sharp claws tearing straight through his hunting gear.
I could already see one body lying in the dirt, gray fur stained red, ribs heaving with each breath.
Gods, who was it? Brave Sierra? Sweet, eager Ricky? Reserved Oliver?
When Elder Gabriel swung the barrel of his gun around toward me, my wolf leaped forward.
We didn’t hesitate. This was what my wolf had been waiting for all these years.
A chance for a little payback. We sank our teeth into his arm, his blood pouring over our tongue.
We gave a rough shake of our head, and kept shaking until he cried out, his fingers grappling futilely with our muzzle to try to prise himself free.
Finally, we felt his grip on the gun loosen, and it fell on the ground with a clatter.
When we finally let go, Gabriel fell to his ass with a whimper and shuffled back, cradling his arm to his chest, blood gushing all down his front.
Joel darted forward, as fast as his very-pregnant body could move, and he grabbed the weapon with shaking fingers, looking frantic and lost as he tried to figure out how the hell to work the thing.
He was going to shoot someone by accident if he wasn’t careful!
Finger on the trigger, he hoisted the gun up in one hand, panning the barrel back and forth, unsure of where to aim it without hurting one of our own.
With his other arm, he kept Wick safely behind him as they backed away from the fight.
They seemed to be safe, outside of the hunters’ focus, but where the hell was Kedi?!
All across the clearing, the remains of the pack’s makeshift camp had been trampled. A campfire had been kicked loose of the ring of stones, lighting one of the tents on fire. Dancing light and shadows painted them all in a macabre dance of blood and violence.
There! my wolf yipped. He’d caught sight of our mate on the other side of the clearing.
I wished more than anything I had the time to admire how he’d changed in our time apart, basking in his pregnancy glow, but no such luck. This was war, and I had to believe we would have all the time in the world once this was put to rest.
Kedi might not have been able to shift, but he was wielding an axe like a sexy wood-chopping lumberjack influencer, and his eyes were all wolf.
He took a swing at Castor when the hunter got too close, but Castor stepped back, frowning, arms down at his sides, his hunting knife held loosely in his grip.
He didn’t want to hurt a pregnant man, and if my plan was working, then he had a shifter inside him begging him to stop.
Pater, however, had no such morals.
In the firelight, his grin was all predator’s glinting teeth and eyes bright with menace. And he’d set his sights on my mate.
Go! I shouted at my wolf, but he was already in motion.
Darting around grappling bodies, we lost our footing in the slick melting snow, and for one desperate moment, I thought we would be too late.
But then our claws dug in, muscles flexing, and right as Pater pulled the trigger, we launched ourselves in front of Kedi.
There was no doubt, no regret, as the bullet punched into our shoulder. We fell to the ground with a yelp, warm blood soaking our fur, but we still managed to crawl to Kedi, trying to shield him with our body.
“No!” Kedi cried, cradling our head in his lap, pushing his hands over the wound to try to stem the flow of blood. “Please, no,” he moaned, his tears dripping onto our face.
The shift was pure agony, but if I was going to die, I needed to tell him how much I loved him, that he was my world, through this life and the next.
As muscles shifted to human anatomy, trying to work around the bullet, it felt like shrapnel was tearing through me again, a shiver of searing pain shooting through me.
“Hey, baby,” I grunted out through gritted teeth.
“Why did you do that?” he scolded raggedly, blood leaking through his fingers where he clamped them back over the wound in my chest. “You shouldn’t have done that, you stubborn ass.”
“Kedi, you are my everything. I would die a thousand deaths to know you’re safe,” I vowed, but we didn’t have time for a proper reunion.
I felt him before I saw him. I quickly rolled to face Pater as he aimed the gun at me a second time, this time with the intent to kill. The world spun around me as I struggled to keep my footing, guarding my mate as best I could.
“To think that I once considered you my son,” he said with a sneer.
“Says the man who murdered my real father in cold blood and then drugged and brainwashed me into believing you were the good guy,” I barked back, with a low growl rumbling in my throat.
In that moment, I saw a flash of my father’s face at last, smile full of pride, green eyes like mine crinkling in humor, and it filled me with love and bravery.
“You’re all nothing but small, angry men playing at being gods. ”
“And you’re nothing but a mangy dog about to be put down for biting its master.” He spat on the ground at his feet. But then his gaze shifted over my shoulder to Kedi, and a manic kind of glee filled his eyes. “The only good shifter is a dead one, and it looks like he’s two for the price of one.”
Pure rage burned through me, fangs and claws punching through in a half shift.
I rolled to my feet and barreled toward him, vowing to take him down with me.
His eyes widened, and he brought the gun up to my head.
I braced for the pain I knew would come, but before he could pull the trigger, a giant monster of a beast tackled him to the ground, slamming into him like a freight train.
I stared in utter disbelief at the sheer savagery of the animal, its short speckled brown fur and bottomless black eyes reminding me of something you would see on the nature channel. Was that… a hyena?
Pinning him to the ground, it clamped its jaws over Pater’s screaming face and crunched down with no mercy, silencing his cries with a wet crunch. In the silence, it pulled back with a cackle that made goosebumps erupt down my spine. I knew that laugh… The hyena was Seth!
It seemed to trigger the shift in all of them.
All around us, animals were bursting from skin, only to turn on the very masters who’d suppressed them all these years.
Castor’s clothes split as he doubled, then tripled in size, thick brown fur covering him in a heavy pelt, until he emerged as a 600-pound grizzly, and with one paw, he flattened Elder Grant, rendering him unconscious.
Moros lengthened into a large black snack, wrapping Elder Ethan in thickly muscled coils and squeezing until the man could no longer draw breath, face turning an ugly purple, eyes bloodshot.
But then Brahm unleashed an almighty roar and exploded into a tiger, and that put an end to the war right there. No one dared stand against him.
“Thanks, guys,” I muttered, right before my knees gave way, and I collapsed toward the slushy ground.
Arms caught me before my head could hit, and I stared up into my mate’s beautiful eyes, filled with panic. “I’m okay,” I whispered.
“The blood pouring down your side says otherwise.” He whipped off his coat, exposing a pair of ridiculous red suspenders, one of which he used to hold a makeshift bandage in place.
“Nah, it’s barely a scratch,” I said as I fought to keep my eyes open. Even now, I could feel the bullet being pushed out of my muscle, the wound healing faster than humanly possible. I would’ve waved him off, but I kind of loved having my mate fuss over me for a minute.
Footsteps headed our way, and I peeled my eyes open to find Seth crouching naked beside me, his chin and chest smeared with gore. “You still with us?”
“All thanks to you. I owe you one.”
“Nah, you don’t owe me, not after all you did for us. And it truly was my pleasure,” he said with a wicked grin, and I felt like he truly meant that. I was just glad he was on our side. “Besides, he had it comin’, trying to hurt our Alpha.”
I jolted at the title, whipping my head around to him, but he just offered me a cheeky wink then strolled off to join the others. I listened to their whoops and excited chatter as they bragged about how awesome their beasts were.
“Will you really be okay, Apollo?” Kedi asked, wiping tears from his cheeks.
“Yeah, I’ll be okay. But maybe… call me Conroy?”
His smile was pure sunshine. “I can do that.”