Chapter 28 #2
An explosion rocked the arena, showering Tobias in dirt and chunks of concrete. He raised his head hopefully, but deep down he already knew. He could still feel Muzzle’s hold on him. Still feel the pain deep in his twisted, half-formed bones.
Muzzle stumbled out of the smoke, speckled with shrapnel but otherwise unhurt. He was laughing, the noise more like a bark as he stumbled.
“Ha! You think one explosion will kill me? That wasn’t even silver. I expected better from my—”
A shot rang out. Muzzle jerked, blood and fur splashing onto the concrete as a scorched hole appeared in his neck.
Meredith cursed. Behind her, Honey leaned over to ask Sadie who the hell did that.
Tobias pulled his warped body closer to Josh protectively. Who did do that? Everybody looked around cluelessly. Nobody had a gun.
The telltale click of a gun reloading echoed from the stands where Muzzle had been sitting.
Donna wobbled on her feet, an adorable gun clutched in her manicured hand. Glued-on rhinestones gleamed along the barrel.
“Metalsmithing gift,” Donna said weakly. “Bitch.”
Honey let out a shocked laugh across the arena. It quickly turned into a wince as the bodyguards scrambled for Donna, trying to grab the gun.
“I have it,” Alexander and his father yelled as one, pointing their crossbows. The injured bodyguard went down with an arrow to the forehead. The second bodyguard yelped as Bart’s arrow went through his stomach.
Muzzle’s blood pool was almost at Tobias’s feet. The alpha was coughing and choking, viscera leaking between his huge fangs.
“Stay here,” Tobias told Josh, barely able to get the words out through his shifting mouth. He dragged himself along the ground toward Muzzle. The amulet was stretched tight around the wolf’s neck, almost cutting into the skin.
A loud shriek made him look up. Donna was tumbling off the side, trying to escape the surviving bodyguard’s grip.
Alexander yelled. “Donna!”
She hit the concrete with a dull thud and a cry of pain. Her arm was twisted strangely, tears already flowing down her bloody face.
“I have her,” Bart said hurriedly. He ran over, stowing his crossbow as he fell to his knees in front of her crumpled form.
A familiar scent cut through all the pain and blood. Tobias twisted to see Alexander dropping his crossbow and kneeling in front of him worriedly, his crisp, clean scent as good as morphine.
Well. Almost.
“The amulet,” Tobias croaked. “You gotta turn it off.”
Alexander nodded determinedly and turned back to Muzzle, unbothered by the blood dirtying his polished boots. He snapped the chain off Muzzle’s furry neck and brought it back to Tobias.
“Which way?” Alexander asked urgently.
Tobias showed him with a shaking finger. Alexander twisted the amulet, and Tobias and Josh slumped in a grateful heap as their bodies sloughed back into their regular shape.
“Thanks,” Tobias breathed.
Alexander nodded. His eyes were fixed on Tobias, his hand twitching out like he wanted to touch Tobias’s face.
The healing stitches, or maybe the scar over his lip.
Tobias would take anything. But Alexander didn’t touch him.
He just sat there, his knuckles white around the amulet as he stared at Tobias like he couldn’t fully believe he was alright.
A death gurgle echoed in from the high seats. The last bodyguard had succumbed to his gut wound.
Just one to go, Tobias thought hazily.
Muzzle was still choking. His paw came up, fumbled at the concrete, then slid out from under him again. He was suffocating to death—but not fast enough.
Meredith stepped up to the great beast and pulled a huge shard of shrapnel out of his shoulder. “Hey, Muz. Remember what you told me last time?”
Muzzle shuddered. Blood dribbled down his snout and puddled on her shoe.
“I’ll…kill…your…pack,” he wheezed. “Like…you…killed…mine.”
“Something like that,” Meredith said. “Funny how these things turn out, huh?”
She plunged the shrapnel through his skull.
Muzzle let out one last yelp and went still. Tobias watched in disbelief, waiting for some sense of relief to set in. He’d wanted Muzzle dead for so long, and now here it was: Muzzle’s corpse draped across the arena where Tobias had fought so many times.
The relief didn’t come. Tobias heard himself whine, an oddly doglike noise he didn’t realize was coming from him until Alexander touched his hair.
“It’s okay,” Alexander said, as awkward and stiff as he always was when he comforted someone. “It’s over now.” He ran his fingers through Tobias’s messy hair, untangling it. The amulet rested next to his knee, forgotten.
Tobias let himself sink into it. He was so tired. He just wanted to rest.
Meredith scowled and stepped back, examining the blood on her boots.
“Fucking mutt,” she muttered, wiping her boots on the concrete with limited success.
Tobias leaned harder into Alexander’s touch. Maybe Alexander wouldn’t pull away this time. Maybe they could stay here like this while Josh stopped panting and Bart did something to Donna’s funky arm before they took her to the hospital.
“Didn’t even have to use my ax,” Honey said disappointedly, standing with Sadie near the concrete slab where Tobias had found the grenade.
Tobias wanted to laugh. But more than anything, he wanted to curl up with Alexander and sleep for a week. If only his body would stop firing adrenaline, his mind crawling with the same dread that came when he woke up in the arena.
Alexander’s fingers went stiff. Tobias looked up to find Meredith looming over them, the arena lights blotting out her face so it looked like she ended in pure shadow. She was still holding the shard dripping with blood and brain matter.
“Looks like I finished your hunt for you,” she said. “Give me that.”
Both boys looked at the amulet resting next to Alexander’s knee.
Tobias watched him reach for it. That dread came barreling back bigger than ever, and he opened his mouth to tell Alexander to smash it on the unforgiving concrete, step on it, give it to me and I’ll crush it with my fucking werewolf super strength, do anything but give it to her.
He could see Alexander’s face. He knew he felt it, too.
But no bad feeling had ever stopped Alexander from obeying before.
He handed his mother the amulet. She took it and held it up to the dim arena light.
“Good,” Meredith said. “Maybe you’re not lost to us after all.”
Then she twisted the amulet.