Annabella
Chapter thirty
Lucas was already Shifting—not fully, but using his Alpha power to partial Shift.
Fur rippling across his forearms, claws pushing through his fingertips, the bones of his face thickening as his wolf bled through.
His dominance radiated outward in waves designed to press lesser wolves to the ground.
Submit. Bare your throat. Remember what you are. Remember your place.
My wolf snarled as Lucas charged.
He was fast—faster than I expected. I tried to sidestep. My ribs screamed. My legs, still recovering from the Kennel, couldn’t quite get me clear. His claws caught my left shoulder. Three lines of fire, deep enough that I felt the muscle separate, and blood streaked down my arm, hot and immediate.
I stumbled back. He pressed the advantage—grabbing my arm, the same arm he’d broken when I was thirteen—and wrenched.
Pain exploded through me. White and blinding.
“Still the same weak, little—”
Sam hit him from the side.
Not a punch. A full-body tackle that ripped Lucas’s grip from my arm and sent them both crashing into the dirt. Sam rolled clear immediately, putting himself between me and Lucas.
“Get your family,” he growled. “I’ve got him.”
“Like hell you do. He’s mine.”
“Annabella.” His voice was stern.
“Sam.”
I heard him sigh, then Sam stepped left. I stepped right. It was instinct, the kind of wordless coordination that should have taken years to build but didn’t, because whatever the fated mate bond, did it was working. Filling the gaps. Connecting the edges.
Lucas scrambled to his feet, blood on his mouth, fury in his eyes. He looked between us, and for the first time, uncertainty flickered across his face. He chose me. Of course he did. The wounded one. The easy target. He lunged. I was ready this time.
I dropped under his swing—lower than he expected, lower than my ribs wanted me to go—and drove my shoulder into his midsection.
Not elegant, but the momentum carried us both backward and I felt his balance break, his feet scrambling for purchase in the loose dirt.
I kept driving, until his back slammed into the porch support beam hard enough to crack the wood.
He swiped at my back and I twisted away.
Blood ran freely now, from my shoulder, my arm, mixing with dirt and sweat.
My left side was a wall of pain. But my wolf was awake and furious and done being afraid of this man.
Lucas pushed off the beam, shaking his head. Spat blood. Came at me again,slower this time, more cautious. He’d expected me to crumble.
Sam was closing in on Lucas from the left, flanking him, cutting off his retreat, when Tara launched herself at him.
She hit Sam mid-stride, claws out, raking at his face.
Sam caught her by the wrist and the jacket and hurled her sideways without breaking stride.
She hit the ground hard, rolling twice before she fetched up against a tree root, gasping.
His eyes never left Lucas.
Lucas feinted left. My wolf read it before my brain did—the shift in his feet, the tensing of his right shoulder—and I was already moving, already driving my knee up into his ribs as he committed to the real strike.
Something gave under the impact. He grunted, a wet, thick sound, and his next swing was wild.
I caught his wrist, stepped through, and used his own arm as a lever to wrench him off-balance. He went down to one knee.
I kicked him in the face. My boot connected with his jaw and his head snapped sideways. Blood sprayed across the dirt and years of half-breed, abomination, witch-bitch went with it.
He tried to rise. I stomped down on his knee. Felt it hyperextend under my heel, the joint bending the wrong way with a crack that split the air. He screamed, a raw, animal sound, and collapsed sideways, clutching his leg.
Sam had Lucas by the collar before he hit the ground, dragging him clear of me, slamming him onto his back in the open dirt. One knee on Lucas’s chest, one hand pinning his throat. Lucas clawed at Sam’s forearm, but Sam didn’t relent.
A warmth spread from my left shoulder where Lucas’s claws had shredded muscle, pulsing down my arm in slow waves. The grinding wrongness in the joint eased; not gone, but changing. Pain reshaping itself into something bearable, as sparks of my magic danced along my skin.
I didn’t get a chance to examine it. Tara tackled me around the waist. We went down together, her fingers twisted into my hair, slamming my face toward the ground.
I levered up on one palm. My left palm, the arm Lucas had wrenched, and it held.
What the hell?
Two minutes ago, that arm couldn’t have taken my weight.
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I drove my elbow back into her face.
She scrambled up, blood on her chin, hair wild, dirt smeared across her jacket.
She looked nothing like the polished Alpha mate from five minutes ago.
Her eyes were wide, her scent laced with fear.
Lucas had never lost a fight before, and she could see her whole world collapsing around her.
She came at me again. I hit her. A straight right, nothing fancy, nothing clever, just my fist connecting with her cheekbone the way I’d wanted to since I was twelve years old.
Her head rocked back, and her legs went out from under her, and she sat down hard in the dirt, blinking.
She touched her face. Looked at the blood on her fingers. Looked at me.
“Stay down, Tara.” My voice came out ragged. “You’re not a fighter. You never were. Your play was always to pick targets who were too young or weak to fight back.”
“You are always going to end up in the dirt, Annabella,” she whispered. “That’s where things like you belong.”
“Funny. From where I’m standing, it looks like the dirt suits you better.”
I turned away from Tara and flexed my left hand.
The fingers responded, all of them, smooth and strong, no grinding, no fire shooting up to my shoulder.
The three claw marks still throbbed, but when I looked, the wounds had closed to raw pink lines, the bleeding reduced to a slow seep.
My shoulder ached like a deep bruise instead of a fresh mauling.
My witch side. My wolf side. Working together to help me.
Sam had Lucas on his back, one hand wrapped around his throat, squeezing.
Lucas’s face was darkening, his claws scraping uselessly against Sam’s wrist, his legs kicking at the dirt.
Sam’s expression was blank. Completely, terrifyingly blank.
Lucas’s kicks were getting weaker. His mouth gaped open, tongue swelling, a thin whine escaping his crushed windpipe.
I couldn’t let him kill Lucas. I’d walked in Sam’s memories, saw the guilt he carried for every death he’d caused.
I didn’t want this one on his conscience too.
“Sam.”
He didn’t look up.
“Sam. Enough.”
Nothing. His hand tightened. Lucas’s eyes were bulging now, bloodshot, the capillaries bursting one by one.
I put my hand on Sam’s arm. Felt the tendons rigid as cable beneath his skin.
“Sam,” I said quietly. “He’s not worth it.”
Sam’s breathing was ragged. His jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscles jumping. For one horrible second, I thought he was past hearing me.
Then his hand opened.
Lucas rolled sideways, gagging, sucking air through his ruined throat. Alive. Barely.
Sam stood, and his gaze immediately came to me.
His eyes tracked down: shoulder, arm, ribs, logging damage.
I watched him frown as the math didn’t add up.
He’d seen the claw marks, my shoulder opened to the bone.
He’d seen Lucas wrench my arm. Now I was breathing without hitching, my left hand steady at my side.
“You’re mending.” Not a question.
“Apparently.”
“And these stupid fuckers never had any idea of what they had. You are fucking incredible, Annabella McGrath.”
I didn’t know what to do with that. Nobody had ever said it like that. Like it was just a fact. I opened my mouth. Closed it. Couldn’t find a single smart-assed thing to say, which might have been a first.
His half smiled. Then his expression sobered, he cupped the back of my neck and kissed me—brief, firm, and warm. “Let’s get your family out.”
Aunt Jo had the door open before I’d taken a step. She took one look at the clearing— he scattered enforcers, the blood, Lucas curled on the ground making wet, rattling sounds—and didn’t ask a single question. Just turned and said, “Fred. Now.”
Uncle Fred carried Mom out the door. Mom blinked at the clearing, at the bodies, at the blood on my hands and shirt. Her forehead creased the way it did when she was trying to hold onto something that kept slipping away.
“Annabella? What’s happening? Where are we—?”
“It’s okay, Mom.” I caught her hand. Squeezed. “We’re going for a drive. You’re going to love it.”
“Oh.” She smiled. Vague and trusting, the way she smiled at everything now. “That sounds nice, sweetheart.”
Something cracked in my chest.
Ellie appeared on Aunt Jo’s hip, eyes enormous. “Bella.” Her voice was small. Awed. “You’re glowing.”
I looked down at my hands. She was right, I was glowing. Silver-green light traced my skin, concentrated at my shoulder where the deepest wounds were still knitting shut, but spreading outward in faint, warm pulses along my arms, my collarbone. It felt warm and soothing. It felt right.
“I know, monkey. It’s okay. It’s just what I am.”
Sam was moving everyone toward the car, his body angled between my family and the clearing, one hand on Uncle Fred’s shoulder steering him toward the passenger side..
I was three steps from the car when the nascent bond between me and Sam screamed. Every nerve lit up at once, my wolf throwing herself against my skin so hard I staggered. Sam was already turning, already putting himself in front of my family.
I spun and saw Lucas on his feet. I didn’t know how.
His throat was crushed, his knee was destroyed; he should have been choking in the dirt for another hour.
But Alpha wolves were built different. Built to keep fighting when their bodies had already quit.
His eyes were full of rage. They locked on to me, and he darted forward.
Sam dove in front of me at the last second, and Lucas hit him at full speed. Sam took the impact, absorbed it, redirected it downward. One hand on Lucas’s jaw. One hand on the back of his skull. A single, sharp twist.
The sound it made echoed off the trees.
Lucas dropped. Sam held on for a half-second longer than he needed to—making sure, confirming he was dead—and then let go.
Tara’s scream came from somewhere to my left—high and thin and animal.
She doubled over like she’d been shot, hands clawing at her chest. I knew that sound.
I’d read about it, heard stories from wolves who’d survived it.
The mate bond breaking was supposed to be the worst pain a wolf could feel. Worse than silver. Worse than death.
For one second—just one—I felt sorry for her.
“Run,” I ordered.
Tara glared at me from the ground, tears cutting tracks through the dirt and mascara on her face.
Whatever she saw in my expression must have been enough.
She scrambled to her feet, half-fell, caught herself.
Grabbed Parker, who’d managed to drag himself upright, and stumbled toward the tree-line.
Melissa limped after them. Matt crawled.
I watched them go.
“Bella?” Ellie’s voice, small and uncertain, from Aunt Jo’s arms by the car. “The glowing. Can I learn to do that?”
This was what I’d been fighting for. For Ellie to have the chance to be herself, to learn her powers, and never feel scared or ashamed about who she was.
“Yeah, monkey,” I said. “I’ll teach you everything.”