19. Poe
Poe
Mate.
Mine.
The words drew me from sleep sometime around dawn, and I cracked my eyes open, wincing against the bright sunlight streaming in through the window.
Ava’s head rested on my chest, her arm draped over my stomach, one of her legs entwined with mine.
Magic whirled through my veins, and it took a moment for my brain to recalibrate and come back online.
Ava marked me.
I marked her.
Mate.
Mine.
I ran my palms over my eyes and sighed.
Fuck.
I’d let my wolf take over, let him run rampant through my worst impulses, and now we were screwed. When Lycan came back, he’d see what we’d done and…what? What would he do?
He couldn’t be mad about it, not when he refused to mark either of us, not when he didn’t want anything permanent.
He’d said so himself. Several times. That didn’t make me feel any better.
My gut churned, and my heart throbbed, and I chastised my wolf for getting me into this situation.
But it hadn’t just been him. I’d been there every step of the way, and I winced to think about leaving Lycan out of it.
My phone buzzed from somewhere overhead, and I ignored it, choosing instead to hug Ava closer and dip my head to breathe her in. Gods, she smelled good. Like me and her and Lycan. Like hope and divinity, my own saving grace.
She stretched and blinked open her big, gorgeous eyes.
“Hey, there,” she said with a sleepy smile.
“Hey.” I pressed my lips to hers. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay.” She brushed her fingers over the mark on my neck, and I hissed in a breath. It was still tender, but my mated friends said the tingling never really went away, especially not when your mate touched it.
“Any more bad dreams?”
She pulled her lips into a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “No.”
“Good.” I’d sensed her fear and grief through the mating bond, and it had shaken me out of a dead sleep.
It seemed too big, too old, like trying to fit a grand piano into a jewelry box.
Almost like it came from a part of her that didn’t belong to her, which made me curious…
and nervous. I wished she’d talked to me about it, but I understood someone wanting to keep the haunting confines of their own mind to themselves.
“How are you?” she asked, drawing my attention back to her.
“Okay.” I tried not to let my internal struggle show. I didn’t want her more stressed out than she needed to be.
“Did we make a mistake?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, running a hand over my face and back through my hair. “It’s too late now, in any case.”
She sat up and touched her own mark, curling her lips into a soft grin. “I don’t regret it.”
“Me neither.” I was surprised how true that felt. My wolf had known since the first time I saw her. The connection between us had been building, avalanching into something unmanageable. She must have known it, too. Her wolf responded to its instincts, and neither of us should feel ashamed of that.
“What do we tell Lycan?” she quietly asked, and her fear snaked through our immature bond like a cobra strike—hot and quick and venomous.
“The truth,” I said, pushing a piece of her hair behind her ear before cupping her cheek. “He’ll see it. He’ll sense it.”
She tilted into the embrace, rubbing her face against my hand before kissing my wrist. Fuck, I wanted to take her again. I wanted to hold her down and make her moan and slot myself inside her for the rest of my life.
My phone buzzed again. Just as I reached for it, footsteps echoed on the grass outside, pounding up the steps to the porch. I shot to my feet and grabbed my jeans, shoving my legs into them as quickly as I could.
“Stay here,” I told her. She grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around herself as I walked to the front door, opening it before the intruder could knock.
Locust and Bow stood on the other side, putrid panic and gut-curdling adrenaline wafting off them.
“What is it?” I looked between them. “What happened?”
“Vampires at the edge of the wards,” Locust said.
“We have to go,” Bow explained. “The patrol said they saw a witch. It’ll only be a matter of time before she breaks through the wards, and us being here puts the whole pack in danger.”
I allowed myself one second of dread, one second to imagine Lycan had been caught, and they’d broken him, and he’d led them here. Then I shoved that inside a box labeled, “Things that would never fucking happen,” before I turned to Ava and scrambled to find the rest of my clothes.
“How?” Ava said, jumping up and racing around to get dressed. “How did they find us?”
“We don’t know,” Locust explained. “Thurjin said something about finding a deer that smelled like a vampire on their run, but other than that, they’re fine.”
I raced around the cabin, shoving whatever I saw into my backpack.
Guns. Laptop. Journal. Clothes. Phone. Everything else wasn’t important.
Ava rushed to get her necessities as Locust and Bow helped us gather the rest. It took two minutes, maybe three, before we were out the door and running through the woods, my palm gripping Ava’s to help her keep up.
“What about the pack?” she asked. “We can’t leave them.”
“Staying here puts them in more danger,” I added.
Ava whined, and a thick cloud of shame shot through me. Hers. For having to leave Madeline, Astrid, and the others. There were children here. There were elders and people who couldn’t fight. She wanted to dig in her heels and insist we stay to protect them.
“Are you sure?” She furrowed her brow and bit her bottom lip with indecision.
No. They’ll slaughter the whole fucking pack when they don’t find us.
But that wasn’t my concern. When it came to saving Ava, saving my mate, I’d do whatever the fuck I needed to protect her.
“C’mon,” I said with a gentle tug.
We stumbled through the undergrowth, dodging trees and fallen logs until we made it on the other side of the wards.
We’d just gotten to a clearing with a small wooden building a few yards ahead when that wretched stench hit me square in the face.
I nearly doubled over. Decaying magic. Rotten flesh. Old coppery blood. Vampires.
Three bodies stepped out from behind the shed.
Two more jumped out of the trees behind us.
I grabbed my gun from my waist holster and held it up, aiming at the head of the biggest one.
Rodent, said the name patch on his cut. Locust fell into step beside me, pistol poised to shoot.
Bow circled to the other side of Ava as three more vampires closed in from the left.
Some were Helena Scorpions. Some were newly made, judging by their coloring and mild odor. Our suspicions had been correct. Evelyn rounded up the European Scorpions and turned them.
“Give us the girl, and we’ll let the rest of you go,” Rodent said, holding up a gun pointed at me.
Fat fucking chance.
My fangs elongated at the insinuation that I’d ever agree. His buddies closed in. Locust and Bow got tighter around me. Ava froze at my back.
I didn’t wait. Heart pounding and lungs heaving for air, I fired.
The steel bullet hit the vampire between the eyes, and he fell backward with a loud splat.
I aimed at the one next to him, but he moved too fast for me to get a good shot.
Booms rang out around me, deafening, and gunpowder lined my throat.
I pulled the trigger, trying to hit the moving target.
I finally got him in the chest, and he dropped to the ground just as a third motherfucker tackled me to the side. I dropped my pistol five feet to the left, out of reach, but it didn’t matter. I’d trained for this fight.
I used my weight to roll us so I was on top, my knees in his chest, his pointed teeth snapping near my face. Another vampire grabbed my arm to try to pull me off, but I swiped at that one and ripped out his eye. He screamed and fell back.
Fury simmering in my veins, I clawed at the fucker’s neck until I hit bone. Then I wrapped a fist around his cervical spine and yanked. His arms went limp. His head detached from his body, and I kicked it away. Another vampire tackled me from the left, and I landed hard on my side.
I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel anything, just the incandescent anger of a feral male whose mate was in danger.
The vampire got his arms around my neck, but I elbowed him in the gut hard enough to make him wheeze, loosening his hold.
I twisted around and punched through his rotting chest, squeezing his heart.
I hardly noticed the mess when I ripped it from his chest.
More shots rang out, and I stood, circling the bloodsucker to stick my fingers in his mouth from the top. Gripping his upper jaw, I braced my foot on his shoulder and yanked. His head split as easily as butter on a hot knife.
But before I could move on to the next piece of shit, fire erupted on my side, toppling me over.
I gripped the wound, expecting my hand to come away fresh with my blood.
When it didn’t, I stared at my ribs, confused for half a heartbeat.
Excruciating pain rippled through the mating bond, mind-numbing fear and anxiety taking root in my chest.
Ava.
I looked up just as she dropped to her knees, clutching her midsection. Locust grabbed her and dragged her to the building, pulling her out of the fray.
No.
“Ava!” I shouted as I ran to her, kneeling at her side.
“Get her out of here!” Locust stood to run back into the fray. “Go!”
Bow was in the middle of four vampires, and more dropped out of the trees behind us. But my vision narrowed on my girl, on her trembling body and the fresh scent of her blood filling my nose, mixed with something wrong…something hot and mineral.
Silver.
They’re using silver bullets.
“I’m okay,” she murmured. “It’s just a scratch. I’m okay. Give me a minute and I’ll—I’ll be up and walking. Just give me—”
“Shhh,” I told her, grabbing her hand to put it over the wound. “Don’t talk. Hold your hand here.”
I had some medical training from a rotation I did with Morwyn, our pack healer.
But I wasn’t magically gifted like that.
I couldn’t siphon the poison out of her or use pack energy to heal her.
I only had our bond. It was a bloody, gory mess, and in that split-second glance, I couldn’t tell if the bullet was lodged inside her or merely scratched her.
I debated what to do. I could run with her.
But there were too many of these shitheads, and they’d follow us. They’d catch up to us.
Or I could end it here.
Something snapped inside me like an old rope that had weathered too much. The human side faded away. The feral beast who had just watched his mate be gunned down stepped forward. I let him take over. I let him have it.
“Don’t move.” My voice wasn’t my own. It sounded like an animal, like some monster from a horror movie.
Rising to my feet, I grabbed a steel root digger leaning up against the shed and stalked forward.
I moved faster than I ever had before. I stabbed one vampire through the chest with it before yanking it out and swinging it full force into another’s head.
I ran through those Scorpion fuckers like they were in slow motion, and I’d hit double speed. I hit a home run with one’s head before thrusting the business end through another’s throat and twisting.
Again and again and again. I didn’t stop until they were done. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, until they were lying in pieces. It was a massacre, a foul-smelling chorus of destruction, and I was the conductor. I made poetry out of their entrails and wrote sonnets from their screams.
I got so lost in my vengeance that, at the end, I turned to swing at a moving object, only to realize it was Bow. He held his hands up and backed away.
“Whoa, brother,” he said. “It’s just me.”
I heaved a deep breath and lowered my weapon, my arms shaking, my pulse pounding.
“You got ’em,” he said. “It’s over.”
I didn’t wait for anything else. I ran over to Ava, who trembled and whined, her face pale from blood loss. Locust knelt over her, shirtless, pressing the fabric to the wound.
“She needs a healer,” Locust said. “But we’ve gotta go. There’ll be more.”
I still didn’t trust myself to speak. I scooped her up, one arm under her knees, the other under her shoulders.
“Where?” I managed to snarl.
“Inside,” Locust said, pushing the shed doors open to reveal four old motorcycles. “Bow, get our shit.”
He limped around the decrepit scene, gathering our backpacks and guns and whatever else had fallen in the chaos.
“Let’s go.” I carried Ava to the closest one and straddled it, situating her in my lap before wrapping her arms around my neck. “Hold on, baby. Just stay with me.”
“I’m with you,” she whimpered.
I kicked it to life and took off. I didn’t know where we were going or when we’d meet up with Lycan, but I had to get her out of there.
Locust quickly took the lead, and I followed him down the back road.
Ava closed her eyes and leaned her head against my chest, and I thanked the fucking Gods for the mating bond.
Her magic curled around my soul. Her heartbeat echoed through my own.
She’s alive.
She’s safe. She’s alive.