Chapter 5 Heath
HEATH
Cars flew by us on the highway in both directions. Billboards lit the horizon against the gloomy Moonless sky, a thick layer of clouds shrouding the stars from view.
“Our exit’s coming up,” Aiden said from the passenger seat, indicating my car’s GPS. He glanced over his shoulder into the backseat. “You’re sure this twenty-four-hour diner is walking distance from Avery’s house?”
“Yes,” Elijah replied. “I parked there last time I… visited.”
Electricity buzzed through my entire body.
It’d been nearly a month since I’d set eyes on my mate.
I hadn’t seen her since the moment the doctors had taken her battered body from Wyatt’s arms and whisked her away to surgery.
It’d taken everything I had to keep from tearing the infirmary apart after that.
“She’s going to be so pissed if she sees us out there,” Wyatt murmured. In my rearview mirror, his shining green eyes took in the cityscape sliding past the window. He fiddled with one of the small black plugs he wore in his ear lobes and smirked. “I hope she punches me in the face.”
“Keep your shit together,” I growled at him. “We’re doing this to protect our mate, whether she likes it or not. We need you at your best, not bleeding all over the place or with one eye swollen shut because you begged Avery to give you a shiner.”
Red rolled across his irises. “You’re the one she’s going to run through with her blade, you dick. You think you’re going to just walk up to her and tell her how it is and she’ll get over everything we did. You’re fucking dreaming.”
My grip tightened on the steering wheel. I wanted to break it in half, launch it out the window, and scream until I passed out. “She’s had an entire month. And camp starts in two days. She has to talk to us sometime.”
“Does she?” Aiden asked sullenly.
I flipped my blinker on and coasted off the highway. “Everyone in this car needs to get their game face on. Not one of you protested when I suggested we make this trip.”
No, the urge to protect our Fated, who would no doubt be traipsing through the streets while wraiths roamed free, had been too much for any one of us or our beasts to handle.
The thought of her not being at her best because of her injuries and her inability to shift freely without risking her secret had plagued my nightmares.
The fact that it’d been weeks since I’d had any idea how she was doing or where she was at any given moment had damn near driven me to insanity.
I didn’t give a fuck whether she wanted our help or not. She was getting it.
It was nearing midnight as I parked at the back of the diner. At least a dozen cars sat in the lot, the restaurant full of humans going about their night, oblivious to the fact that soul-devouring monsters might wander into the busy streets around them.
We exited the car and collected our weapons from the trunk.
Aiden and I wielded identical sabers, the blade we’d trained with since well before we’d ever entered the Guardian program.
Wyatt hefted his battle-ax—a new purchase over the break, since he’d previously only ever cared to use the weapons issued by the program.
Elijah strapped a long dagger to his belt, just in case.
He usually faced wraiths in his basilisk form and only did so when shit got real.
Aiden had performed the Moon blessing on each of our blades under the last Full Moon—something he, the runes professor, had learned from Avery when he stumbled across her blessing her own blades last semester, the lucky fucking asshole.
“I still can’t believe wraiths wander all the way down here,” Aiden said, eyeing the deserted strip mall down the street.
Next door was a trendy brewery, definitely not deserted.
He slid his saber into the leather sheath strapped to his back.
“According to Council records, the only declared Prime living in this zip code is Rand Baxter. Even with the addition of Avery’s undeclared beast, it shouldn’t be enough to consistently attract wraiths away from the shifter communities, especially L3s or 4s. ”
“And yet,” Elijah said, his yellow eyes alight, “hasn’t the recurring theme lately been that everything we’ve been taught is perhaps not entirely accurate?”
I grunted in agreement, sliding my saber into the sheath at my waist. Like the rest of my quad, I wore broken-in jeans that allowed me to move freely, a dark T-shirt, and sturdy boots.
Ideally, we would handle whatever we found out here in our human forms because while those without shifter blood would be unable to see wraiths, the same couldn’t be said of our beast forms.
A giant red bear rampaging down the city streets would probably not go unnoticed. I had no idea how Avery’s family handled the balance between keeping the secrecy of our kind and the need to shift in wraith combat.
And I had no way to ask her. My own mate was unreachable to me.
Wyatt settled his ax on his shoulder and held his phone in front of his face, squinting as he studied the screen. “Dad’s patrol maps show the closest Guardian post is twenty miles north of here, and their zone ends at the border of the Redtail Forest, just outside Deerfield.”
Deerfield was one of the southernmost shifter settlements—a small town with a predominantly working-class population and, more than likely, the barest minimum of wards.
“How active was that zone last night?” Aiden asked.
Wyatt scrolled. “They marked the zone orange for this cycle. I think that means higher than average.”
Wyatt’s father, Ward, was a senior Guardian officer and in charge of our region’s training program. He had—against official policy—given Wyatt access to the Guardian network when it became clear that we would not be talked out of this excursion.
“Okay, sounds like we need to be ready for anything.” I waved a hand at Elijah. “Lead the way.”
We followed him as he cut a path across the busy commercial area and into a residential neighborhood.
Mature trees lined the streets, and every house on the block had to be at least fifty years old.
It was pitch-black, save the occasional porch light.
The soft yellow glow of the streetlamps on each corner did little to pierce the still darkness.
My heart beat harder in my chest. My wolf pushed against my skin, ravenous for blood, anxious for our mate.
Her voice ghosted through my mind, as it so often did.
Admit you think I’m somehow defective.
Those haunting blue eyes had been so fierce, so furious, so righteous as she’d torn strips from my skin at the ball. I’d never seen a more beautiful girl in my fucking life.
And I’d never been so angry in my fucking life as I stood there, spiraling, trying to do right by my quad and my sister, and there she was, invading our space, challenging me, looking so fucking hot in that dress.
Taunting me with something I thought I could never have.
My wolf whined in my chest.
I’ll fix it. She’s ours.
Elijah put up a hand, bringing us to a stop. “Listen.”
Up ahead, the echoes of a screech sounded. A masculine voice barked orders.
I tensed and wrapped a hand around the grip of my sword, taking comfort in the feel of its worn leather. “Let’s go—”
Another screech, this one louder and coming from somewhere behind us.
Shit.
“Elijah and Aiden, support the group straight ahead,” I said, thinking fast. “Wyatt and I will assess the situation to the west.”
No one argued. Elijah and Aiden broke into a run, speeding off down the street until they disappeared around the corner.
Wyatt took off in the opposite direction, running with his huge ax strapped to his back like it weighed nothing.
I followed him, and we wound our way west, farther into the neighborhood and away from the busier streets.
We rounded a corner, and the houses fell away, green space flanking us on both sides.
A park lay on our left, complete with a deserted playground and a man-made pond, its fountain feature creating the only noise besides the night insects.
To the right, a low stone fence separated a cemetery from the rest of the street.
More shrieks rent the air, and three L2 swarmers careened around the corner and into the street in front of us, their bodies pudgy and piglike but their four legs long, hairy, and bent at an angle like a spider’s.
Behind them, an L3 Ripper leapt from the bushes, oozing colorless gray blood from where a blade had been impaled in its chest. It had the vague shape of a bear nearly as large as Wyatt’s beast, but its head was twice the normal size, and in place of paws, it had three-toed reptilian talons.
It was also missing a chunk of flesh from its skull and its entire left side, the patchy, dark gray hide rotted away to reveal decaying ribs.
The faint violet glow of the magic that gave this thing life leaked through the cracks.
It staggered into the street, screeching at decibel levels the SWIM had never managed to replicate. We sprinted right into the fray. Wyatt intercepted the swarmers, yanking his ax from his back and lopping off heads as he ran.
Before I could take a swing at the Ripper with my own blade, Avery’s dad, Kaito, jumped out of the bushes.
He took a running leap and shifted seamlessly in midair into a cougar with shiny dark fur.
His beast smashed into the much larger wraith with a vicious snarl, and they tumbled over the stone wall and into the cemetery.
Avery sprinted out of the park and shot across the street in hot pursuit, her short swords raised, a light sheen of sweat glistening on her exposed skin.
Time slowed to a crawl.
She wore a black tank top, fitted tactical pants in the same color, and combat boots. Her blonde hair was in a tight ponytail, save the few strands that’d come loose and now stuck to her damp face.
So fucking beautiful. The sight knocked the breath from my chest.