Chapter 17 Avery #2
Willow pulled the car back onto the brightly lit street with all the bars and clubs, completing our circuit. “But like we said,” she went on, “they must’ve changed their plan, but they aren’t telling us anything.”
Winona side-eyed me like only a fifteen-year-old could. “It kind of seemed like Wyatt was pretty into Avery. Like pathetically into her.”
“Oh, they’re totally into Avery,” Clara announced. “All four of them. It was obvious from the moment I met her.”
“What the fuck?” Willow barked, her green eyes flashing as she glanced at me through the rearview mirror. “Those four had this beautiful badass lady right in front of them that they all agreed on—which is a fucking miracle—and they haven’t locked her down? Idiots.”
“Well, the problem is—wait, is it okay to tell them, Avery? About, um, you know what?”
“I have a beast,” I said distractedly. My attention was entirely on containing my tiger’s bad attitude. It was a small car, and I didn’t want to scare the girls.
“Ah,” Willow said. “Well damn, C. I should be nicer to my brother. He was going to give up his love so Heath was on sure footing when he challenged your dad.”
“Maybe they changed their mind?” Clara mused.
“Maybe Heath decided he could still gain enough power in a bond with Avery to give him a chance against my dad? Aiden was spending a lot of time in the library before they went to camp. I bet he was researching bonding theory. That’s totally something he’d do.
” She turned around in her seat to grin at me again. “Or maybe they’re all just in love.”
“It’s not that,” I said through gritted teeth.
Willow turned back into the parking lot where they’d picked me up. The cars had thinned out considerably. It was getting late.
Just as she was about to pull into a parking spot, Brody burst out of the bar and tore through the lot at top speed, running straight for my car.
Panic was etched into every line of his pretty face.
“Stop!” I cried.
Willow hit the brakes. I rolled down my window and stuck my head out. “Brody!”
“Oh, Avery, thank the Moon,” he huffed, skidding to a stop in front of my window. “It’s Ian. He’s picked a fight with Kace Mahoney.”
Clara gasped, and my stomach plummeted through the floor of the car.
Kace Mahoney. The asshole Alpha wolf who’d attacked me in the arena last semester when he was supposed to be my teammate.
The guy who ripped a chunk out of my shoulder and left me to experience a simulated soul death under the ministrations of a Giant wraith conjured by the SWIM.
The guy whose trio Ward had tossed out of the Guardians after that incident.
I could only stare at Brody in horror. “W-What?”
His chest heaved, and words began tumbling from his mouth.
“He and I snuck out to the back of the bar and into the employee parking lot to, uh, you know….” He forced a sheepish grin, and I waved an impatient hand.
“But then Kace and that panther who’s in his trio—Drew, I think?
—they came out back with a girl, who I guess works in the bar, like they were going to go home with her, but then Ian walked right up to Kace and punched him in the face—”
“Damn it all to hell,” I groaned.
“—and luckily Drew just laughed and told him to have fun and took off with the girl, but I don’t think Kace expected Ian to be as good at fighting in human form as he is, and it’s getting really bloody back there. He’s going to lose it soon, Avery.”
Lose it. As in let his wolf out.
While Ian could certainly hang with an asshole like Kace as a man, Kace’s wolf would kill Ian, and there would be no justice under shifter law if Ian started it.
“Where the fuck are the rest of our friends?” I growled.
He tossed his hands into the air. “Nico, Joon, and Ash had all left already with girls they picked up in the bar. Allen and Mallory ran back there when I came out here to look for you, but you know Allen’s wolf can’t do anything against an Alpha.”
No, he sure fucking couldn’t.
“Get Heath,” I said without hesitation. I’d dispensed with my pride—the situation was too fucking dire. “I’ll meet you out back.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. He sprinted back toward the bar.
“Willow, back parking lot, and step on it,” I barked.
She was already whipping the car around before I could finish my command. She floored it, and we were around the block and turning into the bar’s nearly deserted employee parking lot within thirty seconds.
“Ian is Avery’s brother,” Clara informed her friends, her tone as panicked as I felt. “He’s a fox! What was he thinking, picking a fight with an Alpha?”
It was a good fucking question.
As Willow screeched to a stop in front of the dumpsters, I had five seconds to take in the scene before me:
Ian, illuminated by the dim moonlight and what little security lighting the bar had installed in the lot.
He was bleeding from his nose and a cut on his temple, and one of his eyes had swollen shut.
The collar of his T-shirt had been ripped, and he was favoring his right side like something was broken.
Kace Mahoney, standing a few feet from Ian. His white hair was matted with blood that gushed down into his eyes, one of his arms hung at an awkward angle, and his jeans were caked with dust and gravel. His gray eyes had gone molten, and his normally pale skin was flushed with rage.
Allen and Mallory stood off to the side, clutching each other, helpless to intervene.
Ian ducked a swing from Kace’s good arm, laughing like a maniac. He popped up, quick and spry despite whatever was broken, and he kicked Kace between the legs before launching a punch straight into his face.
Kace buckled, bellowing with rage. “I’ll fucking kill you, Baxter, just like I should’ve killed your bitch sister!”
White fur sprouted on his arms.
Ian staggered. That last move had taken it out of him after all.
I threw open the car door, launched myself out, and hit the pavement at a run.
Kace snarled, and then his large white wolf burst from his body, his maw gaping, those huge wolf teeth bloody and aimed for Ian’s neck.
I leapt into the air, hurdling Ian as he disappeared. His silver fox streaked away from the pile of clothes left behind on the ground.
My beast, already so close to the surface, broke through her chains with a murderous roar.
And she met that bastard Mahoney head-on.