Chapter 31 Heath
HEATH
Ilooked up from where I’d lodged Aiden’s saber in the Giant’s throat just in time to see the love of my life, her blue eyes blazing, freeze like she’d just slammed into a brick wall.
While two Rippers bore down on her.
The heavy, oppressive weight of feline dominance saturated the air. A huge lion prowled nearby, at the edge of the chaos by the pavilion.
Fucking Cash.
My beast thrashed in my chest, panic like I’d experienced only once before choking me.
I couldn’t get to the Rippers in time. I couldn’t get to Cash in time.
Those hellhounds were going to kill my mate.
Elijah bellowed and hissed, but the Giant in his hold wasn’t dead yet. He couldn’t let go.
Aiden’s jaguar roared and sprinted faster.
But we shouldn’t have worried.
Avery released the loudest, most frustrated scream I’d ever heard come out of her mouth, and she broke the lion’s will seconds after he’d clamped her down. Her beast’s fury shot clear across the field, blanketing us all.
The lion’s eyes widened, and he couldn’t suppress his shiver as the powerful pulse of Avery’s beast hit him.
Freed, Avery ducked under the attacking wraith and thrust her swords upwards, impaling it with a roar. Aiden slammed into the other one, and together they made quick work of the monsters.
Releasing my own bellow of rage, I brought my saber down on the Giant’s thick neck, finally removing the head. Elijah uncoiled from the body as it began to disintegrate.
An icy wind whipped around me. The basilisk roared, his yellow eyes blazing hotter than I’d ever seen them as he zeroed in on Cash’s lion.
“No,” I barked, sinking all my wolf’s power into the command. “Aiden has it.”
Our jaguar was already streaking across the grass, his bloodthirst a surging river around him. Avery watched him run, her spine straight and her face hard. She was so beautiful, splattered in gray guts, her chest heaving as she caught her breath, blue fireworks sparking in her eyes.
The lion turned and sprinted back into the thick trees at the edge of the campground.
Aiden chased after him.
“Son of a bitch,” I said. “That fucking coward.”
Elijah returned to human form, the basilisk falling away easier than I’d expected. Avery was safe for now, and the activity from the rift had finally died down. There were only a few swarmers loose, and Kellan’s team had them covered.
“Did he just do what I think he did?” Elijah hissed.
Maybe the basilisk hadn’t fallen completely away.
Wyatt, no longer a bear, jogged over. He’d managed to get his uniform back on, and he carried Elijah’s and Aiden’s clothes.
“What the fuck is going on?” he asked, coming to stop next to Avery. He threw the pile of clothes at Elijah, and then he turned to Avery, cupping her face in his hands and lowering his voice. “Why does it feel like our beautiful tiger is about to go on a murder spree, hmm?”
“I was, but Aiden beat me to it,” she murmured.
“Cash just popped out of the woods and tried to kill Avery, just bold as fucking brass,” I said through gritted teeth.
Wyatt’s eyes went an angry red. “He what?”
The tiger’s aura changed instantly. Gone was the ferocious aggression, replaced by a soothing purr. She was practically stroking Wyatt’s bear down his back.
Wyatt groaned and cracked his neck. “That feels nice, baby. Keep doing it.”
“That’s what Cash did, right, Killer?” I asked. “He tried to lock you up in front of that Ripper?”
She nodded. “It was definitely him. He doesn’t pack the punch of your dad, but the flavor is similar.”
I blew out a breath and tried to relax my jaw before I cracked a molar. The reminder that my dad had attacked Avery, while she was alone and reeling from us being total fucking assholes to her, made me want to impale myself on my sword.
The tiger nudged at me with a playful lick. My wolf’s self-loathing evaporated instantly, and he wagged his tail like an excited puppy.
Elijah, now dressed, slinked over to Avery and pressed his body up against her back. “Cash got a nice little surprise, didn’t he, Dove?”
She sighed. “Yeah. Now he’ll at least have a sense that I’m stronger than he thought. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
Unease trickled through my body. Cash was a problem that needed solving yesterday. He’d targeted my mate too many times, and I took the fact that he was still breathing as a personal failure as the leader of this quad.
He was now on the list—the one with all the problems we had to deal with once we survived camp. There was no chance I’d allow him to be in a position of authority over Avery once we returned to the program at school.
Aiden’s jaguar came loping out of the woods. He shifted back into a man as he approached us, his body glistening with sweat and his chest heaving as he caught his breath.
“He fucking got away,” he spat. “I couldn’t find Cash or any of the other assholes in his quad either.”
Elijah threw Aiden’s uniform at him. He wiped his brow with his shirt and dressed hurriedly, finishing by pulling his glasses from his pants pocket and sliding them onto his face.
“It’s okay, Aiden,” Avery said, her voice serene. “Cash’s day will come. He’s pushed me too far now.”
Aiden nudged Wyatt out of the way and pulled Avery into his chest. “Fuck, sweetheart. I thought I was going to choke on my own lungs when I saw you freeze. But my jaguar knew better. He knew his mate could handle that weak fucking lion.”
The tiger’s preen in response to Aiden’s praise was immediate and palpable. I shared a smug smile with the others.
“Hey, lovebirds,” Ian barked, jogging up to us. “We’ve cleared the area, and the rift is dissipating, but Matt’s injured.”
Shit. “How bad?” I asked, striding immediately in the direction of the playground.
Ian fell into step next to me. “He’ll live. One of the Rippers Crimson’s unit was handling got away from them, and it took a bite out of Matt’s arm while he was finishing one of our swarmers. He shifted, but his wing looks all fucked up.”
I hurried over to where the hawk was perched on the railing of the merry-go-round. His fluffy body was marred with wraith guts, and his left wing was clearly broken, hanging at an awkward angle. Brody sat with him while the rest of our support team stood guard.
“Hang on, Matt,” I said, bringing my finger to the comm device in my ear. “I’m calling for medical.”
It was needed, as we weren’t the only unit with injuries. At least a dozen trainees were scattered around the campground in their beast forms, healing from gashes and broken bones.
I tried not to delight in the sight of a puffy purple bruise on Teegan’s human face. Something had given him a shiner, and he looked even more put out than usual.
“Blackwell to base,” I said through comms. “The rift at the family campground has dissipated, but we have units with injuries that need medical attention.”
“Tracking,” Commander Moss replied. “Any wraith activity in the vicinity? Our drones aren’t picking up anything except around a smaller rift on the opposite side of the state park.”
I let my wolf surface and listened to my surroundings.
Past the low murmur of voices around us—unit leaders concerned for their injured, trainees recounting their kills, others calling in their own requests for aid.
Past Avery’s husky, hypnotic voice, repeatedly assuring Wyatt and Elijah that she didn’t have a scratch on her, the sound like gentle fingertips dragging down my spine.
Past the soft rustling of leaves and the distant sounds of cars on the highway.
No screeches or unnatural gaits crawling through the woods. No claws scraping tree bark or fucked-up insect noises.
“Nothing in range,” I reported.
“Then hold your position for now. I’ll send a team your way.”
“Thank you, sir.”
It took ten minutes for the two black SUVs to whip into the nearby parking lot and eject four medics a piece.
Matt was seen to right away, and he was able to shift back to human after his wing was reset. He’d endured it with minimal squawking.
My brother joined me. He surveyed the other units as they put themselves back together, and then he shifted his gaze to where Avery sat on the merry-go-round next to Brody and Ian, chatting quietly with them. Wyatt and Elijah didn’t try to pretend they weren’t hovering over her.
“Night one in the books,” Aiden murmured.
“A fucking bad one,” I added.
He nodded, still watching our mate. “Tomorrow is going to be worse.”
“I expect so.”
He finally looked at me, brilliant turquoise ringing his irises and shining behind his glasses. “We have to be ready. We can’t let anything happen to her.”
I swallowed roughly. “I know.”
“You sure it’s not my turn?” Wyatt asked me as he scrubbed his wet hair with a towel. “It feels like I haven’t been on duty in forever.”
I sighed wearily and pointed to the makeshift calendar I’d scrawled on the back of a menu I’d stolen from the chow hall and taped to the wall of our cabin.
“It is very clearly my turn. We hashed this out and put it on paper for a reason, and yet you all insist on arguing with me about it every night.”
“You can’t fault us for sleeping better near our dove,” Elijah said lazily. He was sprawled on his bed, wearing flannel pajama pants and nothing else, flicking idly through the pages of a paperback. “Especially after the events of tonight.”
I rolled my eyes. “Like you won’t be lurking in the woods anyway.”
“Maybe,” he replied with a fangy grin. “After a little nap.”
“Just go, Heath,” Aiden said, yanking on his own pajama pants. “There’s barely any night left. Harder to be sneaky when the sun comes up.”
He was right. It was damn near 5:00 a.m. We were allowed to sleep until lunchtime after patrol, and we needed it badly.
I tossed the towel that I’d tied around my waist onto my bed and strode out of the cabin in the nude. As my bare feet hit the grass, I released my wolf.
The sting of the shift hardly registered, my wolf elated to be let out and on a journey toward his mate.