Chapter 32 Avery
AVERY
Iwasn’t sure what I expected when I invited Heath into my cabin at five o’clock in the morning, but he did not shift back into a naked man outside my door. No, he managed to squeeze his giant furry body through the door as I held it open for him, fighting a bemused smile.
“Oh, okay,” I said as he did a few circles in the tight space between the two beds and sniffed my things. “Make yourself at home, then.”
He sent an aggressive snort at George, who was curled up in the middle of the piles of clothes on my extra bed. Heath was probably unhappy that my python pal did not attempt to strangle either of the men who’d decided to knock on my door and ask me out at this unholy hour.
George returned Heath’s snort with a sassy hiss and went back to ignoring us both.
Heath proceeded to rub his giant wolf head all over me, and I laughed, scratching his ears. “Yes, hello. Are you happy to be out? You had to sit on the sidelines tonight, like my girl does pretty much every time.”
He huffed and nudged me toward my bed.
“Fine, I’m going. Bossy.”
I climbed into bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. The exhaustion sank into my bones, and my eyelids fluttered, sleep coming for me almost immediately.
The large wolf curled up beside my bed was a safety blanket I didn’t exactly need, but my body and beast appreciated it nonetheless. My tiger purred contentedly—another thing that was going to lull me to sleep in short order.
I reached over to rub the soft fur on top of his head. He rumbled a happy noise. “Tonight was… good, Heath. It felt right.”
He huffed and licked my arm.
“You’re a good leader,” I said sleepily. “A good brother. A good… friend.”
A good man that will make a good mate.
I batted that pesky thought away as I let sleep take me.
“Well, isn’t this cozy?”
I blinked awake, slowly and reluctantly. The sun was blazing high in the sky, and I hissed like a vampire as it assaulted me through the windows.
Heath let out a big wolf yawn and flopped over on my floor, also in no hurry to get up.
Wyatt stood at my door, smirking at us through the screen. “Can I come in, Wildcat?”
I sat up and swung my legs over the side of my bed. “Yeah,” I croaked, rubbing my eyes. “Watch where you walk. Don’t step on my snake or my wolf.”
Heath chuffed and licked my leg. George had already made his way down from my spare bed and was making his escape.
Wyatt shoved the door open, waited a beat for George to slither past him, then stepped inside. He wore black joggers and the world’s tightest white T-shirt, and he had a backpack slung over one shoulder.
He grinned at me, his emerald eyes bright as he took in my silky tank top and tiny pajama shorts. “Heath’s a better man than I am, baby. There’s no way I could’ve stayed a beast and slept anywhere but in your bed with you if I’d been invited in here, not with you looking like that.”
My tiger preened. I did my best to look unaffected, even as the idea of naked Wyatt pressed up against me in my bed, even just to hold me while I slept, made my entire body tingle. I squinted at him. “Are you here to retrieve your fearless leader?”
“Yes, but I also came to talk to you.” He sobered and reached into his backpack. He tossed a pair of shorts and a T-shirt at Heath. “Shift and get dressed, man.”
Heath growled irritably then stood up and shook out his sandy-blond coat. He nosed at me one more time for some pets, which I gave to him, and then his body morphed into a naked man, all tan skin stretched over taut, hard muscle.
He yawned and raked his fingers through his disheveled hair. I stared unabashedly at him, though I was demure enough to keep my gaze above his waist. He winked at me, then turned around to pull on his shorts, which only gave me a view of his award-winning ass.
My beast flicked her tail with great interest.
I know. I won’t even argue with you anymore.
“Good morning, Killer,” Heath said, turning back to face me as he pulled on his shirt. “Did you get enough sleep? Feeling rested?”
“I think so.” I stretched my arms over my head and pretended my entire body didn’t warm when both of their gazes went straight to the sliver of my stomach that peeked out. “I’m used to the late-night patrols, Heath. Been doing them since I was fourteen.”
“Don’t remind me,” he growled.
“But last night was a lot,” I added. “I’ll admit that. Killing wraiths that wander into the shifter neighborhoods in the city isn’t like taking them on directly from the rifts up here.”
“They’ve already coded our zone red for this cycle,” Wyatt said. “Dad told me. The Guardians are considering sending in non-trainee backup for the New Moon tonight. It could get nasty.”
The thought stirred nervous excitement within me.
I’m finally doing it.
“What’s the update from Ward?” Heath asked, giving Wyatt a pointed look.
“That’s what I came to talk to you about, Wildcat.
” He sat down next to me on my bed and wrapped his big hand around my thigh.
“Aiden and I went to my dad earlier this morning. We told him exactly what Cash tried to do, and we told him we were walking if he didn’t remove Cash and his quad from the program. ”
“You what?” I asked, incredulous. “You’d leave the Guardians?”
He nodded. “We know becoming a Guardian is important to you, baby, but it’s not worth the danger our own fucking trainers are putting you in. We figure we can all just move to your neighborhood and kill wraiths in the streets. You’d be safer with us around, even if we weren’t Guardians.”
I blinked at him, stunned, then I looked at Heath. “You sanctioned that?”
He shrugged. “The vote was unanimous.”
Wyatt squeezed my thigh. “But it won’t come to that because Dad’s finally had enough. Cash and his quad are out. Not out of the Guardians, unfortunately, but out of the training program. He’s going to find someone else to take over at school.”
“What about in the field the next two nights?” Heath asked.
“It’s all hands, as you know,” Wyatt replied. “But Dad is going to try to ensure that our units are sent to the opposite ends of the zone.”
I waved a hand. “Cash doesn’t scare me. I appreciate that I won’t be watching my back for the entirety of our senior year, but I hate that it was necessary. I joined the Guardians with every intention of handling this sort of shit myself.”
Heath knelt in front of me and wrapped his hands around my calves.
I suppressed a shiver. The feel of his and Wyatt’s hands on my skin was like slipping into a hot bath.
He regarded me with his familiar intensity, his hazel eyes soft.
“Let us take care of you, please, Killer. You don’t have to face any of this alone. Not ever.”
“We’re not fucking around with your safety, baby,” Wyatt added. “I don’t think you’d fuck around with ours either.”
“No,” I growled, my beast showing herself before I could stop her. “I wouldn’t.”
“That’s good to hear,” Heath said softly. His hand began a slow journey up my leg and onto my inner thigh. “Because there’s nothing on earth more important to us than you.”
Wyatt, always the most brash and untoward of the bunch, took the hand he already had on my thigh and slid it under my shorts to tease at the edge of my panties. He put his lips to my ear. “You gonna let us take care of you, Wildcat?”
I bit my lower lip and braced against a heady wave of lust. We were in my cabin, its screen doors and windows open to the air, and anyone could just walk by. “It’s probably not a good idea—”
“Hey, assholes,” Ian barked from outside my door. “Unhand my sister. She needs to eat.”
My lust haze evaporated instantly.
Heath dropped his head into my lap and groaned. Wyatt threw his hands into the air and flopped backwards onto my bed.
Ian crossed his arms and quirked a brow at me. Brody stood behind him, wearing an enormous grin.
I looked over my shoulder at Wyatt as I stroked Heath’s thick, silky hair. “I am pretty hungry,” I said.
“Me too,” he mumbled into my pillow.
I nudged them both. “Go wait outside while I get changed. And don’t antagonize Ian. He fights dirty.”
They grumbled but didn’t argue. Wyatt peeled himself off my bed and trudged to the door. Heath climbed to his feet, dropped a kiss on top of my head, and followed.
My stomach growled. It was time to fuel up then get my mind right for whatever awaited us tonight in the field.
What awaited us turned out to be pure fucking chaos.
“Avery, with Wyatt!” Heath shouted. “Aiden and Elijah, with me!”
Wyatt the bear and I darted left while the other three veered right.
Ian and his team had just plowed through a bunch of disgusting rodent-shaped swarmers, and three Rippers had jumped out of the trees on their heels.
Vaguely feline-shaped, they were the size of a Prime lion, grotesque teeth visible in their long snouts where their gray flesh was melting away from their skulls.
Wyatt and I peeled one off, attacking its flank, while Heath’s team dealt with the other two.
I slashed its front leg, severing it from its body, and then Wyatt rammed it, knocking it to the ground before tearing its throat out.
With two hard strikes, I hacked off its head, then whirled to face north again, tense and ready.
Screams echoed throughout the woods, both the high-pitched wailing of wraiths and what sounded like screams of pain from our fellow Guardians.
Heath already had to call for medical assistance when we happened across a unit who’d been badly torn up by an unknown number of wraiths, and we hadn’t even been out here for an hour yet.
We and a dozen other units had been sent to the northeast side of the state park tonight.
Heath had us following the path of one of many mountain-biking and hiking trails, and we’d already killed six Rippers and one Giant.
I’d lost track of how many swarmers Ian and his team had killed, but they hadn’t stopped swinging their blades for more than sixty seconds at a time.
The tortured screeches of Rippers in their last throes sounded behind me. In my periphery, Joon and Nico spun, hacking and slashing at the rodents, both bleeding from cuts to their arms and face.
More Rippers—hellhounds and some kind of horse-bodied creatures with jackal heads and taloned feet—burst through the trees. Six, seven, eight, nine, shit, shit….
I backed up to Wyatt’s rump, swords raised.
Wyatt growled menacingly as three Rippers surrounded us.
They began to attack, first one, then another, then all three.
I spun my swords in my hands, slashing at them, Wyatt doing the same with his big bear teeth and claws.
We sliced and stabbed and bit, and guts and flesh rained onto the ground as we did our damnedest to weaken them little by little until I could manage to cut off heads.
Heath shouted more orders somewhere nearby. Aiden shouted back, which meant he was also alive and unharmed. And Elijah was basically unkillable. Everyone was fine.
Everyone would be fine.
Ian and Brody stumbled into my line of sight, fighting with a stray swarmer and one of the jackal-horse Rippers.
Brody ducked a swipe of a huge taloned foot aimed at his head.
Ian shouted in alarm and stabbed it in the throat.
He had a large tear in his shirt, the gray material dark and wet on his side.
Worry choked me. When had that happened?
Horrendous shrieks sounded, and the trees in front of me were torn from their roots. Three serpent wraiths, Giants the size of a fucking house, careened onto our path, their spiked tails whipping like blender blades.
Elijah’s basilisk erupted from his body. He launched himself at one of the serpents. Their long bodies wound together and tumbled out of sight.
Another of the serpents whipped its tail straight at Matt, who was trying to hack through the thick neck of a nearly dead croc swarmer.
He cursed and jumped away, shifting into his hawk and flapping frantically to evade the wraith.
The tail snapped again and connected with the hawk.
I bit off a scream as he dropped out of the air, landing somewhere in the trees.
There was no time to panic. Wyatt jerked a Ripper by its neck and tossed it against a tree. I hacked its head off, stabbed another one through the throat, whirled, and did the same to another. Wyatt ripped out throats, and I finished the job.
When the last hellhound began to fizzle into gray goo, I darted a frantic look around.
Ian and Brody were now holding off two jackal-horse Rippers. Andre had shifted into his small wolf and was lending his teeth to the fight, snarling and ripping at the oozing flesh of the wraiths while Ian and Brody swung their swords.
Heath and Aiden the jaguar were busy with one of the two remaining Giant serpents.
The last Giant screeched as Nico and Joon made harried slashes at its face. It swiped at them with its enormous tail, and they dove out of the way.
It spun wildly, screeching and shaking its head, and then it darted toward Ian and Brody.
Fear choked me. “Wyatt!”
I sprinted for the Giant.
Wyatt roared and chased after me.
A stray Ripper leapt from the trees. A new one, with a hyena head and a tail like a scorpion’s.
It jumped straight at Brody, whose back was to it as he stabbed at a hellhound.
Ian shouted in alarm and threw himself at his boyfriend, shoving him to the ground and out of the way.
Time slowed.
The Ripper’s scorpion tail impaled Ian right through his stomach. Ian fell to his knees.
I screamed.
Brody rolled onto his hands and knees. His mouth was open like he was also screaming, but I couldn’t hear him.
The Ripper whipped its tail again, and the knotty part below the stinger hit Ian in the head, knocking him out cold.
The wraith jumped on top of Ian’s prone body. The eerie violet light that leaked through its torn flesh and exposed bones glowed brighter.
It was trying to eat my brother’s soul.
No!
I screamed again. Tears streamed down my face, clouding my vision. I veered away from the Giant and ran for Ian faster than I ever had in my life.
He cannot die. He’s not allowed to die.
Before I could get there, Heath’s enormous golden wolf flew through the air and slammed into the wraith standing over Ian. He snarled and sank his teeth into its thick hyena neck. He shook it violently until he tore a huge chunk from its throat.
It dropped. Brody stumbled over to it, sobbing, screaming, and he hacked its head off with Ian’s katana.
Heath shifted back into a nude man, stooped to pick up Ian’s bleeding, unconscious body, and then he sprinted away, shouting something into his comm as he ran.
Brody was now shouting at me too. His lips were moving, his face terrible, but I couldn’t hear anything over the ringing in my ears.
Something crashed into my side. My ribs cracked under the hit, and I went flying.