Chapter 2 - Mason #2
I left Jackson to guide the remaining adults down while I ran back inside for one more careful sweep of the rooms. Something didn’t feel right.
I’d always lived for danger; it was part of why I’d taken this job.
But the fires in Honeycreek had been increasing lately.
There wasn’t just orange flame, as normal, but shoots of green fire.
There had been too many incidents this month alone for it to be a freak accident after a freak accident.
No one was left, but I heard a quiet meowing in the corner of the main library that had been half-doused, but the flames were persistent. I stopped dead when I saw a cat curled up on the top of a bookshelf in the far right corner.
“I can’t leave it,” I muttered, shouldering my way through the room, ablaze. The main library was utterly destroyed, but this cat couldn’t be left. It was a black and white tuxedo, and my heart beat faster as I raced through the length of the room to where it was perched.
I’d like to have a kitty one day. In my head, I heard a female voice—a voice I always tried to block out whenever I remembered it—talk about it, and I told myself that I didn’t stop for that.
For a long-ago afternoon where a girl told me her ideal life.
Maybe a rag doll or a tuxedo with little white paws. I’d call her Waffles.
Why Waffles? I’d asked.
She’d giggled, something I hadn’t let myself properly think of as beautiful back then, and said, Who’d expect a cat to be called Waffles? I like the unexpected.
And now I was clambering up onto a half-broken chair, braced against the wall and bookshelf, and scooped a mewling, hissing thing into my arms.
“Hey, you,” I said softly. “You want to come with me?”
The cat tensed before looking up at me.
“Yeah, yeah, I imagine you have some reservations,” I laughed, and the sound of something collapsing, and my name being shouted, had me moving. I finished my sweep, tucking the cat into my jacket, and finally declared that we’d gotten all the survivors.
“Mase!” Theo shouted when I broke through the entrance of the library. Half of it was utterly gone, and there was a crowd gathered around, all murmuring, some picking up the survivors. “What the fuck are you playing at?”
“I had another rescue,” I told him, pulling the cat out. She was beautiful and soft, a little coated in ash, but she meowed quietly, looking between Theo and me.
“You—you fucking risked your life over a cat?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Yeah, I fuckin’ did, and don’t challenge me again, Theo. I’ve had enough of that for today. I’m not leaving any life behind. This one included.”
“We’re dealing with demons, here—”
“We don’t know that,” I growled. At the noise, the cat protested noisily. I stroked a thumb over her soft head. “Why demons, Theo? What’s their plan, huh?”
“We have enough evidence to suggest it is,” Theo insisted. “The scorch marks, the sudden fires everywhere? We’re getting restless, worn thin, Mase. We’re a good pack but a small brigade. We don’t have the resources for the frequency of these attacks.”
At that, I was in the dark about what to do. He was right, but I didn’t care for his tone.
“We’ll keep looking into it,” I muttered, passing him, but I was stopped from taking a small breather as I dragged off my helmet.
“Hey!” Jackson’s voice called out. His team had successfully cleared the storage room, and the other team had the water blasting. Things were under control. “We have another emergency. We gotta leave now, Mase. Give me a team.”
“What’s happened?” I checked my pager but had nothing.
I frowned, but Jackson was looking at his own phone.
His dark buzzcut made him look sharper, especially with the ash on his face.
His eyes, so painfully green like his sister’s, the girl I had been trying to bury in my head for seven years, stared at me with dread.
“It’s Bryce,” he said. “She’s in danger.”
His sister.
Bryce Calloway.
Emerald green eyes flashed through my head, and everything in me surged. My blood roared in my ears.
“Let’s go,” I snarled. “Theo, carry on here!”
“Wait, Mase—” Jackson put a hand on my chest.
“I’m going with you,” I told him, my voice commanding.
I was his alpha; he’d follow my orders to no end.
But he wasn’t my second for nothing. He looked ready to fight me on it, but I let the streak of protectiveness flare, letting him see that these seven years could be forgotten between Bryce and me if it meant getting her out of danger.
I couldn’t picture her vulnerable and scared, in whatever emergency situation she was in, and not going.
But beneath that was something else: something primal, something that the wolf in me howled for.
“Get your team together,” I told him right as I pulled away.
I was barely into the treeline before I was shifting, my body stretching to accommodate my other form.
Soon, I was no longer Mason, but a black alpha wolf that pounded through the trees, heading for the next town of White Bay, where Jackson had once told me that his sister had moved out to.
I would find her, and I would protect her, even if I had broken her heart seven years ago.