Chapter 10 #2
Someone screamed. Someone else fired too close. A bullet whistled past my ear and burrowed into the dirt.
One of the other Watch soldiers ran forward with an axe. She swung hard, cracking the feral across the shoulder. It yelped and lunged at her anyway, jaws snapping shut on her forearm.
She screamed, but she didn’t drop the axe. Instead, she tried to keep fighting with her other hand.
The feral jerked its head violently, and I heard the sound of bone and sinew giving way.
The woman screamed and crumpled, axe slipping from her grip, blood pouring down her sleeve in thick, shocking streams. The feral lunged and clamped his teeth around her neck, shaking its head violently before it ran off to join another fight.
She lay on the ground, eyes wide, mouth opening as if she wanted to say something, but only a wet, broken breath came out.
Eamon rushed toward her, hands already reaching, but one look at her face and he stopped.
His shoulders sagged just slightly.
Then he knelt anyway, because he was Eamon, and pressed two fingers to her neck even when he already knew.
“She’s gone,” he said quietly.
The fight raged on after that.
Every time one feral went down, two more surged to replace it.
My arms were slick with blood. My knife felt heavy. My lungs burned. My heart hammered in my throat.
Bishop took another hit.
A feral’s claws raked across his shoulder in wolf form, tearing through fur. Bishop snapped back with a vicious bite, but he staggered when he landed, and for the first time I saw his eyes go slightly unfocused, as if he’d taken more damage than he wanted anyone to know.
“Bishop!” I shouted.
He shifted back to his human form and glanced at me, breath ragged. “I’m fine.”
It was a lie.
He knew it. I knew it.
Elias knew it too. He cut across the yard in two bounding strides, slammed into the feral that had caused it, and tore its throat out with brutal force. Then he shifted back to human in a blink and grabbed Bishop’s arm.
“Get back,” Elias ordered.
Bishop bristled. “No.”
Elias’s eyes flashed. “That wasn’t a request.”
Bishop’s jaw clenched, but he obeyed, limping back toward Eamon’s position. Eamon caught him, immediately pressing his hands to the wound, expression rapt with concern.
“We’re losing too many people,” Clara said hoarsely, her injured arm cradled tight to her chest as she continued firing one-handed. “We can’t keep this up.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Exhaustion was beginning to weigh heavily on the Watch as well as us.
Even Griff’s movements, brutal and unstoppable moments earlier, had begun to slow.
Bishop’s injured shoulder was slowing him, forcing him to compensate.
Eamon moved constantly behind us, shouting orders, dragging wounded clear, hands red to the wrists.
Elias and Nox were still moving strong, but they were starting to breathe hard.
Another feral slammed into the line, driving two people backward. Someone went down hard, crying out, and for a terrifying moment I thought that we were going to lose.
Then a series of howls broke through the night.
Shapes burst from the tree line at a dead run, moving with terrifying speed and purpose. Massive wolves poured into the moonlight, coats gleaming silver, black, brown, and white under the stars, eyes bright with awareness instead of madness.
It was Zara’s pack.
Magnus hit first.
His great silver-gray wolf form slammed into the flank of the feral wave like a landslide, jaws snapping shut around a feral’s neck with decisive finality. He didn’t snarl, didn’t hesitate. He killed it, then surged forward again, breaking the momentum of the oncoming mass by sheer force of will.
Tobias followed close behind him, darker coated and leaner, moving with a methodical calm. Where Magnus was overwhelming power, Tobias was control, cutting off angles, herding ferals away from the human line, and snapping legs and shoulders to slow them down so they could slaughter them.
Callum’s gray wolf form darted through the chaos like a missile with a grin, nipping, tripping, slamming into ferals from unexpected angles and sending them sprawling into each other.
Then he shifted into his human form. “Miss me, you ugly bastards?” His voice rang out mid-shift, bright and reckless.
Thorne and Killian flanked them, darker shapes cutting through the edges.
Thorne fought hard, his pale white coat streaked with blood as he held ground and refused to give it back.
Killian’s reddish-brown form moved more quietly, almost like a shadow that appeared at a feral’s throat and vanished just as fast.
Then more howls rang out.
Sera’s pack surged in from the opposite side of the yard, hitting the ferals from behind before they could regroup.
Logan’s wolf form, huge and black, plowed straight into the densest knot of ferals with a furious snarl, tearing one down and hurling another aside like it weighed nothing. He fought fiercely, rage sharpened into purpose.
Aidan flanked him, lighter and faster, darting in to finish what Logan started, his movements quick and ruthless. Declan barreled in next, massive and relentless, his broad dark brown wolf form crashing into ferals and pinning them so others could strike cleanly.
Jamie moved with surprising agility for his size, eyes bright and focused, protecting Aidan’s blind side. And Edward fought like a blade given fur, every movement economical, every kill intentional.
Magnus roared.
Elias surged forward beside them, his midnight-dark wolf weaving seamlessly into Magnus’s advance.
Griff followed, the two of them forming a brutal spearhead that drove straight through the center of the feral mass.
Bishop, wounded but burning with determination, shifted again and joined the flanks, snapping and clawing to keep ferals from regrouping.
The tide had turned, and I felt it in my bones.
I sprinted forward, knife flashing. A feral lunged at me and I sidestepped, slamming my knife into its shoulder and driving it down into the dirt. Another came from my left and I ducked under its snapping jaws, slashing across its hamstring and spinning away as it collapsed in a screaming heap.
The ferals were still dangerous, but without cohesion, without direction, they were nothing but broken bodies and brains reacting on instinct. They snapped at each other. They hesitated. Some tried to flee back into the trees and were cut down before they could escape.
The Watch advanced behind us now, emboldened by the sudden shift. Clara fired with grim focus. I saw Seamus being hauled farther from the fight, and Eamon barking instructions at the people around him. I saw Bishop stagger, then steady himself as Tobias flanked him, taking a feral down together.
Griff raced past me, human now, eyes blazing. “You good?” he shouted.
“Better than good,” I shouted back.
Another feral charged.
Magnus intercepted it midair, jaws snapping shut with a sickening crack. Logan tore into another beside him, their movements brutal but coordinated, packs interlocking instinctively.
Within minutes—though it felt like hours—the ferals were no longer advancing.
They were dying.
The last cluster tried to break back toward the forest, but Thorne and Declan cut them off, forcing them into a narrow corridor between buildings where Elias and Sera’s wolves finished it decisively.
When the final feral fell, the night didn’t immediately go quiet.
Blood and adrenaline roared in my ears. My heart hammered against my ribcage. The wolves stood over the fallen, chests heaving, eyes scanning the tree line for threats that didn’t come. Moonlight glinted off blood-slick fur and steel.
Then, slowly, the forest stilled, leaving us with the aftermath.
Bodies littered the yard. Humans leaned on weapons or sank to their knees, shaking now that the danger had passed. Wolves shifted back to human one by one, grim-faced and exhausted.
Magnus approached Elias, blood streaked across his arms and chest. “You did good.”
“So did you. Thank you,” Elias replied.
Logan clapped Griff on the shoulder hard enough to make him stagger. “Next time though,” he growled, “send us an invite so we can arrive on time.”
Griff huffed.
Killian grinned, wiping blood from his cheek. “We do love making an entrance though.”
“That you do,” Griff replied.
We buried the dead at dawn.
The men took that on without discussion, wolves and humans working together, shoulders bowed, shovels biting into earth that was still cold from the night.
Griff, Elias, Magnus, Logan, Bishop, Nox, Tobias, and all the other wolves worked alongside the surviving humans to dig several rows of shallow graves at first, then deeper ones as the sun climbed and warmed the ground.
I stood at the edge of the group with Zara and Sera, watching the men move with the same coordination they’d fought with just the night before.
Corporal Rowe’s grave was marked with a piece of scrap steel bent into the shape of a cross. A woman named Maeve was laid to rest beside him. Clara knelt between the two mounds for a long time afterward, hands folded, jaw set, until Sera touched her shoulder and helped her stand.
Eamon took over the med bay and any room that would hold a table.
Bandages were boiled and reused. Clean water was given out.
The most life-threatening injuries were managed first, followed by less serious ones.
Eamon moved like a conductor—pointing, instructing, reassuring anyone that needed it—never raising his voice, never stopping. He worked like a machine.
Zara and Sera stayed with me.
We fell into a rhythm without talking about it. Zara helped when Eamon asked. Sera cleaned wounds with a surgeon’s efficiency that surprised me until I remembered she’d probably been trained in basic human anatomy in her role with the Watch. I used my own skills to help when I could.