18 Sloane #2
My operative training kicked in, overriding the panic. How many? I thought frantically, doing the terrifying math. It’s a fast strike. They followed the beacon. They wouldn’t have had time to organize a massive assault. Seekers. Maybe a Warden or two to handle the magic.
Please, I prayed to the goddess. Please let them not have had time to send a Saint. A surprise attack by standard operatives we could survive. A Saint in the packhouse would mean the end of my pack and my family in front of my very eyes.
The net failed.
Glass rained across the stone floor. The smell poured through the open frame.
Chemical-sweet. The suppressant soup. It smelled like a sterile hospital corridor mixed with rotten fruit. It coated the back of my throat.
Wardens. My wolf snapped her jaws. They found us. KILL.
I didn’t panic. Panic was for civilians. I tracked the sightlines, the exits, the immediate threats.
But before I could move, Finn moved for me.
He launched over the overturned table, grabbing and pulling me flush against his side.
The bond between us flared hot and sharp, anchoring me to him.
He didn’t just pull me to safety. He positioned his body as a physical shield between me and the shattered window.
The sheer, terrifying weight of his protectiveness radiated down the bond—a possessive fury that took my breath away.
Barrett shoved Maren behind him. Tommy yelled something out in the corridor. A shout from the boundary wolves on the northern sweep cut off into a terrible, wet silence.
“Secondary protocol!” Finn shouted. He threw open a cabinet next to one of the bookshelves and handed out weapons, never taking his eyes off the breach. “Get everyone to the lower level!”
Timber splintered somewhere north of us. Stone cracked. The house shook. Dust drifted down from the ceiling rafters. Voices called out positions and fall-back lines over the pack link.
“They hit the northern hall.” Levi backed toward the doorway. “Two Seekers, one Warden. Del has them pinned at the north stair but he won’t hold them long.”
“Nell!” Reed’s voice cut through the noise. Pure Alpha command. It anchored the room, a physical force pushing back against the panic.
“Already running.” Nell’s voice came over top the pack link, sharp and clean. “Fourteen accounted for, two runners missing. Some of the Lodestone medical team is in the east wing—”
He grabbed a heavy iron fire poker from the hearth alongside a gun from Finn. “Nell—secondary exit. Do you know it?”
“Yes, Alpha.”
The air pressure dropped again. The room smelled like a blown transformer and hot pennies.
A grappling hook made of pure silver slammed through the broken window. It buried itself deep in the far wall, shattering the bookshelves.
Then a Shrieker poured through the frame.
It flowed over the sill—a nightmare of brass eyes and oilcloth hide, moving with a cracking, artificial gait. A made-dog. The moment its boots hit the floor, it threw its head back and released a sonic keen.
The sound ruptured the air. Blood immediately rushed from my nose. Across the room, Genny screamed and clamped her hands over her ears, dropping to her knees.
Then her scream warped into a guttural snarl. Bone snapped and reformed. White fur erupted over her skin. Her clothes shredding. Beside her, Levi roared, the sound tearing into a full-throated howl as his massive, dark wolf form tore out of his clothes.
The Shrieker lunged for the wolves.
The massive dark wolf took the Shrieker’s charge head-on.
The beast’s brass claws tore a jagged line down Levi’s shoulder, ripping through muscle and spraying blood across the stone.
Levi let out a canine bellow of pain, but he didn’t fall back.
He drove his jaws forward, clamped his teeth around the Shrieker’s lower jaw, and wrenched sideways with the full, terrifying strength of a shifter.
The mandible popped off its hinge with a dry, clean crack. The keen abruptly died into a wet gurgle. Levi slammed the ruined construct to the floor and crushed its brass skull under his heavy paws.
A figure dressed in black vaulted through the window next. He moved with the terrifying speed of a fully augmented Seeker, a blur of motion too fast for normal eyes to track.
Genny met him in the air. The white wolf hit the Seeker’s chest with the force of a freight train, driving him backward against the stone sill.
A silver blade slid from his wrist gauntlet with a metallic snick, but before he could swing, Genny sank her teeth into his throat.
The bone crunched, and the Seeker went still.
Another figure climbed through the window. Then a third.
The third one wore a featureless mask. The air around him shimmered with a localized dampening field. His boots hit the floor, and the magic in the room died.
The glowing schematic on the slate blinked out. The Oath marks on Finn’s arm faded to dull gray. The connection to the pack vanished from my mind, leaving a horrifying, empty silence in my head.
“Dampener!” Finn raised his weapon, his arm still tightly wrapped around me. “Physical weapons only! Don’t try to shift!”
He fired three rounds. The deafening cracks echoed in the small room. The bullets struck the Warden’s shield. They flattened into useless lead discs and clattered to the floor, smoking on the stone.
The Warden raised a gloved hand. The heavy oak doors to the map room slammed shut. The deadbolt engaged with a crunch of warping metal, sealing us inside.
“Barrett, the door!” Reed swung the iron poker, crushing the knee of a Seeker. The Seeker went down, but slashed upward, carving a silver line across Reed’s thigh.
Barrett threw his shoulder against the doors. “It’s fused!”
A low, synthetic hum vibrated from the Warden’s suit. He turned his masked face. He wasn’t looking at Finn. He was looking at me.
Move! I screamed down the bond. The connection felt like trying to yell underwater, muffled and distant.
The Warden snapped a whip of crackling blue energy. It arced straight for my chest.
I braced for the burn, but it never hit me.
Finn stepped directly into the path of the strike.
He took the crackling whip across his chest, the energy scorching and throwing sparks across the stone.
His eyes bled from human green to pure, terrifying gold.
He looked at the Warden with a ferocity that made my own breath hitch.
The absolute, primal protectiveness of a mated Alpha male radiating from every line of his body.
“Touch her,” Finn snarled, his voice vibrating with a terrifying, hollow promise, “and you die.”
The Warden stumbled, trying to recoil the whip.