Chapter Six #2
“These are not drunks out of a tavern,” Gerhard snapped back. “These are soldiers trained to kill. Underestimate them, and you’re dead.”
Reckless. He would be reckless, and I knew it.
His arrogance was a weight pressing on all of us, his wolf so certain it could tear through them like claws through soft hide.
I swallowed hard. Maybe he was right. He was strong, stronger than any wolf I’d seen.
But he wasn’t trained for unit work, for coordinated strikes.
There was no time to teach him that now. Only time to gamble.
Gerhard came to me before we moved out, set a hand over my arm. “You can walk away at any time.”
“I know. And I won’t.”
I smiled at him, though my stomach knotted tight, my wolf pacing beneath my skin, restless, aching to answer the Moon’s call–to run, not to fight.
And gods, she wanted to run with his wolf.
The pull was physical, a thrum in my blood, a twitch in muscle and bone.
I could feel Dierk’s eyes even now, burning hot as Gerhard’s hand lingered on my sleeve.
The contact was wrong. My body knew it, registering the touch as wrong because it wasn’t Dierk’s.
I fought the urge to shake him off. It made no sense.
None of it did. But the Moon whispered, and when it did, reason was the first thing to fall away.
Thank the gods all our scents were bound.
“Let’s move,” Matthis said.
We shifted and cut through the forest at a run, paws hitting damp earth, breath steaming in the night air. Branches lashed above as the trees thickened and the wind howled, and the reek of sweat, smoke, and fear would soon cover the forest’s sweetness.
The pit lay raw in the clearing. A gouge in the earth, lined with half-driven stakes and piles of dirt.
And soon, they appeared. Villagers huddled together in clusters, wolfsbane chains on them, their eyes wide hollows in the torchlight.
The collectors prowled the edges, pushing them on, some with fire flickering in their hands,others already shifted, wolves with eyes like burning coals.
The scrape of chains, the whip of rope pulled tight, the shuffle of too many feet forced forward. It made my stomach lurch.
I shifted back, ducking into cover in the trees. Gerhard and Matthis’s Prowlers melted into the shadows.
Dierk stayed in wolf form, and with the same arrogance of a predator at the top of the food chain, he moved forward and positioned himself at the very lip of the pit, between it and the villagers.
He stood alone. A wall of muscles and violence, unshakable and seething with the promise of blood.
The collectors saw him then. The lone beast in their path.
“Get out of the way,” one barked, annoyed, his voice carrying across the clearing, his hand lit with fire.
Dierk didn’t move.
“Leave, or burn.”
Dierk’s snarl split the silence, echoing through the forest like a war-horn.
A rain of fire answered, blazing arcs crashing down on him.
He didn’t flinch.
Because he knew, trusted, that I was ready. I shot my own flames high, smashing theirs apart midair until the night exploded in sparks. Those I couldn’t catch, I bent into shields, walls of heat that burned bright enough to swallow his shadow.
Villagers screamed. Chains rattled.
The collectors surged in wolf form, a formation of four snapping for Dierk’s throat.
He exploded forward.
He hit them like an avalanche, brutal and fast, snarls ripping through the dark.
I saw claws, teeth, heard the crack of bone, the yelp of pain, and smelled blood soaking the hard ground.
Two wolves went down in the space between heartbeats, lifeless heaps at his paws.
Blood slicked his own hide–cuts and burns–but he fought as if he didn’t feel it.
As if he’d drowned himself in the fight.
My hands shook, but only inside. Outward, I burned and struck and shielded, my fire forcing collectors back.
Gerhard waded into the fray, precise and lethal, intercepting blows in fire of blade that would have taken Dierk down.
Matthis’s Prowlers cut chains, dragging terrified villagers toward the tree line.
The shift into chaos was sudden.
Fire met fire. Wolves collided in a frenzy of fangs and screams. Some villagers shifted and bolted away. Others stayed, waiting for help, until Prowlers freed them.
And still I felt him. Even when my flames dragged me elsewhere, even when the world was a blur of blood and smoke and screams and snarls, his violence clung to me like a second skin.
I turned just in time to see death coming for me.
A collector, his fire ready, marched toward me. His eyes widened when he recognized who I was, and still he came. He knew my father would not mourn me. He knew my father would reward him.
Too close. He was too close for me to shift and run away. My wolf was not fast enough.
I struck again and again, but panic made me sloppy and exhaustion dulled my flames. I would die here. Either now, at this male’s hands, or at my father’s, as soon as I was brought in front of him.
Gerhard shouted. Matthis started running toward me.
And then Dierk was there.
Scorched, bleeding, his wolf jumped between me and death. He tore into the collector in a blaze of fury so fast, so brutal, the male didn’t even cry before he was ripped apart.
Relief slammed into me. Fear, too. But I couldn’t pause for either.
Not now. The freed villagers were rushing past, stumbling, crying, running for the trees as wolves or on two feet.
And then my blood iced over. A group of males careened toward us to get away.
Dierk turned toward them. Blood dripped from his jaws, eyes gold, wild, and blind with bloodlust. He would go after them.
Innocents. The same claws that had saved them would raise to shred them.
The villagers screamed. Chains clattered as they scrambled away, some falling, others dragging them up.
Gerhard roared orders, his voice thunder. Dierk didn’t hear any. His wolf had taken over everything, high on blood and violence.
I couldn’t let this happen. For them, for him.
I stepped forward.
Flame blazed in my palm, roaring to life. I raised it high, then let it fall in a sheet of fire close to him, not to burn, but to catch his eyes. To give him something else, something immediate, to focus on. “Dierk,” I called.
His wolf turned, fangs bared, ears pulled back, a snarl tearing the night.
“Enough,” I commanded. My voice was steady, though my heart was a drum. It was racing, wild, uncontrolled, but I didn’t have it in me to control it. Not now.
His chest heaved. His claws dug furrows in the earth. His golden eyes locked on me.
And then the world stilled.
Just the two of us, suspended in the dark like fiery stars caught in orbit.
Slowly. Slowly. His growl thinned. His body shuddered, then eased. He lowered to his haunches, panting, staring at me.
I dared to let a breath in, and reality crushed back in.
The forest floor was wrecked. Bodies strewn, wolves and men, charred flesh and torn throats.
None of the collectors remained. But the villagers lived.
Some had already run. Others staggered weakly, still bound in wolfsbane, helped by Prowlers who gave them water, scraps of food, anything to keep them on their feet while working the chains off.
“Are you alright?” Gerhard asked me.
“Yes.” My throat was raw. “Take them away. Matthis and the Prowlers know where. It’s not safe for them at the keep.”
“You can’t stay here alone,” Gerhard growled.
“I’m not.”
He searched my face, worry heavy. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He nodded once and, with Matthis and the Prowlers, began herding the villagers into the forest.
Leaving me with the Stray, blood-soaked and breathing like thunder, his golden eyes still locked on me.
Dierk turned as soon as we were alone. Blood streaked down the right side of his face, oozed from deep cuts at his neck where a Collector had bitten him.
Magic always reset us when we shifted back, so his clean tunic covered him, but blood was already soaking through the cotton.
His chest. His side. Even blooming dark across his leg.
Yet he stood, unbent, eyes still burning with the high of the kill.
“You’re hurt,” I said. Such stupid words.
He shrugged, shoved blood-soaked hair back from his face, smearing it worse. “I’ll be fine soon enough.” He scanned the trees. “We have to leave. It’s not safe here.”
No, it wasn’t safe. But it sure wasn’t dangerous enough to completely ignore what had happened. “It can wait a moment.”
“No.”
Fire licked under my skin; my wolf snapped at me as much as at him. Tired. Frustrated. With me, with him. Well, there were two of us. “Do you understand what you did?”
“I killed the collectors. The villagers walked away.”
I exhaled hard, frustration sparking into flame. “And then you nearly tore them apart.”
A growl started in his chest as fire flickered around my hands. “You knew what I am,” he growled.
“You say it like you don’t have a choice,” I growled back.
“Maybe I don’t.”
“You do,” I bit out, stepping forward. “You always do. But this way is easier, isn’t it? Just give in to the fire. To the wolf. Then say you couldn’t do anything to stop it.”
“Don’t talk to me about easy. You’ve never lived a day in my skin.”
“Maybe not, but I’ve bled from mine. And I don’t let it own me.”
Something in him faltered. His wolf flickered in his gaze, and it wasn’t only anger seething there.
For the briefest second, he looked lost. My own wolf must have sensed it too because she sat, a low chuff rising from her chest. “Shed that skin, Dierk. You’re not chained to it unless you choose to be. ”
He looked at me, male and wolf both, for the longest heartbeat. “You don’t touch me anymore.”