Chapter 18
Kade
Pain. White-hot, splintering through my ribs. Can’t breathe. Rain stings my face. Something huge crushes my chest, pinning me, making it impossible to move. The scent of rust, metal, and . . . her. Roses and old paper, laced with terror.
Alanna.
My head lolls, vision swimming back into a blurry, terrible focus. The echo-beast, so close, coming for me. Beyond . . . I see her. Standing in the open, wet hair plastered against her skin, small in stature but a powerhouse of magic. She squares her shoulders and calls out.
No. The word is a choked thing in my throat, useless.
She promised she wouldn’t.
Her magic surges in a blinding flare of light and sheer power.
My ears ring from the sound it makes. The shadow forgets me, forgets everything but her.
It’s going to consume her. Her light will go out forever.
I’ll lose her.
Denial ignites deep inside me, ripping through my soul. The mating bond, which I have fought for weeks, detonates with the force of a nuclear explosion. It’s a blistering inferno of undiluted instinct, and it demands one thing: protect her. At any cost.
Strength floods my veins, beyond what I thought were my limits.
It vaporizes the pain in my ribs. Without conscious thought, I’m shifting, flesh rearranging, broken bones snapping apart and knitting together in a new formation, faster than ever, fueled by savage necessity.
The world explodes into an onslaught of heightened senses—the scent of her fear is thick enough to choke on, the sound of her frantic heartbeat a drum against the rain.
The heavy beam pinning me becomes nothing more than a flimsy twig. I am a beast that will not be contained.
My mate is in trouble. She needs me. If it’s the last fucking thing I do, I will keep her safe.
With an enraged snarl, I shove against the crushing, dead weight, my claws scrabbling for purchase on the asphalt.
I strain against it, muscles screaming, pouring all of my supernatural strength into the feat until suddenly, I heave the mangled steel column aside.
The moment it’s gone, I launch myself forward—a missile of dark fur and fury crossing the distance in an instant.
The echo-beast is milliseconds from her, its obsidian claws extended.
Right before it can touch my mate, I slam into it, a three-hundred-pound wall of muscle, driven by a single, overriding purpose.
We hit the ground in a tangle of snarling shadow and snapping teeth, rolling across the wet pavement.
As I tumble, I glimpse my mate. She has stumbled back, her hand covering her mouth, eyes huge.
I know how I look. Fucking massive. Vicious canine teeth, eyes burning gold.
A monstrous predator from the nightmares of childhood, built of corded muscle and born for the hunt.
But it’s not fear on her face—not the abject terror I’d expect.
It’s an expression of astonished awe, a dawning recognition.
She knows. She sees me. And in that moment, she doesn’t run.
My heart hammers, every beat intensifying the instinct I’ve been suppressing. Mine. Mine. Mine.
It drives me into a frenzy, fueling my strength as my claws, now inches long and sharp as razors, tear into the echo-beast’s solidified body.
It screams, agonized and furious at being denied its banquet, while its serpentine tendrils lash out.
But the freezing cold that once bit at my human skin is only a dull twinge against the raging furnace of the wolf.
I can taste its unstable energy, a foul metallic tang on my tongue, and I meet it with all the primal, righteous ferocity of a shifter defending his mate.
My fury gives me an edge, but the beast is tenacious and doped up on electricity.
Its tendrils, thick as pythons, wrap around my front leg.
A snarl rips from my throat as I fight against the freezing, crushing grip, but its hide is like iron.
It’s stronger than I anticipated, and for a terrifying second, it gains leverage, its weight bearing down on me, overpowering me.
Then, the air changes. A clean, disciplined energy washes over us.
My mate has her hands outstretched, her face a picture of fierce concentration.
Her resonance feels different this time.
Not the crude flare she used to lure the beast. This is something else entirely—focused, intricate, and woven with a complex harmony that my senses can barely comprehend.
She wields it like a scalpel, striking with a calculated precision that makes me proud.
The pulse hits the creature, and its grip on my leg falters.
I don’t know what she’s doing, but I know it’s a display of control and ingenuity that reflects her growing mastery, her brilliance.
Seizing the opening, I lunge and sink my teeth deep into the creature’s violet-veined shoulder.
For a glorious second, I taste victory. The echo-beast tries to buck me off as its form wavers, dissolving slightly under my assault and my mate’s continued resonance.
But the victory is short-lived. The creature’s hunger is greater than its pain. Instead of recoiling, there’s a horrible shift as it latches onto my mate’s magic, drawing it in, drinking the orderly energy and corrupting it into fuel.
Its form swells, crackling with energy while the wound my teeth left seals over with darkness. Purple eyes shine with unparalleled strength. The tactical advantage we had is gone, replaced by the sinking certainty that I have led my mate into a fight we cannot win.
There is no victory here. Only death.
I wrench free from the beast’s clutches and leap back, putting myself between it and her. It looms over us, a mountain of energized shadow, its claws leaving deep gouges in the concrete as it prepares to strike again. I issue a sharp, commanding bark.
My mate understands instantly, sprinting for the truck. I feint to the left, attracting the beast’s attention, then pivot, using all the power in my haunches to spring after her. A frantic, desperate retreat. The beast’s cold presence surges behind us, gaining ground.
Reaching her side in an instant, I nudge her with my shoulder, urging her faster, keeping my body between her and the monster at our heels.
She fumbles with the driver’s door, yanking it open and scrambling inside while I stand guard, snarling at the approaching darkness.
A massive, clawed limb sweeps toward the cab, but I rear up and thrust it away with my front paws, earning us the split-second we need.
The engine rumbles to life and I vault over the side, making the entire truck shake when I land.
The sound of the shadow’s furious, thwarted roar shakes the metal of the frame as she floors it, leaving the railyard and the monster behind us in the rain.
As we speed through the rain-slicked, empty streets, each bump sends a fresh wave of agony through my ribs. But I’m not going to shift back. Not yet. I heal faster in my wolf form. And I need to be healed, in case that thing decides to follow us after all.
I put my head on my paws and close my eyes, trying to rest. But it’s impossible when I can smell her through the metal and glass of the cab—her lingering terror, her exhaustion, and the triumphant, electric hum of her magic.
She did it. She faced down the echo-beast, stepped into her power, and saved us both.
The admiration I feel for her is a tangible thing, a painful ache in my chest that has nothing to do with the injury.
But beneath the awe, something hotter and more dangerous is churning.
Possessive, animal fury that I’m too exhausted to fight against. She stood up.
She made herself the target. She looked me in the eye and promised me she would stay back, then walked willingly into the path of the creature that wants to consume her.
I don’t care if it was brave. I don’t care if it saved me. I don’t care if she thought it was the only way. It was fucking reckless and I almost lost her.
I realize that a low growl is emanating from me, just from thinking about it.
The mating bond burrows deeper into my bones, past my defenses, shredding me apart and putting me back together with itself at the center. I almost lost her before I had the chance to have her. She is so beautiful, so brilliant and fierce, it makes my teeth ache with the need to mark her as mine.
I must have her.
Drag her into the most secluded, secure den, and chain her there so she can never, ever put herself in that kind of danger again. Mark her, take her, claim her.
I know she wants me, she all but confessed it only hours ago. A single touch was enough to send the scent of her arousal into the air, a truth her angry words couldn’t hide.
Why am I fighting it? I could run my hands over every inch of her, learning the lines of her body until I’ve memorized every curve.
I could bury my face between her legs, breathing in the scent of her arousal, tasting her until she’s screaming my name.
I could fuck her again and again, sinking myself so deep she forgets where she ends and I begin, my teeth grazing her throat with the promise of a claim.
I want to watch that clever, analytical mind of hers unravel, to be the one thing in the universe that can silence all her racing thoughts with unbridled, mindless pleasure.
The need swells and spreads just under the surface, a physical sickness, a poison in my blood. I clench my claws, my vision tinged with red.
She has no idea what she’s unleashed.