42. Annabella
Chapter forty-two
Annabella
We’d done it. We’d actually done it.
The thought kept hitting me in waves as we ran through the trees, picking our way over roots and underbrush while black smoke billowed behind us.
My lungs stung with every breath. Even from here I could smell the melted plastic and ash and the acrid stink of ruined spellwork.
But underneath all of it was something I hadn’t felt in years.
Freedom.
We’d burned Simon’s facility to the ground.
Destroyed years of his research. Confronted Lydia, faced down Duke, and walked out the other side still standing.
The chain I’d been holding since I was a teenager—the one that said I owed him everything, that I was his weapon, his good little soldier—was in pieces behind me, melting alongside his test boxes and his spell circles and his lies.
I was running, but I felt wild and free and alive.
It wasn’t just me; we were all wired. That raw, electric hum that comes after you survive something that should have killed you. Everything too bright, too loud, my skin too tight for my body.
“Everyone still vertical?” Sam’s voice cut through my thoughts. He’d slowed, checking each of us over.
“Define vertical,” Jem muttered, but he was grinning.
“Vertical enough,” Zeke said.
Esme gave a thumbs up, then frowned. “Does anyone else—?” Esme started, then stopped.
Jem was immediately on alert. “What?”
Esme tilted her head. “I don’t…Something’s not right.”
Inside, my wolf stilled as around us the forest went quiet.
Sam’s shoulders squared. His hands flexed once.
Witch’s fangs.
He felt it too.
Then the unmistakable scent of werewolves hit me.
I opened my mouth to call a warning, and the forest exploded.
Wolves launched from every direction, massive bodies hitting us from the flanks, from behind, from the high ground, going for legs and ribs and throats. Human-form fighters followed.
The Meute des Montagnes.
A wolf the size of a car came straight at me. I threw myself sideways, hit the ground hard, rolled. Came up with a knife in my hand. The blade caught the next attacker—a male in human form—across the shoulder. Not deep enough. He barely slowed.
Claws raked down my back. Four lines of white fire tearing through my jacket. I spun, drove my elbow into someone’s throat. Felt the crunch. They dropped, gagging.
Another wolf. Gray and scarred. Teeth locked around my calf and the pain shot up my entire leg like a current. I kicked. My other foot connected with its snout and it released my leg, snarling.
Sam materialized beside me. Intercepted the next wolf mid-leap and slammed it into the ground. Through the bond, I felt him.
Protect. Kill. Protect.
“Stay close!” he shouted.
Like I had a choice.
A fighter came in from my left. Fast. I caught the knife in his hand a fraction before it would have opened my stomach. Twisted. The blade caught my jacket instead, tearing fabric.
My claws extended. The partial Shift came on instinct now and I caught him across the face. Three deep tracks from temple to jaw. Blood sprayed hot across my knuckles. He went down screaming.
But they kept coming.
Too many. Too fast.
A massive black wolf hit me broadside. I slammed into a tree trunk, and the impact emptied my lungs. For two horrible seconds, I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think past the white noise ringing through my skull.
Move. Move now!
I ducked under snapping jaws. Got my knife up. Drove it into the exposed throat above me with everything I had left. Hot blood poured over my hand as Sam kicked it from the side. The wolf dropped.
I yanked the blade free and stumbled. Sam caught me but my back was screaming. My calf was shredded. My magic was flickering at my palms, unstable. I’d burned too much in the facility. Didn’t have the reserves for a sustained fight.
Sam and I stood back-to-back. I could feel the heat of him through my jacket.
Around us, five wolves circled. Cutting us off from the others.
I caught a flash of Zeke fighting two attackers.
Jem trying to protect Esme and drive three others back.
Gideon, two wolves unconscious at his feet, spinning and sprinting to help Jem.
Then bodies blocked my view, and there was only the circle and Sam’s back against mine and too many enemies to count.
A wolf lunged for my throat. I got my forearm up. Teeth closed around it, and the pressure was immediate and immense. Bones creaking. The pain turned my vision white at the edges.
My magic answered. Light crackled across my skin, and the wolf yelped, releasing me. Shaking its head. I’d shocked it.
Cool! I needed to do that again.
I couldn’t. My reserves were guttering. My magic flickered and died.
Another attacker. Human-form, female, terrifyingly fast. She caught my wrist. Twisted. My knife spun away into the undergrowth.
Hex it all —
I head-butted her. Felt cartilage crunch against my forehead. She staggered.
Three more replaced her.
My arms were lead. My breath came in wet, ragged pulls. Blood—mine and theirs—slicked my hands until I couldn’t grip anything properly.
Something clipped my jaw. Copper flooded my mouth. I spat and kept fighting because stopping meant dying, and I was not dying in a forest in Quebec after everything we’d survived.
Through the chaos, I heard Zeke shout. Heard Jem’s snarl cut short. Esme calling my name, the pitch rising —
Then a sound I knew.
A metallic click.
Tranquilizer guns. Modified, the bursts of compressed air had a different pitch, and when the darts flew past I caught the glimmer of runes etched into the metal. Witch-enhanced. Designed to work on supernaturals.
I saw Sam’s head snap toward me. Saw the recognition hit, and then he was in front of me, his body a shield.
The first dart buried into his chest.
He flinched. One involuntary jerk, then he set his feet.
Another in his shoulder. A third caught his ribs.
“Sam!” I screamed, lunging forward.
A fourth dart hit his neck. A fifth grazed his jaw, leaving a line of blood.
His wolf tried to fight it. I could see the struggle in his body. The way his muscles tensed. Trying to stay on his feet through sheer stubborn will. Six darts. Whatever they’d loaded those things with, it was enough to drop an Alpha in seconds.
He swayed. Knees buckling.
“No! Sam, no! Stay with me—”
Another dart hit him square in the back. He turned his head to look at me, his eyes roamed my face like a man starved. Like he was memorizing me in case this was the last time.
Then he went down hard. Crashed into the pine needles with a sound that tore something inside my chest.
No. No, no, no—
I dropped beside him. Hands on his face, his neck, trying to find a pulse through the blood and the dirt and my own shaking.
“Sam. Sam! Stay with me, don’t you dare —”
Pain lanced through my arm.
I looked down. A dart buried in my bicep. The runes along its shaft glowing soft blue.
Another hit my thigh.
The world shifted sideways. My coordination dissolved, fingers going numb, legs refusing to hold me. I tried to reach for Sam. So close. His hand was right there, fingers slack against the pine needles, but I couldn’t close the distance.
The air bent. Pressure change. Static making my hair lift.
Esme’s magic detonating. She was trying to save us. The blast was raw and desperate, a shimmering wave of force that threw wolves backward like dry leaves. Trees shuddered, bark splitting. The ground rippled beneath us. Most of the attackers hit the dirt hard. Some didn’t get back up.
I heard Esme scream my name, but she was too far away.
Two wolves in human form came from behind a boulder. Hands locked around my arms. Yanked me backward. I fought. Tried to fight. My claws scraped uselessly against leather gear. The darts were dissolving everything: my strength, my coordination, my will.
“Let go! Get off me —”
They didn’t respond, just dragged me like cargo.
They shoved me onto a sled-like crate hooked to a quad bike, positioned at the edge of the clearing, engine already warm.
Silver-threaded cuffs snapped around my wrists. The burn was instant. Cold fire that made my wolf shrink back to somewhere small and dark.
Through the fading chaos, I heard movement—two figures sprinting, closing fast. Jem. Gideon. Their faces murderous.
The quad bike roared to life. The sled jerked. Forest debris flew up, stinging my face. My vision was narrowing. Darkness bleeding in from the edges. Trees blurring into streaks.
In the last moment before everything went dark, my eyes found Sam on the ground. Six darts in his body. Eyes closed. Utterly still.
He’d taken them for me without hesitation. He’d tried to protect me.
The quad bike dragged me deeper into shadow. Into the cold. Into the silence.
No, no, no! Sam—
I tried to hold onto consciousness. Tried to fight the sedative.
Then everything went black.