Chapter 23 The End of Secrecy #4
Silas looked at the wedding party with theatrical patience. “They have not told you? How rude.”
“Silas,” Ronan warned.
“They are wolves,” Silas said.
The humans stared.
Rain fell.
No one laughed.
Grant made a strangled sound. “That’s insane.”
Henry barked again, high and frantic, because dogs always knew monsters before people admitted them.
Silas’s smile widened. “Yes. It usually sounds that way before the screaming starts.”
Ronan took one step down. “You break secrecy here, and every neutral pack turns on you.”
“I have broken nothing yet.” Silas lifted one hand, palm out. “All they have is words from a man under duress at a very dramatic wedding. Unless, of course, someone loses control.”
His eyes went to me. There it was.
The invitation.
The trap.
The door he wanted me to walk through teeth first.
I looked at the Thorne wolves around the hostages. Counted them. Eleven visible. More beyond the hedges. Two on the balcony above the ballroom. One near the service arch. Rain blurred scents, but it didn’t hide heartbeats.
Ronan had eight in the courtyard, six more in the hall behind us, and Cormac already drifting right, toward the service arch.
Sava had one hand near Cassie’s back. I met her eyes over Cassie’s shoulder.
She understood.
Cassie was still staring at me.
“Ian,” she said quietly.
I stepped closer to her.
Silas watched. Everyone watched.
I lowered my voice until only she and Sava could hear. “Remember the plan.”
Her eyes flashed. “No.”
“Stay close to Sava.”
“No.”
“When it breaks, take them and run.”
“Ian.”
“Do not look back.”
Her face changed. Fear rose through her anger, sharp and immediate. She reached for me but I stepped away before she could touch me.
If she touched me, I might fail.
The hurt in her eyes nearly ended me anyway.
I turned toward Silas.
“You wanted me,” I said.
The courtyard seemed to hold its breath.
Silas smiled. “I wanted you obedient. This version is less useful, but more entertaining.”
“You should have stayed missing.” I growled.
“And miss this?”
He gestured toward the hostages. Toward Cassie. Toward the packs, the rain, the human terror, the full moon waiting beneath the day.
“This is history, Ian! The moment everyone sees what you become when the wrong hand pulls.”
Something moved near Cassie.
Not Silas.
One of the Thorne wolves at the edge of the hostage line, a younger male with shaking hands and too much excitement in his scent. He had been staring at Cassie since we arrived. His eyes were bright, pupils blown wide. Not stable. Not disciplined enough for the game Silas thought he was playing.
He shifted his grip on the knife, then he stepped toward her.
Sava moved. So did I.
The young wolf smiled at me and did exactly what Silas had brought him to do.
He shifted in front of the humans. Bones cracked wetly beneath skin. His jaw split forward. Teeth burst through gums. His shoulders tore the seams of his shirt as fur ripped along his spine. The knife clattered to the stone, useless now, while claws opened from fingers that were fingers no longer.
The wedding party screamed. Henry lost his mind, barking and lunging against the leash until the fountain ring scraped stone.
Cassie froze for one half second as the Thorne wolf launched at her.
I hit him in midair and the world went red.
My body moved before the full shift finished, wolf and man colliding inside the same skin. I drove him into the stones hard enough to crack the courtyard paving beneath his skull. His jaws snapped inches from my face. I tore his throat out with one hand before his hind legs finished forming.
Blood sprayed hot across the rain.
The humans screamed louder.
Then every restraint in the courtyard broke at once.
Wolves shifted all around us. Men split into beasts beneath the gray morning sky, suits and shirts tearing, bones snapping, mouths opening around fangs.
Ronan’s wolves crashed into Thorne’s before they could reach the hostages.
A black wolf took a baton to the ribs and answered by ripping the attacker’s arm open from wrist to elbow.
Cormac shifted halfway near the service arch and drove two Thorne men backward into the hedge in a spray of leaves and blood.
Tessa screamed Cassie’s name. Cassie’s father cursed at the top of his lungs, which at least meant he was alive.
Sava grabbed Cassie from behind and pulled her toward the fountain. “Move!”
Cassie fought her. “Ian!”
I turned. For one second, through rain and blood and the blur of shifting bodies, I saw her.
My human. My mistake. My almost mate. My one good thing, poisoned at the root and still somehow standing.
She looked terrified. She looked furious. She looked like she was about to come for me instead of run.
I could not allow that. I let the wolf rise enough for my eyes to go gold.
“Run,” I snarled.
She flinched and I hated myself for it.
Then a Thorne wolf came over the fountain wall toward her family, and I stopped being a man long enough to meet him.
The courtyard descended into teeth.
Rain hit stone, but the blood hit harder.