Chapter 37
Sera
The world exploded.
It seemed that the Elder had somehow signaled all his lycans simultaneously, and the battle took on a new level of intensity.
The crack of rifle fire came from the southern beach. Then the deeper thump of heavier artillery, charges, mortars, I didn’t know what, answering out over the water. The sea threw spray high enough to catch the light like shards of glass.
The British hit the sand fast, a horde of men spilling off a line of boats in a rush.
Helicopters carved through the air in tight circles, doors open, gunners swinging their barrels toward the black smear boiling out of the surf.
The first burst chewed spray and meat together, bodies tumbling back into the churn.
The lycans screamed like metal tearing apart and kept coming.
The Watch had braced the cliffs with so many guns that I couldn’t even begin to count them all. They fired down into the fray, spraying hundreds of bullets through the line of approaching lycans.
And into that mess: my wolves.
Logan slammed past me first, a black wall of fur and muscle moving at full speed, hitting a lycan that leaped over the lip of the cliff and shoving it back into the face of its pack.
The thing pin-wheeled, claws scrabbling for purchase, and Logan was already on the next, jaws chomping on its throat.
Aidan crashed into a knot of them to my left and simply threw three off the ridge like he was emptying a sack.
Declan tore through fur and sinew with a joy that should have frightened me, but just made me proud.
Edward moved like a knife on a hinge with no wasted motion; everything he bit stayed down.
And Jamie was a streak of fury, cutting through where the line thinned, leaping off shoulders and back again like the laws of physics had decided to give him a pass for a day.
Tamsin and I took the center. Bishop anchored us at our backs.
Nox, very calmly, slid a blade into an eye socket, and then another and another, never once looking like he was trying.
Griff laughed as he fought, lifting a lycan by the throat and holding it up for Jamie to claw it open from throat to ass.
Eamon kept moving, keeping an eye on everyone for injury, but also using his claws to rip through a lycan or two as they lunged at us.
“Flares,” Tamsin snapped, batting a claw away from my ribs with the back of her pistol. “Now.”
Beside us, Nox dug two out of his belt, yanked them alive with his teeth, and hurled them down into the knot climbing below us. Red fire spun, briefly beautiful, then took three out by the eyes. They howled and fell, dragging others with them.
“More incoming!” Bishop barked.
“Let them,” Nox said. “We’ll kill them all.”
A lycan got through. I was too slow seeing it, too slow reading the angle.
It came over the edge low, clever, not where our eyes were, and it was on me before I could bring my blade up, its breath hot and rancid.
There was no time to think. I spun and slammed my knife up into the soft inside of its forearm and yanked, felt tendons part with a wet snap.
It screamed, I kicked into its ribs, and then I was stumbling backwards toward the cliff edge. The sky was suddenly everywhere.
A sandy blur hit me from the side. It was Jamie, with a shoulder in my gut, rolling us both away from the drop. My back slammed the rock, breath gone, stars bursting across my eyes. For a moment, he shifted back to human form and grabbed my chin with his hand.
“Eyes up, lass,” he panted, grin brief and bright even with someone else’s blood in his teeth. “You don’t get to die today.”
“Right,” I managed, lungs restarting like stubborn machinery. I shoved myself to my feet, drove my blade down into the screaming thing and made it go quiet. Beside me, Jamie shifted back into his wolf and snarled as he lunged right into another lycan.
Another sound threaded into the chaos then: orders barked through radios by men down below. The British had made the beach, and they were trying to get control amidst the absolute mayhem down there.
“Hold!” a voice yelled from somewhere down the cliff. “Hold the—”
A deep heavy rumbling answered. The Watch blew part of the lower cliff out from under the swarm.
Shattered stone and broken bodies went down together in a tumbling mess, the roiling sea swallowing the whole lot.
For a heartbeat all was silent. Then the next wave climbed over the dead and kept coming.
A lycan surged toward us and Edward flew at it like he’d been waiting for an invitation.
I wrapped my hand around a broken chunk of rock and hurled it down into another’s open mouth.
It choked, and then Aidan leaped down and removed its head.
Declan leapt off the lip of the cliff to take two more down with him, making me scream in terror.
He jumped down, and came back up through a spray of gore that would have made me gag if I’d had any oxygen to spare.
A crackle cut across the open air, a loudspeaker somewhere below. Dane’s voice poured through static. “Sections Two and Three, hold your fire! Detonate only on my mark—repeat, only on—”
I didn’t hear the rest. The ground lurched under my boots as a slab of stone sheared off to our right in a grinding scream. Half a dozen lycans went with it, flailing into the frothy water. I pitched sideways as the ground went out from underneath us.
A hand caught my forearm—Logan’s, human again. He’d moved faster than I could track. He hauled me back from the edge with a grunt, and when I blinked the grit out of my eyes, he was all wolf once again.
“Thanks,” I said, knowing he couldn’t answer, then threw myself back into motion again.
Another wave hit. We gave, then took, then gave again.
Tamsin pressed her back to mine, her pistol cracking again and again until the slide locked back empty. She tossed it, drew a knife, and didn’t flinch. “We can’t hold forever!” she shouted over the din.
“I know!” I gasped, blade slipping in my sweaty grip as I jammed it into a lycan’s neck. Hot blood splashed my arm. “But if Dane’s detonations keep collapsing the cliff, we’ll all go with it!”
For a heartbeat, everything slowed enough for me to look back at the circle of wolves around me.
Logan’s fur was matted and stained with red.
Aidan bled from his flank. Declan grinned at me across a corpse like we were sharing a joke no one else heard.
Edward held the line because someone had to, and he only ever chose hard jobs.
Jamie shot me a too-quick wink, his wolf form slinking toward me.
“Stay with me,” I whispered.
The sky to the south lit with something that wasn’t the sun.
The British fought hard on the beach down below.
The Watch’s guns stuttered for a moment and Dane’s voice rose through the speakers.
I made myself a promise that I hoped I’d live to keep: if he didn’t die today, I’d kill him sooner or later.
As if summoned, another blast ripped through the stone a hundred yards down the ridge. The cliff belched smoke and dust, and another dozen lycans vanished, screaming, into the surf.
And still more came.
The Watch were firing in disciplined bursts from their nests, but their fire lines were breaking under the sheer numbers.
Down on the beach, British soldiers tried to hold the line, bodies of both lycans and humans already littering the sand in dark heaps.
The helicopters couldn’t pick off targets fast enough.
The swarm parted again, down on the beach, slower this time.
The Elder Lycan’s silver-shot fur gleamed wet in the sun. He lifted his head and breathed in. My stomach clenched; I knew what he smelled.
Me.
From down on the beach, his gaze slid past the wolves, past Tamsin, and locked on mine.
It was like being pinned by a spotlight. My pulse jumped. I couldn’t look away.
Jamie darted in front of me, snapping at the Elder’s line of sight, snarling. Logan joined him, his black wolf rigid with fury. Aidan bristled, teeth flashing. Declan growled deep, the sound a little unhinged. Edward stood steady, not a flicker of fear in his gray eyes.
They didn’t speak, but they didn’t need to. Their bodies said it for them.
She’s ours. You will not have her.
The Elder’s head lifted, his nostrils flaring. His grin widened slowly, knowingly, and a chill skittered down my spine.
He could smell me.
The Elder raised one massive, clawed hand.
And the swarm moved.
All at once, as if some hidden command had been loosed, the lycans clawed over the edge in a frenzy.
They no longer climbed one by one, slow and desperate.
They poured upward like a living tide, bodies shoving, clawing, leaping, crawling on each other’s backs to crest the cliff in a mass of howling hunger. It wasn’t natural.
They hit us like a rogue wave, all claws, teeth, and frenzied bodies crashing toward us in a single, horrifying surge.
My wolves met them head-on, snarling and snapping, teeth tearing through flesh as the tide broke against us. Blood flew hot and wet, painting the stone, but the swarm only kept coming.
I fought too, blade slick in my grip, stabbing, slashing, ducking under swipes meant to tear me in two. Tamsin and her men fought at my side, her knife flashing silver in the light of day.
Renewed mayhem engulfed the cliff.
A lycan’s claw grazed my shoulder, but Declan slammed it down before it could finish me, jaws ripping its throat.
Another lunged from the side, but Aidan barreled into it, throwing both of them over the lip.
My scream tore out of me, but a moment later his dark wolf hauled back up over the edge, bleeding, furious, but thankfully still alive.
“Hold!” Tamsin shouted, though her voice was barely a whisper in the storm.
I slashed another lycan’s arm open and sucked in a ragged breath.
This is what Dane wanted, I thought. The Elder Lycan here, drowning us all in blood. He’s watching. Waiting for us to fall.
The cliff shuddered again, dust raining down. Somewhere below, men screamed. My wolves bled, teeth stained red, fur matted, but still they fought, forming an unbreakable wall around me.
And for the first time, I wondered if even that would be enough.
Aidan, shifted back into human form, yelled out, “The Elder is coming!”
The Elder Lycan climbed up the cliff toward us, but there was nothing we could do to stop him. When he crested the lip, the grin on his face widened and he cocked his head, his gaze leveling with mine.
“Tonight,” he roared, and the sound carried over gunfire and helicopter rotors, over the howls of his army. “Tonight, I finish you. Wolves, humans, and the Watch. You’ll all die together.”
The words slammed into me like physical blows. My throat dried. My wolves snarled, bristled, but they couldn’t answer, at least not in words.
The Elder Lycan lifted one clawed hand toward the beach, gesturing as though presenting us with a generous gift.
I looked down, and my stomach dropped.
The British line was gone. Soldiers still stood, still moved, still fired, but many of their eyes burned yellow now, their faces twisted. Their howls rose, mingling with the swarm’s. An entire company of trained men turned in minutes.
His lycans had bitten them. All of them.
“Your idiot commander,” the Elder sneered, “thought I would drown in the sea. Thought his cliffs and his guns could break me.” His yellow gaze cut upward, past me, past my wolves, as if Dane himself were within earshot. “But this is the night the Watch dies.”
“No…” The word broke out of me, ragged. My blade shook in my grip.
The Elder grinned wider, teeth gleaming white in the red light of the flares.
He lunged forward then, sudden and brutal, there was a blur of mass and claws.
My wolves met him with snarls and roars, slamming into his bulk, growling and snapping.
Logan clamped on his arm with his teeth, Declan hit his side, Aidan went for his throat, Edward for his legs, Jamie darting in like lethal lightning strikes.
The Elder didn’t falter. He threw them aside like toys.
“Mine,” he growled, eyes locked on me.
And then a howl split the chaos.
Not his.
Then a chorus of howls, rising sharp and clear over the din.
From the south ridge, white, silver, and red-brown fur streaked into the fray.
Magnus first, big as a wall, eyes bright as fire.
Thorne, his white wolf as cold and deadly as winter, cutting down lycans like ice shearing branches.
Killian was fire itself, a blur of red rage.
Callum’s lighter frame darted through gaps, snapping with youthful ferocity.
Huge Tobias brought the rear, his growl a steady drumbeat that drove them forward.
And at their head—Zara.
Relief crashed through me so hard my knees almost gave. Reinforcements.
Hope.
The Elder Lycan snarled, his grin fading. I saw his eyes narrow. Was that doubt I saw there?
“More lambs for the slaughter,” he spat.