Chapter 16
KIAN
Zharkov will come for us. The only question is when.
The thought won't leave me alone as dawn breaks over the Atlantic in pale grey light. I watch it from the cottage window, my tiger prowling just beneath the surface of my skin, restless in ways that have nothing to do with the sunrise.
We've been locked in this cottage since the Zharkov meeting, Finn and I hunting through shipping manifests while Catriona builds her case. Days of pretending bedroom walls create enough distance when her scent saturates every corner, days of waiting for retaliation that hasn't come... yet.
The syndicate doesn't threaten and then wait. They act. Zharkov walked into her office, made his position clear, and left expecting either compliance or a corpse. The silence since then feels wrong. The kind of wrong that sets my tiger pacing and snarling, sensing danger before it arrives.
Behind me, Catriona finally sleeps. I convinced her to rest, to let exhaustion win for once instead of fighting it.
The bite mark on her shoulder is still healing, the bruising dark against her pale skin where I can see it through the open bedroom doorway.
My mark. The claiming I stopped because I decided what she could handle.
My tiger snarls at the memory, demanding I finish what I started. Demanding I claim her properly, transform her, bind her to me so completely that nothing can touch her.
Movement catches my eye. There, at the edge of the tree line where forest meets the narrow track leading to the cottage. Shadows that don't match the dawn light. Shapes moving with purpose toward the isolated structure.
My phone is in my hand before conscious thought. A quick text to Declan:
They're here. Cottage. Now.
The response comes instantly:
Minutes out. Hold them.
I move silently through the cottage toward the bedroom. Catriona wakes the moment I enter, her cop instincts firing even in sleep. She reaches for the weapon on the nightstand.
"Russians?" She's already moving, pulling on clothes fast.
"Multiple hostiles approaching from the south." I cross to the weapons mounted above the fireplace in the main room, grabbing firearms loaded with ammunition designed to kill supernatural threats. "The brotherhood is coming, but we need to hold until they arrive."
She joins me, checking her service weapon with hands that don't shake despite the fear I smell rolling off her. "How many?"
"Half a dozen. Maybe more." I hand her a rifle. "They're moving like trained operatives."
The first gunfire shatters the dawn quiet.
Bullets punch through the cottage walls, ripping through stone and wood with the distinctive crack of military-grade weaponry. I push Catriona toward the floor as the windows explode inward in a spray of glass and wood splinters.
"Stay down!" I'm already moving, returning fire through the shattered windows, driving the attackers back toward cover.
They advance anyway.
The front door explodes inward with enough force to tear it off its hinges. Multiple operatives storm through the entrance, weapons raised, moving with coordinated precision.
I drop the first one with a shot to center mass. The second takes Catriona's bullet through the throat. The third gets close enough that I can see the cold calculation in his eyes before I put him down.
More gunfire erupts from the south side. They're hitting multiple entry points simultaneously, standard breach protocol.
Then I smell something that makes fury surge through my tiger. Shifters are among the human operatives. The syndicate brought supernatural muscle to this fight.
A wolf crashes through the eastern window. It's not one of ours. It's Russian, judging by the smell, but wrong. It's been enhanced somehow. The wolf is larger than natural, faster than it should be, eyes glowing with an unnatural light that has nothing to do with normal shifter biology.
I shift.
The transformation flows over me. Human to tiger between one breath and the next, hundreds of pounds of muscle and fang and lethal intent. My senses explode outward. Every scent becomes a story written in molecules. Every sound sharpens to crystal clarity.
The Russian wolf lunges. I meet it mid-leap, jaws closing around its throat before it can land. The vertebrae crack under the pressure. I taste twisted magic, the essence of a shifter warped by syndicate enhancements. The wolf goes limp in my jaws.
I drop the corpse and turn to face the next threat.
Another shifter bursts through the back door—a bear, unnaturally large and wrong in ways that raise my hackles. It's too big. Too fast. Its eyes burn with an unnatural glow. The syndicate has been experimenting on their soldiers, creating monsters from what should be natural predators.
The bear roars, the sound rattling windows that haven't already shattered. The floor trembles as it charges, each paw strike cracking stone. I can smell the wrongness radiating from it, the chemical stink of whatever the syndicate pumped into its veins mixing with bear musk and rage.
I dodge left as the massive paw swings where my head was a heartbeat before.
The displacement of air whistles past my ear.
I rake claws along its flank as I pass, feeling them tear through thick hide and muscle.
Hot blood sprays across my face, metallic and bitter on my tongue.
Gore splashes the cottage walls in wide arcs.
The bear wheels with shocking speed for something that size, agility that shouldn't exist in a creature that massive.
A paw catches my shoulder before I can fully clear the strike.
Claws like curved knives slice through fur and muscle, parting flesh down to bone.
The pain detonates white-hot through my nervous system, but I don't stop moving.
I can't stop. Catriona is behind me, and this monster is between us, and stopping means dying.
I go low, beneath its guard while it's overextended from the strike.
My jaws find the soft belly where his vital organs are vulnerable.
I tear upward, claws joining teeth, ripping through hide and muscle with every ounce of strength I possess.
The bear's roar turns to a shriek as its intestines spill across the floor in steaming coils, blood flooding the stone in a hot rush that reeks of death and corruption.
The bear collapses, thrashing in death throes that crack furniture and gouge deep furrows in the walls. Its claws scrape against stone hard enough to throw sparks. I leap clear as it writhes, the massive body convulsing with the last firing of dying nerves.
"Kian!" Catriona's shout comes from near the window where she's taken cover.
I turn to see more operatives advancing through the front entrance. These ones move with supernatural speed, faster than humans should be capable of. Shifters in human form, judging by the scent. The syndicate sent an entire squad of enhanced shifters to this isolated cottage.
Then I hear it. The thunder of paws on earth. The crash of bodies moving through underbrush at impossible speed.
The brotherhood has arrived.
Declan's grey wolf explodes through the southern window. He lands among the enhanced shifters with jaws snapping, ripping through tactical gear and flesh with decades of combat experience driving each strike.
Rafe flows through the shattered doorway, panther form darker than the shadows he moves through. He takes down an operative before the man can raise his weapon, moving with the silence that makes panthers apex predators.
The eastern wall cracks. Grayson doesn't bother with subtlety. The great bear hits stone hard enough to create his own entrance, sending chunks of thick wall scattering across the floor. He catches an operative in his jaws and shakes once before dropping the corpse.
And Finn.
The cottage shakes. The heat floods through the broken windows as dragon-fire turns the clearing into an inferno. I can't see him from inside, but I feel the temperature spike, smell burning flesh and melting tactical gear. Operatives scream. The smell of charred meat fills the air.
We move like we've fought together for years. Declan herds attackers toward Grayson's devastating strikes. Rafe eliminates threats from unexpected angles. I use speed and precision to target weak points, to disable and destroy with the surgical focus that comes from years of survival as an exile.
Blood soaks the floor. Bodies pile in corners.
An operative raises a rifle toward Catriona's position. I'm moving before conscious thought, launching myself across the cottage in a single bound. The rifle cracks. Pain explodes through my chest as the bullet punches through fur and muscle, burying itself near vital organs.
I ignore it. I have to ignore it. The operative dies with my jaws around his throat before he can fire again.
I land hard, favoring my injured side. The world tilts. The bullet burns with a heat that tells me it's silver or something worse. My body tries to expel the foreign object, but it's wedged too deep, resisting immediate rejection.
"Kian!" Catriona's voice cuts through the battle noise.
I shift back to human form. The transformation pulls another wave of agony through my chest. The bullet wound bleeds freely now. Catriona is beside me in seconds, her hands pressing against the injury.
"You stupid, reckless bastard." Her voice shakes despite the steady pressure she maintains. "That was meant for me."
"I know." Speaking hurts. Breathing hurts. Everything hurts with a bullet lodged near my heart. "You're welcome."
The battle continues around us. Declan's wolf tears through operatives. Grayson smashes through the last of the syndicate's bear shifters. Rafe appears and disappears like smoke moving between shadows. Finn's flames consume everything the syndicate sent against us.
Then I hear it. A sound that pulls my tiger forward despite the injury. A whimper. Young and scared, wrong in ways that have nothing to do with combat.