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Their escape is cut off by a coalescence of wolves and cougars standing before them at the intersection of two roads. Pausing gives their pursuers a chance to fall upon them, nipping at their heels. Avery guards Sascha with one hand,snagging the backpacks from his mouth with the other; in doing so, he inadvertently leaves his chest exposed to an opportunistic cougar. There, Avery sustains his first injury, blood blooming along curved valleys.

Unlike the result of Atwood’s attacks on Avery’s human body, these scores begin to heal as readily as Sascha’s did, knitting under the guidance of his alpha ursine magic. Still hurts like a motherfucker.

Another cougar goes for Avery’s throat and is barely thwarted by Sascha jumping into its path. The cat yowls in surprise, scrambling to avoid injuring the alpha’s son. Without hesitating, Avery snatches the cougar’s tail and swings it into yet another body, the arc shaped by a prolonged shriek. Again, it leaves his hands occupied, and while Sascha guards Avery’s front, a cougar leaps onto his back and digs in its claws, teeth sinking into the meat of Avery’s left shoulder.

The points of pain are intense, agony like rusted railroad spikes supporting the heavy cat’s weight. He clocks a second in the head with the full backpacks, not wanting to let go of their only survival supplies, but a wolf takes him by the elbow and yanks him off balance.

Avery figures this is the beginning of the end. His only comfort, as two cougars isolate Sascha from protecting Avery’s throat so a wolf can lunge for it, is knowing the Madison pack won’t let Sascha die. At least Avery has that.

He prepares for the punishment of jaws around his trachea, hoping Sascha will be properly corralled away from the impending fountain of blood.

A roar so deep it puts even Avery’s ursine to shame rattles thousands of branches around them, and a tree bends under massive paws banking off its trunk, too-long spine slithering to avoid the cluster of cougars like an eel over slippery rocks. Before Avery can close his eyes in wait for the end, jagged orange stripes cut in front of his vision. Beryl takes the bruntof the collision, writhing just enough to avoid the lethal nature of the blow.

Avery wants to maul them in a hug, but seeing as they’re currently fighting to his potential death, he opts to not. Furthermore, this time, he doesn’t need Beryl to urge him into motion. He scoops Sascha under his arm, snaps at the cougars who try to stop him, and barrels through the line that had been preventing their continued flight.

Beryl takes care of the rest, hissing as they put their long body at Avery’s back, creating a barrier most people would kiss a viper before crossing. All the shifters with sense hang back, and for the few without… Avery is pretty sure Beryl snaps one of their necks without a moment of hesitation.

It’s the second time someone has taken a life specifically to protect Avery’s. Beryl barely knows him. Beryl spent most of their brief acquaintance trying their level best to terrorize him into sharing their fucked-up situation.

Avery doesn’t know what changed their mind. If it happened when they plucked him from the ditch or built slowly over time, watching what he and Sascha risked to be together. Maybe it was just his honesty when he admitted to not having the strength Beryl did to maintain their never-ending trudge toward survival. In their position, Avery would’ve welcomed Atwood to land the final blow. He got Sascha instead. Somehow, he ended up with Beryl, too.

Dropping Sascha onto all four paws, Avery hefts the backpacks that, in this form, weigh less than nothing. Even Sascha, a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound cougar, didn’t feel like much of anything in his grasp.

From there, they run and run, part of Avery expecting to reach the shore of the island in not too long. That tourist map Sascha kept frowning at didn’t paint an impressive geographical picture…

And then Avery’s proven wrong. A great incline rises before them, wooden fences and staircases for tourists off tothe side. They scramble up the brush and foliage, no option for turning back, and as they ascend the rocky hill, a white, craggy arch greets them at the top.

When there is nowhere left to climb, and the hollow of Arch Rock stands above them, a sun-sculpted network of judgmental shadows, Avery can see the water beyond. Blue-green and brilliant, boats with white sails like pock-marks. The other side of the hill is too steep to descend without care, and even if it wasn’t, the wind over Mackinac’s shoreline bellows:Where would you go?

Might as well have lay down in Skull Cave and kissed the old bones.

Beside him, Sascha makes a pained sound. Avery turns so abruptly he drops the backpacks, one of them tumbling down the steep rocks toward the wooden fence at the bottom. He wouldn’t care if both of them had fallen into fire, not with Sascha’s legs giving out beneath him. Avery catches Sascha before he hits the ground, wrapping long, double-jointed fingers around Sascha’s body and cradling him like a kitten against his chest.

Unable to do more than vocalize, Avery makes helpless sounds, fretting and stroking Sascha’s soft tawny fur.

A handful of wolves yip as they bound up the rocky outcropping, either fresh reinforcements or a lucky few who made it past Beryl. Bad news either way, with Sascha vulnerable, a dead weight gasping for breath, and their only ally nowhere in sight. Avery bares his teeth but doesn’t budge. He tightens his hold on Sascha, only to be startled when the heavy cougar shudders once, then flickers. A moment later, there’s a naked man in his grasp, Sascha’s tall biped form even more exposed. His eyes are glassy, and his longer anatomy doesn’t fold up quite so neatly as the cat did.

Avery settles Sascha on the most even patch of ground he spots, resting his head on the remaining backpack, then steps in front of him. Even knowing it’s useless, he roars at theapproaching wolves—not to intimidate, but to broadcast his refusal to give up, even while alone, distracted, and trapped.

They descend upon him, three at once. Avery takes hits, less concerned with defending his own body than he is protecting Sascha, who isn’t unconscious, but is clearly lost in one of his vertigo episodes. The distant sensation of spinning, endless spinning, echoes in the back of Avery’s mind. He chalks it up to his own dizziness, maybe from blood loss, and tightens his fingers around the throat of a wolf. The shifter makes a choked sound, thrashing its paws and clawing at Avery’s hand as he lifts it from the ground. A cougar picks its way through the underbrush, so Avery hurls the limp wolf at the cat, counterbalancing for the kick he lands in the ribs of another, sending that wolf tumbling down the rocky hill. Its body slides to a stop, caught on a low bush.

All Avery can smell is blood, much of it his own. His body can’t string together the wounds fast enough, teeth punctures oozing while the furrows from greedy claws drip in long streaks down his arms and back.

Then it happens. While Avery is fighting the bruised cougar from earlier away from the crook of his neck, dangerously close to his throat, a wolf makes it past him, crossing under the great stone arch. The cougar digs its claws into Avery’s chest, but Avery hardly feels the pain when he rips the shifter from his flesh and spins to see the wolf perched with a paw on Sascha’s chest, bloody teeth bared.

Avery lunges, not doubting for a second that the Wilderness pack will not hesitate to harm Sascha in order to get to Avery. Maybe he shouldn’t have thrown the cougar into the viewing platform's metal railing, as it might have helped defend Sascha, but it’s currently lying still at the base of the stone wall.

Though Avery succeeds in snatching up the wolf before it can harm Sascha, something lands on his back, biting the same spot where the cougar had its teeth moments before.Avery yelps in pain, not so much casting the wolf away as dropping it off the edge of the hill, sending it tumbling down the steep, sharp rock face.

With all his accumulated injuries, this is the strike that breaks him. Avery can’t even dislodge the cougar on his back before the ursine howls and retreats, fully defeated, leaving Avery screaming as his body begins to deconstruct itself.

The agony is indescribable. He doesn’t have time to finish healing before his bones snap and crunch, shards embedding in his muscles. Extra skin sloughs off, opening half-closed wounds, and while he tries to free himself from the pulpy mix of blood and disintegrating flesh, coarse hair gets in his mouth and eyes. The cougar gets tangled in the same mess, but all too soon, it succeeds in tearing a pocket in the rapidly drying tissue. It seizes Avery by the arm and drags him, naked and staggering, out of the ursine’s withering shell.

CHAPTER

TWENTY

Avery