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Stay and fight. Prove vampires sat at the top of the apex world and always would.

What? The top of the apex world? What was he thinking? Maybe he wasn’t thinking at all, only reacting to the scent of adozen wolves within a mile of his proximity. He tried to stop grinding his teeth.

“You okay?” Leslie whispered, as though the wolves might overhear them.

“Fine,” he gritted out. “I just…want…to beat them.”

“Beat them up?” Her eyes widened in the night.

“No, beat them. You know, win at something. I’m good at chess; I could beat any of them at chess.” Wow, his thoughts were getting more ridiculous by the second.

Leslie gave a low chuckle. “Okay then.”

He shook his head, and the motion helped clear some of his aggression. “My brain’s been in competition mode since I was two years old. You can ask my mom. But you said yourself you want to fight them when you get near their territory.”

“It’s not a contest in my head. It’s a weird rage-y aggression that’s totally out of character for me.”

Her courage was a visible thing, broadcast by the tension of her facial muscles. She was probably braver than he was, because to be truly brave, you had to be a little scared. Ryker had never had much sense when it came to things that were rightfully scary. Or so his mom said.

His thoughts broke off again. His senses took over. Wolf. Headed this way fast. Really fast.

He hissed. Leslie set her hand on his arm, and Ryker gritted his teeth and tuned his ears, but the incoming wolf didn’t crash through brush the way Ryker assumed he would. In fact, the wolf’s ability for stealth nearly rivaled his own.

“That’s disturbing,” he muttered.

“What is?” Leslie said.

He shot a warning look at her.

She shrugged. “He can already hear us, Ryker. He’s a wolf.”

Curse it all. He’d never needed to know the precise hearing range of a wolf. He had to learn about them—really learn the facts after a lifetime of casually nibbling the legends.

From the nearest house came a woman’s low, sleepy voice. “Jeremy? What’s wrong?”

A low growl responded, and Ryker nearly cracked a tooth as his jaw spasmed tight.

“Vampires,” a wolf growled from inside. “Two of them at the head of the Lane.”

“Just standing there?”

“Yeah.”

“Should we alert the pack?”

“Not necessary. That scent’s got every wolf on the Lane awake and growling.”

Ryker looped his arm through Leslie’s and tugged her closer to his body for protection. “We’re leaving.”

“We can’t now,” she said. “We woke up the whole pack. We’ve got to explain ourselves. Shoot, I didn’t realize our scent would wake them up. I’d have stayed out of range.”

“What’s their scent range?”

“Farther than ours.”

Crap. Crap. Crap.

When the charging wolf emerged from the overgrown brush along the side of the road, Ryker’s skin crawled. Leslie grabbed hold of Ryker’s hand and squeezed tightly, and he squeezed back, hoping she understood his promise. If this wolf came anywhere near her, Ryker would rip his throat out.