Page 45

I nod as I lie. "Yeah. Just... processing."

And then we hear it—a heavy tread just beyond the steel door, accompanied by low, muffled voices that definitely don’t belong to any of ours. I snap my gaze toward the others. Kari is already in motion, yanking her shirt over her head with practiced urgency. Maggie doesn’t hesitate, peeling out of her jacket and tugging at her jeans, and Cassidy’s already halfway undressed, her gaze hard and focused. The air changes, thickening with anticipation and danger. My eyes widen as I realize exactly what’s about to happen.

I whisper, my voice cracking, "What are you..."

Cassidy turns toward me, her jaw tight. "You might want to brace yourself," she mutters, her voice a tense hum of warning.

I blink. "For what?"

None of them answer. Kari steps forward first, shoulders rolling as she exhales sharply. There's something primal in the way she moves, deliberate and braced like she's about to step off a cliff she’s leapt from a hundred times before. Maggie and Cassidy follow suit, each of them still and focused, their eyes gleaming.

And then it happens.

Mist rises from the floor—glowing, shimmering, mysterious—alive with surging streaks of lightning and glowing arcs of impossible color. It coils upward in slow, deliberate spirals, moving like it has a mind of its own. Prismatic flashes dance through the swirling fog, painting the concrete walls with flickers of blue, violet, and molten gold.

There's a silent vibration that stirs deep in my bones, pulsing upward from the floor through the soles of my feet and coiling up my spine like a rising current of energy.

The pressure in the air thickens, brushing against my skin like invisible static, making every nerve hyperaware. There's noscent, no taste—just the disorienting awareness that something ancient and powerful is happening right in front of me. My breath stalls in my throat, not from fear, but from awe—this is elemental, sacred.

The light intensifies, growing brighter until it fractures through the mist in jagged streaks that defy natural logic. My vision wavers, the radiance painting afterimages that shimmer and pulse, bending the air itself in impossible ways. The storm wraps around them, alive with silent thunder and lightning, and I can only watch, rooted in place, as magic I never believed in becomes terrifyingly real.

The mist coils hungrily around each of them, tendrils of light flickering through the shifting haze as it climbs their bodies and conceals them from view. I watch, mesmerized and terrified, as the shimmering fog devours their forms inch by inch—shoulders, arms, faces—until nothing remains but swirling light and the electric taste of the storm in the air. My breath catches, chest tight with wonder and dread, caught between the beauty of the moment and the primal fear of the unknown.

When it dissipates, they’re gone. In their stead, stand three wolves—larger than any I've seen in a zoo. They're wolves, and yet they're familiar. I can recognize each of them as the woman she'd been only moments before.

I stagger back a step, my hand bracing against the wall, the cool surface anchoring me as a cold sweat beads on my upper lip. My breath comes short and shallow, my heart pounding hard against my ribs. The sight before me is staggering, not just because it's surreal, but because something deep in my bones accepts it—welcomes it. The connection is visceral, intimate in a way I can’t explain.

My knees wobble as the reality settles in—this is real. They’re wolves. They’re them. And we’re in the middle of a war. But the shock isn’t fear. It’s something else. I feel them. Not just seeingthem—I know them. Even like this, with fur instead of skin and growls instead of words, I know who each of them is. My chest clenches.

There’s no time to question it—no room for hesitation or fear. My instincts override thought, driving me forward on pure adrenaline and muscle memory, every beat of my heart screaming at me to survive.

The door explodes inward in a thunderclap of steel and shrapnel, slamming against the wall with enough force to rattle the steel frame and send dust cascading from the ceiling like ash.

A man bursts through—body armored, rifle raised. He’s screaming something, but it’s lost in the high-pitched ring of detonation. Kari lunges first, a black blur of power and precision. She takes him down hard. The sound is sickening—bones snapping, a strangled scream. Another man follows, gun raised. He aims—at me.

I don’t think. I just move, muscles jolting into action like a switch has been flipped. My feet skid across the floor as I pivot, adrenaline punching through my bloodstream and setting every nerve on fire. The echo of gunfire hasn’t even faded, but my body’s already in motion, driven by pure instinct and the terrifying certainty that hesitation equals death.

My Glock is in my hand before I register drawing it. The shot is deafening in the confined space. One. Two. Center mass.

He drops.

I stare, breath heaving, as the gun trembles in my grip. Smoke curls from the barrel, thick and oily, coiling like a serpent in the air. Blood gushes from the man’s chest, dark and slick, pooling fast beneath his body and crawling toward my boots. The stench hits me next—coppery and final. My ears ring, a high-pitched whine slicing through the chaos, and my knees threaten to buckle.

He was going to kill me. He raised that rifle like he’d done it a hundred times before. He came in locked, loaded, and without hesitation. It was him or me—and I’m still standing.

I’m a cop’s daughter. I was raised on the rules of survival, on training and reflexes and muscle memory. But nothing prepares you for the moment when theory becomes real. The moment you take a life. And it stays with you.

My mind jerks between Deacon, the wolves, and the steel door that has just imploded. I grip the Glock until my knuckles ache, trying to still the quake in my limbs, swallowing the scream rising like acid in my throat.

No time to unravel. No space for regret. He would’ve ended me—and I didn’t let him.

But the knowledge does nothing to still the shaking.

My stomach roils. I press back against the wall, hand over my mouth, trying to hold in the scream clawing at the back of my throat. Maggie—the wolf that is Maggie—pads to my side. Her flank brushes my leg. Solid. Warm. Grounding.

I suck in a breath. Then another.

A third man crashes through the doorway. Cassidy and Kari are on him before I can lift the gun again. They fight like a unit, a blur of claws and teeth and fury. The man doesn’t stand a chance.