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“Doesn’t she understand…”

“What if she’s discovered?”

Marcus’s face twisted in a self-satisfied smile. His whole intention was to turn the meeting to his own purposes—namely, to get Emma into his pack.

Over my dead body.

Or his.

When I raised my hands, the noise died out. “She’s promised to return after her work week is completed. She’ll continue her training with Olivia at that time,” I said, but the explanation sounded weak to my own ears.

Marcus cursed, and he flashed his teeth. “Logan, Emma cannot be housed here with your pack. You’re the one who discovered her, and it’s already gotten out that you have a stranger in your midst.”

I cocked an eyebrow, crossed my arms, and placed my hands on the table, leaning forward. He could go fuck himself. Emma wasn’t going to be anywhere other than Six-Mile. “Is that so?”

“She can take up residence with the Ville Platte. No one would expect her to be in our territory, not based on the animosity between us. We’ll keep her safer than anyone else can.”

The leader of the ravens jumped to her feet with a loud caw. “Is that so? We can collect the multimorph.”

A rumble rolled through Torbin. “As though ravens were more skilled in protection than bears.”

I bit back a small smile. Torbin would be pleased when he learned she’d chosen a bear form to defend herself.

The keypad on the training warehouse chimed, and the entrance swung open. Phil burst in through the frontdoor with a naked Rachel in his arms. Deep gashes covered her body. Either she didn’t have the strength to shift, or she was dead. The door banged closed behind him.

Olivia gasped and sprinted toward the door. “Is she…”

Phil shook his head, placing her in the center of the long table of alphas. Then he stepped out of the way. “Not dead but not far from it.”

“Do we have a healer here?” I bellowed at the collection of shifters at the long table.

The raccoon shifter darted to Rachel’s side and pressed her hands to the unconscious woman’s cheeks. Her mouth moved in spells as a breeze tripped through the room, and Rachel’s wounds began to mend. Beneath closed eyelids, her eyes moved, and she whimpered.

Phil gestured to Rachel. “It’s worse than that. They’re on our land, and they’re headed this way.”

“They?” I asked.

An explosion sounded outside the bulletproof window of the training hall, and sparks rained down over the windows. Then a half-shifted face slammed into the glass, head thrown back in unfinished howl, before slipping down, leaving a bright red streak behind.

The healer helped Rachel into the reinforced room, adjacent to the relic room, at the rear of the building, and then she dashed to a window. She snarled and hissed.

I sprinted to another window and peered out. Sorcerers surrounded us. Though, I didn’t recognize anyof them, and the number of opponents eluded me. There had to be some kind of spell obscuring them all.

“Let us out,” Torbin roared. His snout elongated, and a massive influx of shift magic swirled in the air around him.

Yet he did not change.

Each alpha darted to the exit where Olivia joined them. She glanced at me as another explosion rattled the walls. At my nod, she entered the code and the thirteen of us poured out onto the lawn around the training warehouse, shifting one by one until Torbin was the only one who remained as a human.

Howls, yips, caws, and roars thundered through Six-Mile. Others of my pack appeared and shifted, joining in our fight against the attackers.

Dark clouds obscured shadowy figures. They had each been smeared in a dark red paint, so thick on some it had dripped down their arms and dried. They all held magic in their hands. A stream of balefire impacted the side of the building.

A fireball shot from one and slammed into Torbin who grunted and dropped to his knees. With a roar, he turned into a large white bear, as large as a polar bear, and in one mighty leap, he clamped his jaw around the head of the sorcerer and ripped it from the shrouded body. He spat the trophy aside, and the headless form dropped to the ground, the cloud camouflage dissipating.

Olivia and I galloped to the far end of the now-dozen sorcerers. Between us, we each caught one arm andquickly pulled the trespasser in two, tossing the leftovers aside.

A metallic scent punched me in the nose, the hint of magic still in the plasma. It wasn’t paint at all. They’d been doused in blood. Not just any blood.