Page 101 of Bad Wolf's Nanny

She didn’t think. Didn’t hesitate. Her fingers closed around the device-

And she pressed the button.

Everything went white.

And then, nothing.

Chapter 22 - Dane

The explosion hit like a clap of thunder.

Flames roared, smoke bloomed like black wings, and the walls of the Pine Shadow Club shook with the force of the blast. Dane hit the ground hard, dust and ash raining down on him. His ears rang. The taste of blood coated his tongue.

For a moment, all he could hear was the pounding of his heart, loud, urgent, primal.

Then came the screams.

He pushed up with a groan, blinking soot from his eyes. Around him, the world was chaos. Rubble littered the floor. Flames licked the air. Somewhere to his left, Rick barked orders, and Felix shouted something he couldn’t make out. The air was full of smoke and snarls and the tang of blood.

But none of it mattered.

His wolf surged to the surface, furious and wild. His boots crunched through ash and ruin, wolves snarled all around him, his thoughts fixed on one name.

Lola.

He had to find her. Had toprotecther. She was alive. She had to be.

Shehadto be.

He should’ve been helping the pack. Should’ve been taking orders, guarding Felix’s flank, coordinating with Nicolas and Rick. But none of that mattered when the world had narrowed to one violent, singular truth.

He came for my mate.

That thought had taken root in his gut, and it would not let go.

Dane shoved through a tangle of collapsed timber and broken stone. Behind him, wolves snapped and shrieked, bodies slamming into walls and earth. His pack fought like hellhounds, a hurricane of snarls and strikes. John Heath’s wolves had joined the fray too, leaner, slightly smaller alphas, but ruthless, practiced, and tactical. They didn’t fight like they owed the Iron Walkers a damn thing, but rather like men defending their own corner of the world.

Heath himself was barely visible through the smoke, flanked by two lieutenants, barking low orders with an eerie calm. Rick circled nearby, blade glinting crimson, eyes narrowed, his savagery taking over.

Then Dane spotted a wolf, already shifted, its red-gold fur streaked with ash and blood. It crashed into an enemy alpha with brutal grace, tearing through muscle and fur with terrifying precision.

Marsha. It was Marsha.

Dane blinked, his head in a daze. Marsha had been in the club when the explosion happened; she had been one of the women trapped—

But then Daisy’s unmistakable figure, small and cream-furred, blurred through the smoke and pounced with a vicious snarl, guarding Marsha’s flank as she swung a shattered chair leg like a cudgel with her teeth.

Somewhere, Nicolas cried out with pure animal relief as he saw his mate.

Dane’s chest tightened.

They’d escaped. They were here. They were unhurt.

Lola did this. Lola got them out.

A scream cut through the night, not pain, but rage, and other females broke into the clearing, wolf-shifted, eyes wild and glassy with adrenaline. They weren’t trained. They weren’t ready. But they were here. Fighting.

He felt it in his bones. The pack was shifting. What had once been hierarchy and ritual was now blood and trust and fire.