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Tor

“Harper’s in trouble,” I said as soon as I got off the phone. “I’ve gotta go.”

“Is this that terrible brother?” Mum asked. “Kieran’s?—?”

“Mack’s,” Dad corrected, then nodded to the rest of the family. “Dina, Mira, leave the cleaning.” My sisters tossed the scrapers and cleaning cloths they had been using to remove the paint sprayed over the front of the restaurant. “Where are we going, son?”

“Maybe everyone should stay here?” There was no certainty in that statement. Harper’s words, her recklessness, took my breath away, and that was saying something. “I mean?—”

“You are going to protect your mate.” Mum’s hands were tiny, but as she took mine, I felt the strength of her tiger there. “And we will come with you.”

“No, Mum?—”

“Should’ve killed that idiot a long time ago.” We all turned to see my grandmother walking out of the restaurant. “We took fur and hunted for him in the parklands in the south.”

“You what?” I yelped.

“Son, when you told us Mack was having problems, you had to have known we’d step in to try to resolve them.” Dad’s hand landed on my arm. “We hunted for some time, got a stray scent of a wolf occasionally, but nothing concrete. So you have an address?”

“Look alive, idiot.” Mira rapped me on the head, then plucked my phone from my hand before reading the address Harper had sent. “So he is in the old quarry. See, Dina, I told you.”

“So now we end this.” Mum’s voice had turned into a low growl, her eyes turning emerald green.

“This is the work of the gods,” my grandmother said, shaking her head. “Your mate is very brave and very reckless.” Her eyes narrowed. “Reminds me of someone. So, are we going to tear this jackal to pieces or what?”

I shook my head as if to dispel the haze of shock.

“Try to keep up,” I said, running towards my car.

“Are you enroute?” I barked at Kieran. I’d put a hands-free call through as I drove, weaving through traffic. It was bad enough that people were beeping at me for my insane driving, but of course, my family was hot on my heels, following me the entire way.

“Getting close now,” he replied. “Asher and his crew—” They were an organisation the bear community had set up before the Big Reveal, designed to help and support women and children leaving domestic violence situations.

Asher led the crew and was devastatingly effective at taking out bad guys.

He was also the reason why humans knew about shifters in the first place.

His last rescue made it on the news, revealing our nature to the world.

“They’re coming, as is every damn bear the dads can find. ”

“And me!” A muffled female voice called from in Kieran’s car.

“And Mum,” he huffed. “She wouldn’t stay home.”

“Harper is going to need support,” Kim said. “Family. Has anyone called her mum yet?”

“Don’t call her mother!”

Kieran and I shouted that at the same time.

“Yeah, well, my family is coming along to play as well. Fuck!”

I swerved right hard to avoid a truck that suddenly changed lanes, then put my foot to the floor, speeding past it.

“The tigers are coming to play as well?” Kieran asked.

“By now every tiger in the city will know what’s happening,” I said, shaking my head, able to see clearly my mother lighting up the phone tree. “They’ll be on their way.”

“And Mack?”

I felt a pang of guilt, but that was shoved to one side as I was forced to weave between the small spaces in traffic.

Faster, my heart beat. Get there faster.

Save Harper. Kill Dax and then live happily-ever-after.

Easy, right? I shook my head, my grip tightening around the steering wheel.

I was too damn fixated on the first part to even think about the latter.

When Harper had told me what she intended to do, I’d begged her to reconsider.

She’d done what she needed to, getting Dax’s location from her.

Me and my family would get Daria free, right before we tore Mack’s brother’s head from his shoulders.

The tiger snarled within me, liking that idea very much.

But the man?

He was just freaking terrified he wouldn’t make it in time.

Several near collisions later and a long drive down the highway, I started to get close to the quarry. Police cars went racing past, forcing me to stick to the speed limit, but I wasn’t their focus. As they zipped past, I knew what was happening.

“Looks like Harper called the cops,” I said to Kieran, our phones still connected.

“Not smart,” he replied. “Don’t need witnesses to what has to happen. You know Dax needs to go down, right?”

“The tiger needs to taste his blood.”

“So we’re in agreement then.”

I was forced to cut off the call as soon as I hit the dirt track, the car bumping around like crazy as I took the road at speed.

Fuck the chassis, fuck the tyres, fuck everything but Harper.

As I reached the end of the track, I threw my door open and jumped out of the car.

The sound of cars pulling up should’ve had me turning around, but the tiger was too close.

We could smell Harper. Fear, anger, it stank like cat’s piss, making me wrinkle my nose.

Take fur, kill everyone, get the girl, that was the plan. Then Kieran came running up.

“Bears are here in force.” Doors slammed and men came spilling out of their cars, storming over to where we stood. “We’ll surround the place, make sure Dax doesn’t get out.”

“Not getting out.” It felt like the tiger was raking the quarry walls, not me, noting that there were no exit points. “Holing up in his den.” My head whipped around so I could stare into his eyes. “He won’t come out, and if we…” I swallowed hard. “If we try and force our way in.”

“He’ll savage your mate.” Asher turned into the biggest polar bear I’d ever seen, and right now I could see evidence of it in his flat gaze. “Anyone else and I’d say your girl was safe.” He glanced at the mine entrance. “Harper is his fated mate.”

“It doesn’t matter.” We all turned to see a bedraggled woman come stumbling towards us.

I blinked, unable to reconcile who I saw now with Daria’s formerly glamorous facade.

“She doesn’t matter.” When her hands clasped mine, I moved, trying to steady her, then get her the hell away from the quarry, when my nose began to work.

A scent, just like Mack’s but sour, clung to her.

My hand shook as I lifted it, wanting to inspect the mark on her face.

“Harper’s just a means to get Mack here,” Daria said.

“A way to hurt him. That fucker…” She stabbed her finger in the direction of the quarry. “He doesn’t think Harper is his mate.”

“She’s just bait…”

It felt like blood was draining from my body, because all of us, Harper included, were operating under the same assumption. That our mate was protected, at least in the short term, by that status. Killing your fated mate would cause a shifter unspeakable agony, and why would Dax do that to himself?

He wouldn’t.

Everyone was creating labyrinthine like plans that made my fucking head ache, but really there was only one thing that was true. Dax wanted to get revenge on Mack, hurt him as much as he possibly could, right before he killed him, and the best way to do that was to hurt Harper.

And she’d gone waltzing right into his den.

I couldn’t hold the tiger back anymore. His roar reverberated throughout the entire quarry, a call to arms. Other roars answered mine, right as I leapt forward.