Page 30 of Bullied Pretend Mate (Silverville Firefighter Wolves #3)

The second that bitch takes a step toward my mate, I’m not waiting for a signal from Xeran to move. I’m on my feet, driving forward, shifting in mid-air, my paws thundering against the ground as I launch toward them.

“Oh,” Tara says, turning and smiling serenely at me even as I’m thinking about getting my teeth in her throat. “This is going to be fun.”

She raises her hands toward me, and I see the faint spark of magic in her palms.

“Don’t touch him!” Phina shouts, and I realize a second later that I’m not the only one running into this scene—Xeran and Lachlan are on either side of me. Apparently, we all decided that we’d had enough of whatever was going on here.

Enough of our mates being in the presence of a madwoman.

A blast of magic strikes through the air, flashing through the space around us like a lightning bolt. I see it flash off the bark of the trees around us, illuminating the clearing and all the people.

Then, it slams into Tara’s side, sending her rag-dolling across the dirt before we can reach her. We skid to a stop a few feet from Tara and a few feet from the girls, watching Tara as she lies completely still in the dirt.

“Is she…?” Phina asks, her voice small, and despite everything, I get the feeling she might actually mourn the loss of this girl.

“No, bitch,” Tara moans, pushing herself into a sitting position, cracking her neck, and lolling her head to look at the girls, apparently not concerned with the three wolves staring her down. “I’m not dead. Even though you clearly gave it your best shot.”

“I didn’t,” Phina says, her eyes darting to Xeran. “I just didn’t want you to hurt him.”

Even in his wolf form, I can feel Xeran bristle. As the supreme, there aren’t a lot of things that should be able to scare him. And not many things could hurt him.

Nothing that his luna should have to protect him from.

“ Ugh ,” Tara says, pushing herself to her feet.

I break formation and walk around to the other side of the clearing slowly until I’m standing behind Maeve.

The others come to join me, all of us keeping our eyes on the blue-haired girl in front of us.

“When are you guys ever going to learn your lesson? Boys are such a waste of time.”

“She really is just like she was,” Phina whispers, her words only intended for Valerie and Maeve on either side of her. “Like she’s still a teenager.”

Tara cracks her neck again and stands up, letting out a loud whoop. “You know what, actually, that was good . Hit me again, Sera.”

The face-off is completely uneven—only Tara against the five of us and the three girls. Then, laughing, Tara raises her arms, and deeper laughter choruses after her, echoing through the forest.

“I might be struggling to start a fire,” she says, her eyes glinting dangerously. “But I have absolutely no problem fucking you up !”

In a flash, several dancing figures emerge, like flames licking into the night but somehow more real, thicker, and more substantive. They advance toward us, and although the girls yell for us to stay back, we spring forward, each of us taking one of the figures.

My teeth go right through the fucker, my mouth singeing hot, my claws struggling to gain purchase. To my left and right, Lachlan and Kalen are facing their own struggles with the daemons, snarling and fighting.

And behind us, magic flies, sparks echoing through the air, lighting up the night around us in quick flashes.

Again and again, the flashes illuminate the trees and the leaves.

Embers from the daemons float into the sky, flipping and dancing, catching on the leaves and igniting fires around us, which start to spread in the foliage around the clearing.

“Duck!” Maeve screams at me, and I do what she says, trusting the bond, trusting that even with what I did to her, she would still have my back. Keep me from getting leveled by her weird, magical high school friend.

Magic flows in the space above me as I flatten myself to the ground, and I can feel the heat singeing the fur along my back. The daemon I was fighting dissolves into smoke, going up in a puff that leaves behind nothing but silken silver ash.

The others continue to fight, and I can hear the crackling of the daemons as I roll to the side, trying to push myself up onto my feet again. The scent of scorched earth fills my nostrils, mixing with the acrid stench of burning leaves.

“ Felix !” Maeve’s voice cuts through everything—the noise, my watering eyes, my stinging nose.

When I look up, she’s deflecting another blast of magic from Tara, sending it ricocheting off into the trees.

Maeve’s face is strained and red, sweat beads forming along her forehead.

Her dress is barely hanging on at this point, and it’s hard for me to reconcile this scene with where we were earlier.

The easy tempo of our lives up to this point, brought to a stuttering halt by me telling her that I loved her. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

“What?” Tara laughs, stepping easily through the flames, shooting off little blasts of magic that Phina and Valerie have to deflect from Lachlan and Xeran. “Having trouble keeping up?”

Lachlan lets out a loud, twisted howl as one of the flames rakes its claws across his flank, leaving scorched flesh and tendrils of smoke in its wake.

“Lach!” Valerie cries, twisting to the side and rolling along the ground, then climbing over to him.

If he were human, he might grit out through his teeth, “I’m fine,” like he does any time he’s hurt. Valerie raises her hands over his wounds, already starting to soothe the burns, repairing the flesh.

Somehow, Kalen manages to pin his daemon down with nothing but sheer resistance, ripping at the slippery thing until it gasps and disappears into smoke. With it dead, Kalen slides over to us, and we form a circle around Valerie and Lachlan, protecting them from Tara and the daemons.

“These daemons are tied to her,” Phina says through ragged gasps of air.

Maeve is strong with her magic, but Phina is the most powerful of the three.

When Xeran first came back to town, she protected us from a bout of daemon fire that would have left us nothing but ash. “We need to break her concentration.”

“What do you want me to do?” Maeve asks, giving Phina a droll stare. “Lap dance?”

If I were human right now, I’d laugh. Maeve fills me with a buoyant sort of joy, a weightless happiness. She and I are mates. She can make me laugh even in the darkest of moments. Even when we’re fighting for our lives.

Tara cackles again and levels a bolt of magic directly at Phina, which she counters, but barely. Xeran roars and barrels toward Tara, and I realize what’s going to happen before it does.

Xeran is the supreme. Tara knows that if he gets his claws in her, she’s dead. So all her focus is going to be on him.

I peel away from the group, running as fast as I can toward Tara, who is, sure enough, focusing completely on Xeran. I run like I’m attacking a daemon, then pivot and launch toward a burning branch above Tara’s head.

The flame licks into my skin, and I grit my way through the pain, using my momentum to push off toward Tara, slamming into her back, my weight driving her to the ground.

“Fe-lix!” Maeve calls, her voice breaking in the middle of my name.

The daemons around us flicker and falter, then puff out like a snuffed candle.

My claws dig into her as I scramble to keep my purchase on her. She bucks beneath me with inhuman, and, frankly, inshifter strength, a kind of determined movement I’ve never experienced before.

Her skin lights up, suddenly wreathed in flames that rush through my fur and into my skin, a mottled, wrecking kind of pain that feels like it’s pushing into my brain, sucking the oxygen from my lungs.

A twisted, garbled howl breaks out of me, the agony like a blanket over my body, but I can’t let go. If I let go of her, she might bring the daemons back, and Lachlan is still down, Valerie working feverishly over him.

“Get the fuck off me,” Tara snarls, her voice louder than what seems possible, and distorted with rage. Blue fire rises up around us, over my chest and ribs. Like eating a million jalapenos.

I’m burning up from the inside.

“Felix!” Maeve cries, and I feel her magic wrapping around me, trying to tug me away from Tara, but I hold tight. “ Let go !”

“You’ll die!” It’s Xeran’s voice now—he must have shifted back. He imbues his voice with the authority of the supreme, booming, “Retreat, Rana!”

But I have to protect Maeve.

Without meaning to, I spent a lot of my life hurting her. I drove her to the worst night of her life. Now, I owe her this.

She’s the love of my life. My mate.

And I’ll die if it means she can go on and live her dreams. Get her clothing line into Hollerand. Make sure other women like her can find the same kind of confidence she has.

The pain is almost ethereal, like Tara is burning away pieces of my soul. My vision blurs, black spots dancing at the edges, but I hold on. I have to hold on.

Tara rolls, using the flames to her advantage, getting on top of me.

Phina runs forward, her hands sparking with magic, but Maeve grabs her, shouting something I can’t hear over the roaring in my head.

Something like, “You might hit him, too!”

Good. Hit me. Take both of us out, and make sure there’s never another daemon fire in Silverville, ever again.

If Maeve wanted closure from coming home, like she said, I can’t think of something better than taking out the psychotic bitch who’s been causing the wildfires.

But then, instead of just holding Phina back, Maeve surges forward, pointing her palms at me. I see the blast before I hear it, the sharp crack of the magic through the air a physical thing.

It hits Tara clearly, knocking her off me and blasting her body into the trees behind us, flames following in her wake.

“Felix,” Maeve says, dropping to her knees beside me, holding her hands over my body, tears running down her cheeks. “Just hold on.”

Valerie and Phina appear, too, all three of them holding their hands over me, healing magic doing nothing to touch my skin, which feels like a piece of bacon dropped directly into a charcoal grill.

I didn’t even realize I’d shifted back into my human form.

Maeve crouches, lifting my head into her lap, leaning down, placing the lightest kiss to my lips, like she’s afraid every touch might cause me pain.

“Felix,” she cries, running her hand over my hair. “I love you. I’m in love with you. Please, just—just hold on, okay?”

I open my mouth and try to speak, and the first attempt comes out as a dry rasp. On the second try, I finally manage, “Will you still love me if I’m no longer beautiful?”

But this time, she doesn’t laugh. She just cries harder as the black descends, and I’m lost to the abyss.