Page 160 of Ensnared by the Pack: The Complete Series (Destined Realms #3)
AUDREY
I skidded to a stop at the last minute before I hit the grimalkin, the pup in my arms whimpering, just as a large gray wolf as big as Knox lunged at it.
“Audrey!” a feminine voice screamed.
I scrambled away from the fight and scanned the area. I stood at the edge of a small courtyard similar to the one where I’d found a grimalkin toying with those kids in my first grimalkin encounter.
But unlike that one where there were two ways in and out, this courtyard only had one — since squeezing between market stalls didn’t count. However, this one had buildings that faced the courtyard, offering not just a place to hide but a possible back door leading to a different, safer street.
Quinn stood at the open door of a squat, one-story building with an older man ushering a group of children inside.
The wolf fighting the grimalkin dug his teeth into the beast’s throat, making it howl and rake its claws through the wolf’s stomach. But the wolf?—
No, Zavier. Somehow, I could tell by the feel of his stuttering, straining alpha power that Zavier was the wolf.
Zavier held on despite the blood rushing from his stomach and spilling onto the stone ground. He viciously wrenched his head to the side and tore his teeth through the grimalkin’s throat.
The beast collapsed, but so, too, did Zavier.
Quinn screamed and raced toward him, and so did I.
“Get them inside,” she yelled over her shoulder at the older man as she dropped to her knees beside Zavier. “Don’t shift. It’s too serious.”
I knelt at her side. “We have to get him inside, too.”
I didn’t know if grimalkins were attracted to the scent of blood or not, but I wasn’t going to risk it.
“I have an elixir,” the man called out.
Tears streamed down Quinn’s cheeks and her breathing had turned short and sharp. She scrambled to put pressure on Zavier’s wounds, but they were too big for her small hands — hands that were even smaller than mine.
“Quinn!” I barked, my pulse thu-thudding softly. “I can’t move him by myself.”
Her gaze jerked up to mine, her bright blue eyes watery and filled with fear.
“We just need to keep him alive long enough for help to get to us,” I said, and I put down the pup and turned my attention to the quivering child. “Get into the house with the others. I’m right behind you.”
The pup darted across the courtyard and I dug my fingers into Zavier’s thick fur, grabbing one of his front legs as close to his torso as I could. I didn’t want to hurt him any more than he already was, but he was as big as Bishop and Knox in their wolf form and probably just as heavy.
“Sorry,” I murmured to him as I braced my legs to start dragging him.
Tell Quinn… he gasped in my mind. Tell her…
“Tell her yourself,” I hissed. “No one is dying today.”
“Right!” Quinn replied, sudden determination hardening her expression, and she grabbed Zavier’s other front leg.
Together, we hauled him across the courtyard, leaving a sickeningly large blood smear on the ground, pointing directly to our hiding spot.
Once inside, the older man shut the door and locked it then hurried to a tall metal cabinet and pulled out an elixir.
Quinn and I dragged Zavier to a corner in the back of the room underneath a large metal worktable and fed him the elixir. It wouldn’t work quickly, but hopefully, it would be enough to help his shifter-enhanced healing stabilize him long enough for him to get medical attention.
“I don’t have a lot of clean towels here,” the man said, taking a small stack from a nearby shelf and handing them to Quinn.
“It’s all right,” Quinn replied, placing them over Zavier’s wounds. “Thanks, Jaxon.”
“Anything for you, sweetheart,” he replied.
She applied pressure, making Zavier huff in pain, and, much to my surprise, a few of the braver children added their tiny hands, helping her to put pressure on most of his injuries.
With Zavier taken care of as best as possible, given the situation, I straightened and took stock of what was around, not wanting to bet we were safe with only a wooden door and the glass in the windows keeping the grimalkins out.
The building was a single-room smithy without a back door. A blazing-hot fire in a blacksmith’s forge burned on the opposite wall from us and close to it were two large anvils and three sturdy worktables. The rest of the space was filled with raw ore, and metal everything: cabinets, stools, a handful of knives and daggers, hoes, rakes, shovels, pots, pans, a plethora of tools, and two dozen wrought-iron fence posts. All of the fence posts were an inch round and half of them had points attached to one end.
It looked like I’d found another makeshift spear, and if the soldering or whatever Jaxon the blacksmith had done to secure the tips held, the fence posts would make better spears than my stick with a point.
I grabbed a post from the rack at the back of the room then pressed myself against the cool stone wall beside one of the front windows so I could peek out and watch for danger.
“You’re definitely living up to the rumors, alpha,” Jaxon said as he took a similar position at the other window.
His voice was firm, and his medium-level alpha power rolled off him in small, stuttering waves, revealing his heightened emotions, but I didn’t get the impression he disliked me. In fact, for a second, I thought I saw respect in his eyes before he turned his attention out the window.
I wasn’t sure if he’d always felt that way, or if seeing me, a shifter who couldn’t shift, grab a weapon and stand ready to fight to protect Quinn, Zavier, and fifteen kids under the age of ten had changed his opinion of me… and I wasn’t going to ask him about the rumors. Even if there were a few good ones, I was sure most were bad.
“Just trying to do the right thing,” I replied, scanning the courtyard.
It was empty, but somewhere out of sight, people screamed and yelled, and it felt more like the calm before the storm.
My pulse pounded, and waves of determination, anger, and fear roared through my mating bonds, making me pray that my guys were safe. I tried to keep my bonds locked tight, not wanting my own fear to distract them. In a fight like this, just a flicker of a distraction could be deadly.
Then the sides of the two wooden stalls I’d squeezed through to get to the courtyard shook and a small, terrified wolf bolted out from between them. My muscles tensed, my body about to jump to the door to let the wolf in.
But before I could move, the stalls burst apart. Wood pieces, bright material, and books flew everywhere and two grimalkins pounced on the wolf.
The first sank its teeth into the wolf’s back, drawing a desperate, terrified howl, while the other dug its claws into the wolf’s side, trying to wrench it away from the first one. They snarled and roared at each other, their fight tearing the wolf in half before I could even think to scream.
I clamped a hand over my mouth, afraid to make any noise that might attract the monsters. Bile burned the back of my throat and tears stung my eyes. It had happened so fast. Logically I knew I wouldn’t have had time to save whoever it was, but my soul screamed with fury that I’d been useless.
That had been a member of my pack — mine! — and the wildness deep inside me howled that I needed to protect what was mine.
One of the children started crying. She might not have been able to see what had happened — thank goodness — but she’d heard that wolf’s death cry and the grimalkins’ growls.
“Shh shh shh,” Quinn hissed, her gaze darting to mine, her eyes wide with fear, before she turned to the child and tucked her against her side. “We have to stay quiet.”
All the children nodded, tears rolling down their cheeks, their bodies quivering, and half of them clamped their hands over their mouths, trying to stifle their sobs.
I jerked my attention to the horror in the courtyard as the beasts fought over the wolf’s corpse. They snarled and swatted at each other, then the larger one batted the slightly smaller one hard, sending it skidding across the courtyard toward the smithy.
I sucked in a sharp breath and held it, my rushing pulse filling my ears.
Don’t look our way.
Don’t notice us.
Don’t notice the blood leading straight to our door.
Please.
The smaller grimalkin leaped to his feet, shaking off the blow, and turned away from the smithy.
Yes. That’s it.
Both of you leave and run into a pack of hunters.
The large grimalkin snarled at the smaller one and a heavy, skin-crawling wave of power — far too similar to the ominous power I’d felt in Anakar — slammed into me as the smaller grimalkin shrank back.
My pulse stuttered with realization.
Holy shit!
The grimalkins had alpha power… and somehow, I could sense it?
One of the kids whimpered, making me wonder if she, too, could feel the strange power, and the smaller grimalkin’s head, which had dipped in submission to the bigger one, snapped around. Its gaze locked on the blood trail and its ears tipped forward. That drew the larger one’s attention and in unison, they both zeroed in on the door.
Oh shit.