Page 24

SUTTON

A s soon as we enter the ranch house, the air turns heavy—stale and tight, threaded with the bite of blood and sting of smoke.

The change hits me like a slap, my skin prickling and the fine hairs on my arms standing on end, as if the house itself recognizes the danger we’ve dragged in.

The air is thick, heavy with sweat, adrenaline, and something else—something feral.

Deacon’s hand lingers on my back for a beat too long, like he’s reluctant to break contact.

Then he’s gone, the front door slamming behind him with finality as the others vanish back into the chaos outside.

“We need to get to the interior room,” Kari says, already in motion. Her voice is tight with urgency and honed instinct. No one argues.

Cassidy grabs my wrist, her grip fierce but reassuring. "Come on, Sutton—we're not staying here to die," she growls, yanking me into motion. My boots skid on the floor as she drags me after the others down the narrow hallway, my heart thundering in my chest.

"Where are we—" I start, but the words choke off as we reach a heavy, steel-reinforced door I hadn’t even noticed before. Cassidy doesn't answer. She shoves it open, muscles straining, and pulls me through.

It slams shut behind us with a metallic boom that echoes through my bones, sealing us in. I whirl to face her.

"You okay?" Cassidy asks, her green eyes sharp, reading my face. She's already stripped down to a sports bra and jeans, sweat glistening on her brow.

I nod, barely. "Yeah. Just—thanks."

Her lips twitch into something fierce and knowing. "Stay close. Don’t think. Just move when I move."

The room is bare bones—concrete walls streaked with soot and smoke residue, a low ceiling pressing down like a physical weight.

There are no windows to offer even the smallest glimpse of the chaos outside.

It’s a panic room, stripped of comfort, designed for one purpose—survival.

The single emergency light sways slightly from its wire, casting a stuttering red glow that turns the room into a hellish cave.

Shadows twist and twitch across the walls like wounded animals trying to escape.

My pulse hammers so hard it blots out every other sound, a deep, internal drumbeat that drowns out even the echo of distant explosions and rattles my bones.

I don’t realize I’ve started shaking until Maggie puts a hand on my shoulder.

My skin is clammy, a cold sweat prickling at the back of my neck.

A chill creeps down my spine, even though the room is stifling and my clothes cling damply to my skin.

My legs tremble like they’re no longer mine, rubbery and weak, and my breath stutters in my chest like I’ve forgotten how lungs are supposed to work.

The scent of burnt powder clings to the back of my throat, thick and acrid, making it harder to swallow the rising tide of panic. The weight of what just happened slams into me, sudden and suffocating—like a building’s come down and I’m trapped in the rubble, barely able to think past the dust.

“You okay?” she asks, her voice low.

I nod as I lie. "Yeah. Just... processing."

And then we hear it—a heavy tread just beyond the steel door, accompanied by low, muffled voices that definitely don’t belong to any of ours.

I snap my gaze toward the others. Kari is already in motion, yanking her shirt over her head with practiced urgency.

Maggie doesn’t hesitate, peeling out of her jacket and tugging at her jeans, and Cassidy’s already halfway undressed, her gaze hard and focused.

The air changes, thickening with anticipation and danger.

My eyes widen as I realize exactly what’s about to happen.

I whisper, my voice cracking, "What are you..."

Cassidy turns toward me, her jaw tight. "You might want to brace yourself," she mutters, her voice a tense hum of warning.

I blink. "For what?"

None of them answer. Kari steps forward first, shoulders rolling as she exhales sharply.

There's something primal in the way she moves, deliberate and braced like she's about to step off a cliff she’s leapt from a hundred times before.

Maggie and Cassidy follow suit, each of them still and focused, their eyes gleaming.

And then it happens.

Mist rises from the floor—glowing, shimmering, mysterious—alive with surging streaks of lightning and glowing arcs of impossible color.

It coils upward in slow, deliberate spirals, moving like it has a mind of its own.

Prismatic flashes dance through the swirling fog, painting the concrete walls with flickers of blue, violet, and molten gold.

There's a silent vibration that stirs deep in my bones, pulsing upward from the floor through the soles of my feet and coiling up my spine like a rising current of energy.

The pressure in the air thickens, brushing against my skin like invisible static, making every nerve hyperaware.

There's no scent, no taste—just the disorienting awareness that something ancient and powerful is happening right in front of me.

My breath stalls in my throat, not from fear, but from awe—this is elemental, sacred.

The light intensifies, growing brighter until it fractures through the mist in jagged streaks that defy natural logic.

My vision wavers, the radiance painting afterimages that shimmer and pulse, bending the air itself in impossible ways.

The storm wraps around them, alive with silent thunder and lightning, and I can only watch, rooted in place, as magic I never believed in becomes terrifyingly real.

The mist coils hungrily around each of them, tendrils of light flickering through the shifting haze as it climbs their bodies and conceals them from view.

I watch, mesmerized and terrified, as the shimmering fog devours their forms inch by inch—shoulders, arms, faces—until nothing remains but swirling light and the electric taste of the storm in the air.

My breath catches, chest tight with wonder and dread, caught between the beauty of the moment and the primal fear of the unknown.

When it dissipates, they’re gone. In their stead, stand three wolves—larger than any I've seen in a zoo. They're wolves, and yet they're familiar. I can recognize each of them as the woman she'd been only moments before.

I stagger back a step, my hand bracing against the wall, the cool surface anchoring me as a cold sweat beads on my upper lip.

My breath comes short and shallow, my heart pounding hard against my ribs.

The sight before me is staggering, not just because it's surreal, but because something deep in my bones accepts it—welcomes it. The connection is visceral, intimate in a way I can’t explain.

My knees wobble as the reality settles in—this is real.

They’re wolves. They’re them. And we’re in the middle of a war.

But the shock isn’t fear. It’s something else.

I feel them. Not just seeing them—I know them.

Even like this, with fur instead of skin and growls instead of words, I know who each of them is. My chest clenches.

There’s no time to question it—no room for hesitation or fear. My instincts override thought, driving me forward on pure adrenaline and muscle memory, every beat of my heart screaming at me to survive.

The door explodes inward in a thunderclap of steel and shrapnel, slamming against the wall with enough force to rattle the steel frame and send dust cascading from the ceiling like ash.

A man bursts through—body armored, rifle raised.

He’s screaming something, but it’s lost in the high-pitched ring of detonation.

Kari lunges first, a black blur of power and precision.

She takes him down hard. The sound is sickening—bones snapping, a strangled scream.

Another man follows, gun raised. He aims—at me.

I don’t think. I just move, muscles jolting into action like a switch has been flipped.

My feet skid across the floor as I pivot, adrenaline punching through my bloodstream and setting every nerve on fire.

The echo of gunfire hasn’t even faded, but my body’s already in motion, driven by pure instinct and the terrifying certainty that hesitation equals death.

My Glock is in my hand before I register drawing it. The shot is deafening in the confined space. One. Two. Center mass.

He drops.

I stare, breath heaving, as the gun trembles in my grip.

Smoke curls from the barrel, thick and oily, coiling like a serpent in the air.

Blood gushes from the man’s chest, dark and slick, pooling fast beneath his body and crawling toward my boots.

The stench hits me next—coppery and final.

My ears ring, a high-pitched whine slicing through the chaos, and my knees threaten to buckle.

He was going to kill me. He raised that rifle like he’d done it a hundred times before. He came in locked, loaded, and without hesitation. It was him or me—and I’m still standing.

I’m a cop’s daughter. I was raised on the rules of survival, on training and reflexes and muscle memory. But nothing prepares you for the moment when theory becomes real. The moment you take a life. And it stays with you.

My mind jerks between Deacon, the wolves, and the steel door that has just imploded. I grip the Glock until my knuckles ache, trying to still the quake in my limbs, swallowing the scream rising like acid in my throat.

No time to unravel. No space for regret. He would’ve ended me—and I didn’t let him.

But the knowledge does nothing to still the shaking.

My stomach roils. I press back against the wall, hand over my mouth, trying to hold in the scream clawing at the back of my throat. Maggie—the wolf that is Maggie—pads to my side. Her flank brushes my leg. Solid. Warm. Grounding.

I suck in a breath. Then another.

A third man crashes through the doorway. Cassidy and Kari are on him before I can lift the gun again. They fight like a unit, a blur of claws and teeth and fury. The man doesn’t stand a chance.

Silence falls as they end him.

Smoke drifts through the room. The red light flickers. The metallic stench of blood, burnt powder, and something primal fills my nose. It's a war zone in miniature—our own private apocalypse.

I drop into a crouch, my back to the wall, gun still in hand. My fingers ache from how tightly I’m gripping it. I glance down. My knuckles are white. The barrel’s warm. My arms feel like dead weight, trembling with aftershock and adrenaline.

The wolves turn to me. For a heartbeat, I feel like the outsider again—the only human in a room full of predators—but the sensation doesn’t settle.

Instead, there's an eerie familiarity. My gut tightens, not in fear, but in recognition. Kari’s eyes meet mine—intelligent, steady.

She nods once, then turns toward the door.

Maggie moves to the side, ears twitching.

Cassidy growls low, a warning that makes my scalp prickle. They're ready for more. And so am I.

I stare at the man I shot. He can’t be much older than me—late twenties, maybe.

Blond hair darkened by sweat and blood clings to his forehead.

His chest rises once, then stills. A patch on his vest catches the low red light—something military, maybe paramilitary, but I don’t recognize the symbol.

The blood spreads out in a sickening bloom beneath him, seeping across the concrete floor like a dark, grasping shadow.

It brushes against my boots, and I can’t tell if it’s colder in the room now, or if it’s just me.

“Focus,” I whisper to myself, voice cracking.

Maggie brushes her head against my knee. A soft rumble rises from her chest—not a growl. Comfort. Support. Like she knows the battlefield inside my head is just as real as the one outside this room.

I nod once. Grip the Glock tighter. And rise.

We’re not safe yet—not while Deacon’s still out there, fighting God knows how many enemies in the dark. Every second that ticks by without him feels like a splinter in my chest, sharp and impossible to ignore. My hands tighten around the Glock. We’ve survived this long, but it’s not over. Not yet.

A sharp clatter draws all our attention, the sound sharp and metallic as if something heavy and lethal has been dropped or kicked aside just beyond the threshold.

Cassidy instantly adjusts her stance, prowling toward the door with her nose lifted.

Kari stiffens beside her, hackles raised, her gaze locked and alert.

Every breath I take tastes like blood and smoke.

My grip tightens on the Glock, pulse thundering.

Whatever’s coming—whatever made that sound—it isn’t finished with us yet.

And neither are we. Cassidy moves to the door, nose lifted.

Kari subtly repositions herself. Something is coming.

And whatever it is, we’ll be ready—predator and prey blurred, teeth bared, triggers tight, and not a single one of us giving an inch.