Page 68 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

No, no no.

Goddamned mother-fucking idiots.

“Run!” I shouted, my face breaking and reforming around the word as I shattered, all my pieces coming back together in a new form. A stronger form.

A false sense of calm flooded my animal body.

I could’ve kept fighting my wolf’s desire for dominance over the other alphas in the clearing. That would have been a thing I could have done, or at least tried to do.

But this was something else. I would kill every last person here who would dare harm them, or I would die trying if that’s what it took. I never could have taken a life to save myself—hell, I couldn’t even bring myself to try to kill Devin when he held me captive. For them, though?

Fighting to save someone you love is different.

Required little to no thought at all.

It’s a reaction.

Like how the pulling of the trigger fires the bullet. Action. Reaction.

And I doubted it would be any different whether I was animal or human. My wolf loved my friends as I did. She would die for them too. We were ready for this.

We snarled at anyone who dared look our way, lifting our head to assert our power.

We dared them to come even a step closer to our friends.

Our mates were at our sides. Their wolves ready to fight too if we needed their help.

Get them out of here, Jared spoke in my mind and we growled at him.

We were not going to leave them, either.

Not with one shifter already dead in the grass, his lifeblood flowing back into the earth.

Before Jared or Clay could try to convince us to leave, Samson howled and the pack mates he’d brought with him—the other five who’d been standing patiently by, waiting for a command from their alpha—were taken off leash.

Charity glanced back at me from where she stood, her eyes wide and fearful.

Go, she mouthed to me before she shifted, running with Harrison, Forrest, Dylan, and Destiny to head off the five attackers while Ryland and Samson circled one another, trying to find weak spots to exploit in each other’s languid movements.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. It was supposed to be easy.

No one was supposed to get hurt.

An animal squeal of pain assaulted my ears and I bent my head, fighting my wolf’s urge to join the all- out brawl under the moon. I could tell Clay was having even more trouble than I was—he was vibrating with the force of his growls, hot saliva foaming at his mouth.

Think Allie. Think! What do we do?

I turned to make sure Vivian, Layla, and Quinn were running. Once they were safely gone, I’d be able to focus. I’d be able to—

A wolf was almost on them.

Layla’s black hair whipped around her face as she spotted the wolf, a silent gasp parting her lips. Quinn jumped in front of her just as the wolf descended upon them.

I was running, I was already running, but it was too late. Too late. The wolf had wrapped its jaws around Quinn’s neck.

Layla—

Where did she go? I couldn’t see her in the grass anymore. But I could hear her.

Layla was screaming.

And Vivian. Vivian was on the wolf’s back, trying to use her bare hands—her useless human hands to pry the beast from Quinn. The rage and fear in her expression tore my heart to ribbons.

She roared as the wolf turned on her and I caught a second wolf racing to aid its friend from the corner of my eye.

Stop it, I shouted in my mind, hoping the thought would reach Jared or Clay. I could sense them a fraction of a second behind me. At ten o’clock coming fast.

In a blind rage, I zeroed all my focus in on the wolf lunging at one of my best friends. I pushed myself harder. Faster. So close now. So close.

So far away.

The wolf knocked Vivian to the ground, and I could taste bile in my throat.

It hurt.

It hurt so fucking bad.

Vivian.

In a fury so hot that it burned into my soul I bellowed; this one is mine.

The fucker didn’t have time to get ready for me.

He was too busy with his blood-soaked muzzle in my friend.

Without any clue how to work my canine body, I let my animal instinct completely take over, and in case it wasn’t obvious to my wolf what I wanted her to do—what I was giving her permission to do, I hissed in the darkest part of my mind; kill.

Our teeth locked on a chunk of fur and thick flesh behind the wolf’s neck. It cried out and bucked us off, shaking itself before it retaliated with teeth bared in a feral snarl and got us with its teeth wrapped around our ankle.

The pain was an explosion of stars in our eyes and we reflexively pulled at the appendage, contorting our body to catch the other wolf under its chin. We felt cartilage and bone in our mouth. It whined, trying to get free. Sharp paws scraping, cutting, slicing.

We didn’t let go.

We wrestled it to the ground. We pressed our paw into the hollow beneath its throat. And then we chewed through all that flesh and bone and sinew until it stopped fighting us. Until it did nothing at all.

Until we were reborn of rage and pain and all that kept us tethered to the earth was the foul taste of the creature’s blood on our tongue to remind us that we were still alive. Our heart still beat. That a part of us was still human.