by T. S. Joyce
“I’ll take hers,” Quickdraw bargained. “She won’t change. Annabelle,” he called, leveling her with a look. God, he was bleeding so much, and the right side of his face was swelling uncontrollably. He arched his eyebrows and begged her with his eyes. “Promise them you won’t change.”
“I can’t change if I tried,” she cried out, tears streaming down her face as she struggled away from the brute shifter holding her. He released her hair but gripped her arm so hard she knew he would snap it at any moment. When another pair of arms went around her from behind, she kicked and clawed at anything she could reach. “You don’t understand!” She looked in horror at the man who pulled a syringe out of the medical bag and jammed the needle into a vial. “You don’t understand!”
“I’ll take her Filsa!”
“Well now, that won’t work for us,” Arrow growled as he approached Quickdraw. “You’re not getting, Filsa. You’re getting something a little stronger.”
“Let her go right fuckin’ now!” Quickdraw struggled against the thick ropes around his wrists and stretched them visibly. God, he was strong.
“Stop!” Arrow demanded, running the last few steps toward him. “Boys, hold him down!”
Annabelle kicked wildly as the man with the needle approached her.
“I’m pregnant!” she screamed. “I can’t change. I’m pregnant! You’ll hurt my baby with that Filsa. You’ll hurt him! Please don’t!”
Her last plea echoed through the arena, and everything faded away except for Quickdraw.
He froze, mid-struggle, his eyes went wide, and his mouth parted like he wanted to say something. She’d never witnessed actual horror flit across someone’s face like this before.
“He’s yours,” she forced past her tightening vocal cords.
The whites of Quickdraw’s eyes disappeared, and turned pure black. As he gritted his teeth, his focus slid to the men holding her, and his features twisted with rage. The air grew heavy with this dark power that clogged her airway. With a bellowing roar, he snapped the ropes on his wrists and shrugged off the four men holding him. He slammed his fist into the face of the one on his right so hard she could feel the vibration from his hit across the arena. The man went down and didn’t move as Quickdraw pulled another man over his shoulder like a rag doll and threw him at Arrow.
Arrow ducked out of the way, but he dropped the syringe in the dirt.
“Shit! Trevor! Get the tranq gun!”
Trevor? Trevor Watkins, owner of Trusted, that Goddamn assassin company.
Annabelle twisted away from the human with the needle and clamped her teeth hard onto the behemoth’s wrist. Now it was her turn to snap bones.
“Kill them,” her wolf whispered. “Kill them all for me. For us.”
She reared back and blasted her fist across his face. He shrieked in pain as blood poured from the sides of her mouth. She hated the taste of him. Bear tasted awful.
The first snapping of his bones sounded, and she had to move. Twisting fast, she ducked out of the way of the other man, barely escaping the syringe in his hand. She grabbed his wrist and slammed the Filsa into his own neck. The man dropped, and his pupils dilated in an instant.
“It kills humans,” she snarled over him so he would know he didn’t stand a chance. So she could see the fear of the end in his eyes.
Hurt Quickdraw? Try to hurt her baby? She would kill every one of them.
Across the arena, Quickdraw was laying waste to the men who had held him, and he was dragging that fight toward her.
The bear shifter was almost changed, and he was going to be a big problem. He was a grizzly. Fuckin’ Griz had two-inch claws, and razor-sharp teeth, too much power, and always fought dirty. If she were a wolf, she would stay in this fight, but not in her human form and not when she had her baby to protect.
“Run,” the wolf urged.
The shifter who had stepped on her with his boot and held her from behind was nowhere to be seen. Ol’ Boot had run like a coward. All that remained was the dead human with the needles in his neck and the giant blond grizzly standing up on his hind legs. As she ran away, Griz roared so loud the earth beneath her feet shook. Two quick gunshots echoed through the clearing, and horrified that Quickdraw had been shot, she cast a glance behind her. Griz was coming for her, but so was a bull.
A bull she knew.
He was dark brown and tan with a white blaze down his face and thick, blunt, filed-down horns. Monstrous hooves and a tail that twitched with rage. Bigger than any bull she’d ever seen. That bull was hers. Quickdraw was changed, and he was coming like a damn torpedo for Ol’ Griz.
“Get to the fence. Don’t climb it, dive through it,” the wolf said. “Roll. Protect the cub. No time to climb it. They’re coming.”
Legs burning, she pushed her way through the deep arena dirt. She grunted as she launched herself through the slats of the fence and rolled while protecting her belly. Thank God for Rork’s training. Thank God.
She turned in time to see Griz coming straight toward the fence. He was going to go through it, and she could be crushed. Scrambling, she tried to get out of range, but just as he reached it, Quickdraw slung his head and slashed his horn against his hind end so hard the grizzly spun midair. He didn’t recover before Quickdraw was on him, slamming his head against his ribs, slashing with his horns. She could hear the echo of the bear’s ribs cracking.
A claw raked out and caught Quickdraw across the neck.
“No!” she screamed, pushing to her feet.
The grizzly was now on the defense, backing away on his belly, turning the sand crimson with his streaming gashes. His ears were flat against his head, and he looked furious and something else. Was that…was that fear in his eyes?
Quickdraw’s injuries weren’t slowing him down at all. He was pure rage and aggression, and he wasn’t backing down an inch.
And then something awful happened. Out of the corner of her vision, she saw movement. Fast movement.
A dark brindled bull was charging right for Quickdraw.
Arrow. Arrow was a mother-fucking traitor bull.
She needed that gun someone had shot. She needed it for Arrow. For Griz. For anyone who ever looked sideways at Quickdraw. He was hurt.
“Quickdraw, behind you!” she screamed.
The massive bull turned just as Arrow reached him. With his head lowered, he took the brunt of the charge with his skull and skidded backward, his hooves etching deep divots into the dirt. Griz was limping away, and she could see why. He had huge gashes right through his ribs. Quickdraw’s horns were painted red. That bear was done.
Good. Die.
The bulls locked up and kicked up dust as they rammed each other this way and that through the carnage of the arena. Their bellowing was deafening, and in the pens behind the arena, the Hagan bulls were calling out, too.
“Back! Back!” Someone was directing the driver of a truck who was backing a trailer to the loading gate in the arena.
“They’ve got a trailer, Quickdr—aaah!” she screamed as someone yanked her backward.
Boot was back. The shifter who had held her earlier now pinned her arms to her sides. With an inhuman snarl, he dragged her backward.
“Let me go!” Geez, he was strong. He was crushing her, and her lungs were screaming for air. He was taking her to the trailer. No, to the truck. Shit!
She locked her legs against the uneven ground, grappling for every moment she could stall.
She’d never appreciated her wolf, or missed her more than in this moment. This was the wrong form to fight in.
There was a man on the fence aiming a rifle at the bulls. Trevor. Arrow had called him Trevor.
“Nooo!” she shrieked as he pulled the trigger on Quickdraw.
Looking over at Quickdraw in terror, she realized they weren’t shooting bullets. Three darts hung from his shoulder with red feathers on the ends.
They were putting his bull to sleep.
“Now!” Trevor ordered, putt
ing the rifle down as he stood straight up on the fence. “Arrow, pull him in!”
Arrow disengaged from the brutal smashing of their heads and locking of their horns and bolted toward the trailer.
She didn’t realize what they were doing until it was too late to warn him. Quickdraw chased him right into the trailer, but there was a side panel open with two men waiting. After Arrow bolted out through the opening, they slammed the panel closed and latched it. Trevor jumped down off the fence and shut the back of the trailer closed with inhuman speed and strength. Traitors. Traitors everywhere. Shifter betrayals, and Annabelle wanted to kill them all.
“Keep your head,” the wolf murmured.
Boot shoved her into the back of a big black Chevrolet truck where Arrow sat. It was unsettling how fast he could change. He sat on that seat relaxed, completely naked, and bleeding from gashes in his throat and shoulders, his eyes full of fever and hate.
He grabbed Annabelle by the arm and slammed her back against the seat. “Give me a fucking reason to snap your neck. I lost half of my goddamn team because of you.”
Nostrils flaring, breath shaking from her adrenaline rush, she gritted out, “Good. You’re next.”
The shifter who had dragged her here sat next to her, trapping her in the back seat. He slammed the door beside him with a string of curses. Trevor took the passenger’s seat, and the driver hit the gas. The other men were piling into a black SUV near the Hagan bulls.
“Are we not loading the Hagans?” Arrow asked as they passed the holding pens where the bulls were pissed, charging the fence panels and fighting with each other.
“This bitch ruined all those plans,” Trevor growled. “You couldn’t stay out of this, could you?”
The fury in his tone made her want to flinch. He was a dominant shifter then. She didn’t flinch for submissive men.
“Get them talking,” her wolf urged. “Keep your head. Think.”
“Why isn’t she dead?” Arrow growled out.
“Because we still need her to draw out the other three.”
The other three? “Let me guess. You want Two Shots, Dead, and Hagan’s Lace, too? Good fuckin’ luck.”
“We won’t need luck if we have bait, bitch.”
“Only bitch I see is you,” she enlightened Trevor. “Traitor.”
“Shut her up,” he growled low.
The shifter beside her hesitated. “But she’s got a baby.”
Twisting in his seat, Trevor yelled, “I don’t fucking care.”
Boom! The trailer behind them echoed with a kick from Quickdraw.
“Keep them talking.”
“Your Filsa didn’t work on him,” she rushed out.
“You really haven’t figured it out yet, have you?” Arrow said. “You think Filsa is the only drug for shifters? You think there isn’t science for anything but the ability to put a shifter animal to sleep?” He snorted like she was the dumbest thing on the planet. “We gave him Humlactol. We put his human to sleep. We put all their humans to sleep.”
Dread hit the pit of her stomach. “You did what?” she asked in horror.
“He’s all bull until the drug wears out of his system. And it’s long-lasting. For all intents and purposes, your man is dead. He’s just a dumb animal now.”
“Why do you want to kill him?” she asked.
“Oh, we don’t want to kill them. Not anymore. The man who hired us figured out they are worth more alive.”
“Sloane Brander?” she asked.
“Mmmm, clever little wolf,” Arrow murmured.
“You know too much,” Boot said. He was beside her, staring out the window at the trees rushing by, sitting as far away from her as possible.
She knew what that meant. They would use her for bait to bring in Raven, Dead, and Two Shots, and then they would kill her.
“Sloane Brander is turning his business into something no one has seen before. He’s a different sort of contractor now.”
“What sort?”
Arrow’s smile made her want to retch. “Now, he sells the bull shifters to underground medical companies for testing. Genetic testing, hormone testing, hybrid testing, breeding research, creating new medicine to harness their power, and on and on. Apparently, there’s a big need for test subjects. And they don’t want just any run-of-the-mill bull shifters. They want the best.”
“That’s awful,’ she whispered.
Callously, Trevor assured her, “That’s business.”
Boom! The trailer rocked hard behind them, and Arrow twisted around, frowned at it. “Maybe we should’ve put a few Hagans in there with him so he didn’t have so much room to move.”
“Those Hagans would’ve been dead by the time we got there,” Trevor said without turning around. He pushed his shoulder-length, dirty-blonde hair out of his face and wiped sweat from his forehead. “Hagans we can get more of. Their stock contractors send them to us straight from their fucked-up inbred herds. Quickdraw is a different kind of beast. He’s worth the most money. And when the powerhouses all disappear, attention will filter back to bull riding. Just man versus beast. No more shifter sport. And good ol’ Sloane will get paid twice.”
“You won’t get away with this,” she said, clenching her fists on her lap. Blood was still dripping down the side of her face so that tiny pit-pats hit the sleeve of her jacket. Everything hurt, but none of that was important. Just that Quickdraw and the baby were okay.
“We will get away with it,” Arrow said. “Those poor saps lying dead in the arena will not. The hard part is over for us.”
Boom!
Boom!
The forest blurred by outside the window, and dawn was starting to show its first gray light on the horizon ahead of them. Quickdraw was going to flip them. She smiled sweetly at Arrow and buckled her seatbelt.
“Hey, Trevor?” Arrow asked, rushing to buckle his too. “Do you think we should—”
BOOM!
The entire trailer toppled, flipping the truck on its side and then onto the roof. There was the chaos of screeching metal. Time slowed. The front end of the truck aimed for the tree line, and the men were yelling and scrambling inside the truck.
A giant oak stood there waiting, wide and patient, like it knew its fate was to stop this truck. As the front end wrapped around it, glass shattered and flew through the cab. Annabelle curled in on herself and threw her arms around her belly.
Gas.
Smoke.
Blood.
The sound of her panting breath was deafening.
Trevor wasn’t in the truck anymore. All she could see was the front window was completely busted out. Shattered glass coated everything. The driver wasn’t moving.
The bellowing of the bull drowned out everything.
“Move,” the wolf said. “Get out of here. He’s coming for them. He’s coming for revenge.”
Panicked, she unbelted herself with shaking fingers and yelped as she hit the smashed-in roof of the truck. Arrow was struggling to get out of his seatbelt.
“I can’t get it undone,” he gritted out.
“That’s tragic.” Sarcasm was her favorite trauma-coping mechanism.
“Help me,” he growled as she slithered her way out the misshapen window.
The other shifter had already escaped the crushed cab.
Another bellow from Quickdraw rattled the cab. Pieces of glass dislodged from the broken windows and tinkled onto the ground. She turned. “Would you like to die out here or in there?”
“Out there.”
“Request denied.” Annabelle gave him an empty smile. “Save me a seat in Hell.”
“Bitch, get back here!”
“It’s Annabelle the Bitch to you.” She walked away just as Quickdraw came charging down the dark road. That truck and those men didn’t stand a chance.
And while that monstrous, bleeding, enraged bull was destroying the people who had done their best to destroy them, she wiped the warmth that was dripping down her cheek with the back
of her hand, unzipped her jacket, pulled her phone out of her hoodie, and connected a call.
“Good morning!” Raven answered cheerfully.
Annabelle didn’t know why that struck her as funny, but it did. Raven was completely unaware of the hell she and Quickdraw had just been through, and her cheerfulness felt so surreal. It also reminded her that everything was okay. Kind of. Well, they were okay except Quickdraw, who was a bull for an undisclosed amount of time. He was currently pulverizing the Chevy but, eventually, he was probably going to be okay.
Why was she so calm right now?
Maybe she was in shock.
“Good morning. There’s been an accident, and we need a ride.”
There were two beats of silence on the other end of the line. “What kind of accident?”
The truck flared up in an angry fire with flames twice as tall as her. Quickdraw was now pulverizing a burning truck. Huh. “Um, maybe it would be better for me to explain in person.”
“Where are you?”
“Uuuuh…” She looked around, trying to clear her head. Where the heck were they? Now she was starting to shake. Adrenaline maybe. Or another phase of the shock. “On the main road heading west away from the property of a man named Russ. He used to sell bucking bulls to the riders on the circuit for practice bulls, but he’s retired. Has a son named Scott who breeds bulls now.”
“Okay, I can use that.” Ravens voice was shaking in rhythm like she was running. “I’m going to wake up Cheyenne. Do we need a clean-up crew?”
“A clean-up crew?”
“Is there blood?”
Well, she and Quickdraw looked like they’d been through a woodchipper and back, but that probably wasn’t what Raven was really asking. Was there blood? “Yep.”
“We’ll be right there.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Did you hear me?” the nurse asked softly.
“Annabelle,” Raven murmured, squeezing her hand.
She dragged her eyes away from the bird sitting in a tree outside the hospital room window. “I should be with Quickdraw.”
“He’s not in the hospital right now,” Raven murmured. “Cheyenne and the boys are prepping him to buck tonight. Otherwise they would all be here.”