by Paige Tyler
Up on the dais, Alyssa screamed again.
Zane looked up in panic to see five more vampires step onto the dais, the whites of their eyes as black as their irises.
He fought against the cuffs again, ignoring the pain spreading through his chest and stomach, straining his arms until the bones creaked. But other than digging the shackles deeper into his wrists, his struggles did nothing. And he only got weaker as he continued to bleed.
Zane glanced at the dais again to see Stefan shoving his uncle off the stage and into a cluster of vampires waiting for him with open arms. The former chief of police briefly cried in pain as the creatures proceeded to tear him apart. Zane would have considered that to be justice of the most poetic kind if he wasn’t so damn terrified for Alyssa.
Zoe and Chloe screamed in terror as each of the old vampires holding them dragged them closer. The other three women simply stood there, paralyzed with fear.
Alyssa was still trying to get loose, kicking and clawing at Dario like her life depended on it. Dario backhanded her with a snarl of rage.
Zane lost it then, all rational thought disappearing as the woman he loved and who loved him in return hit the floor so hard she bounced. He strained so violently against the cuffs his bones cracked again. Only this time, they didn’t stop cracking until the manacles slid off his wrists.
He grunted in shock when his shoulders hunched forward sharply at the same time his back began to pop and shift, forcing him to stay on the floor when all he wanted to do was run to Alyssa. It was only when his whole body was twisting into a completely different shape that he realized what was happening. He didn’t pause to wonder why it was happening now, considering he’d never come close to a full shift in the entire time he’d been a werewolf. When the transformation was complete, and he was, indeed, a wolf, he made a beeline on his four legs for Alyssa—and the vampire who dared to hurt her.
There was a hiss of pain from the far side of the dais, and he darted a quick look that way to see the vampire who’d bitten Zoe rolling around on the floor, clutching at his smoking face. Everyone was so focused on that they didn’t even see Zane coming until he let loose a snarl that echoed through the theater like a rumble of thunder.
Screams and shouts resounded off the walls as guards moved to intercept Zane. In a blur, he was already running full speed across the room, the claws on his four enormous paws digging into the stone flooring as he launched himself at Dario.
Zane didn’t realize how fast he was moving until he slammed into the vampire and knocked him backward a good ten feet. There was a pop as a bone in Zane’s fur-covered shoulder cracked, but he barely felt it. That was when he realized nothing hurt. Not the multiple gunshot wounds he’d just sustained. Not even the long-suffering wound in his left arm. In fact, he felt better than ever.
Dario rolled to his feet quickly, his clawed hands slashing out and tearing through Zane’s side. It stung, but he quickly discovered his thick fur had limited the damage. He lunged forward again, his teeth chomping down on the vampire’s outstretched arm right down to the bone. The taste was as bad as the smell.
He and Dario danced back and forth so fast Zane knew they were nothing more than blurs of movement as they tore into each other repeatedly. It quickly became apparent that Dario wasn’t interested in a one-on-one fight when he shouted at the guards to open fire, but when the shooting started, it wasn’t aimed in Zane’s direction. Instead, the vampires’ guard force aimed toward the entrance and the eight members of the Dallas SWAT team who came rushing in—Gage and Brooks among them, in their fully shifted wolf forms. Zane’s heart pounded even harder when he saw Christine and four other federal agents on their heels.
The theater filled with screams, shouts, and gunfire, but it was the growls and snarls of Zane and his pack mates that sent the vampires running for the exits, crushing their enthralled servants in the process.
Realizing he wasn’t going to get any help, Dario lunged for Alyssa, maybe thinking he could take her hostage. Zane cut the vampire off before he could reach her. She scrambled to her knees, her wide eyes taking in Zane in his wolf form as well as the chaotic scene around her.
Zane pushed the vampire back toward the rear of the dais with a snarl, the two of them trading more slashes and bites, both of their blood spattering everywhere. Dario screeched in rage and leaped at him, his clawed hands rearing back to tear him apart.
Zane jumped at the same time, his jaws aiming for the vampire’s neck. Dario’s claws embedded themselves deep in the ribs on his left side, but Zane’s teeth found their mark as well, clamping down tightly on the vampire’s neck and sinking in until he felt bone crunch.
Dario tore and slashed at Zane with his claws like a creature possessed. But it did no good as Zane began to shake the vampire back and forth as hard as he could. Dario shrieked, a sound that seemed to paralyze every vampire left in the amphitheater. Zane shook Dario harder, grinding his jaws side to side.
He was actually a little surprised at how easily the vampire’s head came off, but that didn’t make ending the asshole any less satisfying—though he would have given a hundred bucks for a bottle of Listerine right then, so he could wash the revolting taste of Dario’s blood out of his mouth. Well, maybe a bowl of Listerine might work better in his current form.
Zane stopped worrying about bad breath when he realized Alyssa was no longer on the dais with him. Terrified, he looked around and caught a glimpse of her disappearing out one of the theater’s side doors at full speed.
He didn’t stop to think. He just went after her.
Chapter 13
Alyssa wasn’t sure how long she knelt there on the dais and stared at Zane as he fought Dario in his wolf form. When Zane had told her some members of his pack could fully shift into a wolf, she hadn’t been able to really envision what he meant. But she’d never imagined in a million years it would be like this. That he would be this…beautiful.
Beautiful.
That was the only word she had to describe the mesmerizing mix of power, grace, danger…and fur. He had fur! How the hell could he ever have called himself a monster?
A large part of her soul had died when Zane had been shot. He’d been hit multiple times in the chest and stomach at a range of less than five feet. Even as Dario had dragged her back to the stage and the start of the ritual, she’d known there was no way anyone could survive those wounds. Not even a werewolf.
But then she’d looked up and seen a snarling gray wolf the size of a small horse charging across the room, trailing torn pieces of Zane’s clothes behind him, and she’d known without a doubt in her mind that he’d shifted completely to save her.
Movement out of the corner of her eye dragged her attention away from the fight between Zane and Dario. Stefan was slipping out one of the side exits, using Stacie as a human shield against all the bullets flying around. The girl wasn’t even resisting. In fact, she actively put her body between Stefan and any danger even though her eyes were so blank she looked like a zombie.
Alyssa threw a quick glance at Zane. He had Dario by the neck and was shaking him like a rag doll. She was pretty sure that fight was almost done, much to her relief.
She searched for Zoe and Chloe. Jake was herding the twins, Lindsey, and Georgie toward an exit with the help of a huge wolf with dark fur. All around the room, men and women in police tactical gear fought vampires and their human guards. She spotted her FBI teammates as well. Even Christine was there. The place was a complete madhouse. No wonder no one had noticed Stefan leave with the girl.
That made up her mind for her.
Getting to her feet, Alyssa ran toward the door Stefan had disappeared through, slowing down only long enough to scoop up a handgun and extra magazine from one of the dead guards—there were lots to choose from.
She was a little unsteady on her feet. Between the bloodletting, the vampire crap in her veins, and the backhand to the face, she was dizzy as hell. But she made it out the door, avoiding the runnin
g battle going on in the corridors and ignoring the acrid smoke coming from the burning tapestries along the walls. How the hell they’d caught fire, she didn’t know. The place was going up fast, and it looked like the vampires didn’t believe in sprinkler systems.
She passed Rachel and Diego exchanging gunfire with several men and a vampire down one of the side passages. There were already several dead bodies on the floor around the two werewolves, and Alyssa desperately wanted to stop and help Zane’s friends, but she knew if she did, Stefan would get away and she’d never get Stacie back alive. She refused to let that happen.
Alyssa let her instincts guide her through the chaos and the spreading fire, until she reached a metal door near the elevators. Her gut told her Stefan had gone that way. She shoved the door open and found stairs. Two sets of footsteps pounded up them, echoing in the close confines of the stairwell.
She took the stairs two at a time, not even slowing to consider whether she was going after the right two people. It was Stefan, she was sure of it. And he had Stacie with him. Alyssa knew that for a fact, just as she knew if he made it out of the corporate headquarters building before she caught up with him, they’d never catch him.
Halfway up the steps, the fire alarm started to ring, the sound so loud it was almost enough to deafen her. Smoke followed, thick enough to make her eyes water. But she ignored both, catching up to Stefan and his hostage just short of the door that opened onto the main lobby—and all the Black Swan employees he could have gotten lost in as they made a dash to get out of the burning building. While Stacie wasn’t resisting him as he pulled her up the stairs, she wasn’t helping anymore either. Maybe the girl wasn’t as far gone as Randy Curtis had claimed.
“FBI! Freeze!” Alyssa shouted loud enough to be heard over the fire alarm.
Stefan spun around and pulled Stacie in front of him, his gun to the side of her head. “Drop it and let me walk out of here or I’ll shoot her! I swear it!”
As if to prove he meant business, he pressed the barrel against the girl’s temple so hard it almost pushed her head all the way over to her shoulder. It had to hurt like hell, but Stacie didn’t make a peep. Yet as glassy as the girl’s eyes were, they were still pleading with Alyssa to save her.
Alyssa considered trying to talk Stefan down but knew it would be pointless. The man knew he was never getting out of this, not after everything he’d done. If she let him get out that door behind him, he’d shoot Stacie just to slow Alyssa down.
Taking a deep breath, she lifted her weapon a little higher, planning to aim for a grazing shot to the top of his shoulder. It would be a tough shot, especially since she was still a little dizzy, but she could make it. She had to.
Suddenly, Alyssa heard a scrabbling sound on the stairs behind her followed by a loud growl. Alyssa knew it shouldn’t be possible, but she recognized that growl.
Stefan’s eyes widened and he jerked his weapon away from Stacie’s head, straightening to his full height and pointing it over Alyssa’s head, aiming at the wolf behind her.
She didn’t waste the opportunity, lining up the shot and squeezing the trigger two times in rapid succession before Stefan could squeeze his. One round hit Stefan in the left shoulder. The other got him in the neck.
Alyssa didn’t bother to watch Stefan fall, instead darting forward to catch Stacie before the girl tumbled all the way to the bottom of the stairs. Stacie collapsed into her arms, pressing her face into Alyssa’s shoulder and sobbing softly.
“Thank you,” she whispered before passing out against her.
Alyssa lifted her head as Zane moved up the stairs in his wolf form and stopped at her side. His beautiful gray fur was covered in blood and she didn’t doubt that some of it was his. But he’d survived a full magazine of bullets to the chest and stomach. She doubted a few scratches would put him down.
He lowered his broad face, resting his forehead against hers. He just stood there, breathing her in. Alyssa wrapped the arm that wasn’t busy with Stacie around his shoulders, digging her fingers into his fur and hugging him tightly.
“Don’t ever think you’re a monster again,” she whispered. “And don’t ever forget that I love you.”
* * *
Zane sat in the back of the FBI tactical response vehicle, gritting his teeth as his pack mate and SWAT team medic, Trey Duncan, dug an endless number of bullet fragments out of his chest and stomach. He had no idea how Trey was able to find all the pieces, but he was damn happy his fellow alpha werewolf could do it because having all that metal inside him hurt like a son of a bitch. Even though he was grateful to have Trey’s help, he couldn’t help tensing every time his friend took another piece of lead out. The last time Trey had worked on him hadn’t ended well.
Alyssa had watched for a few minutes before finally turning away, refusing to witness Trey alternating between cutting into him with a scalpel and poking around with long forceps. She’d turned green after the first several pieces, deciding to keep watch out the window instead of trying to help.
She craned her neck to look at the circus of activity still going on outside Black Swan Enterprises. “If your injured arm completely healed itself when you went through a full shift, why didn’t the bullet holes heal up, too?”
Zane looked over at the back of his left arm, still kind of stunned to see an entire triceps there. A tiny trace of the scar was still there as well, but where there’d previously been a whole lot of nothing, there was now new muscle tissue. According to Trey, it seemed like he’d regrown the muscles while in wolf form and they’d stayed there after he’d changed back to his human form.
“His inner wolf is smart enough to know those fragments would irritate the hell out of him if they stayed in there,” Trey murmured as he continued to work. “When he shifted back into human form, it left the wounds open for a while to give us time to get them out. If we didn’t, they’d heal over regardless, but they’d hurt and reduce mobility.”
Alyssa seemed to take that answer in stride. Truthfully, she was taking almost all of this a lot better than he’d thought she would. She hadn’t even batted an eye when he’d turned back into his human form starkers as the day he was born. She’d simply found him some clothes, then helped him continue to get injured people out of the burning building.
Not that there’d been all that many people. Other than Zoe, Chloe, and the three kidnapped girls, the only people who’d made it out of the nest had been a dozen nearly catatonic enthralled servants. Everyone else had died in the shooting or the fire that still continued to burn under Black Swan Enterprises despite the efforts of the fire department. Apparently, fire and vampires didn’t mix well.
“Okay, you’re good to go,” Trey said, putting away his medic tools and handing Zane a T-shirt. Knowing that a good portion of the Pack would be going through a full shift today, the team had shown up with lots of extra clothes. Just in case.
Zane almost groaned as he pulled on the T-shirt. Damn, he’d forgotten what it felt like to get dressed without experiencing pain in his arm. He glanced at Trey, still busy with cleaning up. Trey had been the one who’d had to cut the muscle out of his arm to save his life after Zane had gotten shot a few months ago. Even though he didn’t want to admit it, Zane had blamed Trey for his bum arm, and his pack mate knew it. Since that day, neither of them had spoken to each other very much.
“Thanks for fixing me up,” Zane said.
Trey didn’t look at him as he finished putting his equipment away. “No problem.”
Zane knew he and Trey needed to talk, so he could apologize for being such a wanker these past few months, but now wasn’t the time. When they got back to Dallas, he’d definitely make a point of it, though. Since giving his pack mate a fist bump was the best he could do right now, he offered his hand. Trey looked at him, his hazel eyes filled with surprise, but then something that didn’t need words passed between the two of them and his teammate returned the fist bump.
Giving Trey a nod, Zane led Alyssa o
ut of the response vehicle. Her friend Christine was waiting for them, and she looked up from her mobile phone to give them a smile.
“I was wondering where you were,” Alyssa said.
Christine shrugged. “I had a few fires to put out—no pun intended. I just wanted to make sure you guys were okay before I got out of here.”
Alyssa’s lips curved. “We’re fine. Better than fine, actually.”
Christine glanced at Zane, regarding him thoughtfully. He got the feeling she wanted to say something about him being a werewolf, but instead she reached out and hugged Alyssa.
“Okay, I have to go.” She gave Alyssa a pointed look. “Call me, okay? We have a lot we need to talk about.”
Alyssa nodded. “I will.”
That was going to be an interesting conversation, Zane thought as Christine gave them both a wave, then hurried off.
As he and Alyssa made their way through the crowd of police, FBI agents, and fire department personnel, it occurred to him that the area looked like some kind of casualty exercise. Except this wasn’t an exercise, of course. And there had been a lot of casualties.
Zane tugged Alyssa’s hand, pulling her off to the side, so they’d be out of the way of any workers—or roaming reporters with their cameras. He hadn’t even realized he was holding her hand as they walked until now. It felt damn nice. He’d never done that with any woman he’d ever been with. He decided he’d been missing out.
They passed by Jake, Zoe, and Chloe, the three werewolves sitting and talking quietly in the back of an ambulance, Zoe messing with the white bandage wrapped around one of her forearms. The alpha and his two betas looked happier than anybody had a right to, considering what they’d just been through. It was obvious they were comfortable together, almost like a brother and his two younger sisters. Zane wondered how it was all going to work out for them. It seemed…complicated.
“So, what do we do now?” Alyssa asked when they stopped a little while later. She wedged her butt up onto a flower bed retaining wall and wiggled around until she got comfortable. “Now that everything is wrapped up, I mean.”