The heated air was pale against the moonlight, and when a wolf head emerged from the gap I thought at first that I was dreaming. Then broad human shoulders came into view, strong arms holding the animal up.
Hunter. I would have recognized that form anywhere and no sight had ever been so welcome.
“Fancy meeting you here,” the uber-alpha rumbled as he hoisted a wolf’s hindquarters upwards in an effort to heave the beast through the busted-out window. I laughed out loud even though my eyes were tearing up from the smoke. Wasn’t it just like Hunter to keep us all on an even keel despite the world falling down around our ears?
I couldn’t see his lips quirking up into a half-smile, half-smirk, but I could feel the expression on my mate’s face. His equanimity settled my stomach and gave me the bravery to grab the ruff of the animal lying between us.
“He might attack,” Hunter warned.
“What’re a few more puncture wounds between friends?” I responded. The animal’s eyes were more human than Lupe’s had been the day before, and I still had most of my leg attached to my body from my previous bloodling attack. So I figured it was worth the risk of being savaged if I was able to free a beast who wouldn’t have been able to achieve safety on his own.
To that end, I yanked as Hunter pushed. The wolf lay like a sack of grain between us, panting heavily in the heated air as it passively allowed us to rip it free of the smoke.
Leaping to the ground at last, the bloodling darted toward the tree line at the edge of Celia’s backyard. Only then was I able to think of the larger picture. Of the young-adult shifters and adult humans who had likely gone to sleep in the bedrooms upstairs.
“Are you the only one...?” I asked, imagining my mother and pack slowly roasting in the house’s ravenous flames.
But my mate shook his head even as he thrust another fully grown wolf toward me. “Robert’s not even here—he went to a hotel last night. Someone is awake upstairs, though. I heard footsteps before I started on the wolves.”
I hesitated, torn between the beasts before me who were unable to shift and exit the building on their own and the pack mates at a higher level. Even though Hunter had heard at least one person upstairs, my stomach remained twisted with dread and I felt in my gut that something was wrong. After all, shouldn’t my pack mates have been helping each other down the stairs by now if they were all alive and conscious?
Plus, I soon realized that my efforts were barely speeding up my mate’s endeavor as he thrust bloodling after bloodling from the burning building. So, during a pause in the action, I laid my shirt across the few splinters of glass remaining on the bottom of the window frame then leveraged myself up over the ledge and into the kitchen. I would be more help inside.
I half expected Hunter to stop me. But instead, he merely jerked his head toward the sink before wrapping two muscular arms around the chest of another wolf. “Wet a dishtowel down, then tie it...,” he commanded, the words petering off as he began to cough.
I’d only been inside for thirty seconds, and already my eyes were screaming for relief. I could only imagine how my mate’s chest burned. So rather than obeying, I shrugged back into my t-shirt then wet down a second shred of cotton to wrap around Hunter’s face instead of my own.
He barely acknowledged the gesture as he continued to toss four-legged shifters out the window. The initial beasts had been easy to handle. But there were at least half a dozen wolves left inside, and the stragglers were more skittish than the earlier escapees. Hunter’s previous rapport appeared to have faded too, because these final shifters darted away from his grasping fingers, fleeing into the smoke.
As Hunter played a dangerous game of blind man’s bluff, I wet a second dishtowel with water that still ran remarkably cold. For a split second, the damp cloth felt heavenly against my skin...then the moisture clung hot and suffocating against my nose and mouth.
“Promise me you’ll go out that window while you can still stand up,” I said at last, voice muffled by my homemade mask. I knew I was wasting time, but I couldn’t resist taking a split second to press my head against Hunter’s hard back. I’d need his strength for the effort that lay ahead.
“I will if you will,” my mate growled, turning to meet my gaze. Then he lunged toward an unwary wolf while I headed quickly but carefully down the halls toward the stairs. If only a single pack mate was awake up there, then we’d need every ounce of energy we possessed to haul three comatose shifters and one human out of the house alive.
Chapter 24
THE SMOKE THICKENED as I ascended the stairs, the sound of flames roaring in my ears. For a moment, I wasn’t sure I could handle the heat and haze. But then I bent over and ran, tears streaming down my cheeks.
The first thing I noticed upon achieving the upper level was the pitch darkness. Next was the way my lungs were able to expand more fully without sending me into a coughing jag. Even this small distance from the conflagration made a huge difference in my comfort levels.
And maybe that distance also means my mother and pack are still alive?
I wanted to think so. But the absence of voices and footsteps made it hard to hope as my fingers trailed along the wall, hunting for a change in texture that would mark the first closed door.
The transition from wallpaper to wood pulled me out of my musings. My sense of distance was skewed by the drama of the fire, but I guessed this would be the guest room, the one where I’d slept two nights prior. It only made sense that my pack would have taken up residence therein, so I wasn’t as startled as I might have been when a sooty arm snaked out of the suddenly ajar door and dragged me inside.
Ginger. I wasn’t sure if my wolf had picked up the twin’s scent over the fire or whether she’d instead noted our pack mate’s distinctive shape silhouetted against the window’s dim light. Regardless, the teenager and I pushed the door closed together, sinking to the floor where the air was just a little clearer.
Only then did my eyes adjust enough to allow me to take in the redhead’s face. Not good.
I’d seen Ginger angry plenty of times. Annoyed, frustrated, pissed off—those were all normal states of mind for the volatile young woman. But never had I seen her with tears streaming down her cheeks and with her eyes red-rimmed from sobbing.
“I can’t get him to wake up,” my pack mate moaned.
Across the room, an uncountable number of lumps sprawled across the single bed. From here, the inhabitants appeared dead, but I hoped they were merely struck down by temporary cases of smoke inhalation instead.
Even though there were three comatose shifters present, I didn’t have to ask which “he” Ginger was referring to. Her twin would always be her top priority, and it was no wonder that the absence of her other half had made the redhead’s usually ramrod-stiff spine crumble into a mass of jelly.
In the movies, I would have slapped the hysteria right out of her. But that seemed like a pretty terrible idea in the present moment. Instead, I asked, “Is he alive?”
“They’re all alive,” Ginger hiccuped. “But I can’t carry him. He just eats and eats and eats all the time and now he weighs a ton and....”
“Okay,” I interrupted before we could delve too deeply into Cinnamon’s dining habits. “We’ve got a choice, then. You and I can carry your twin down these stairs together and hope we have time to come back for everyone else. Or you can take Lia and I can take Celia and we can be certain of saving two people rather than one.”
Green eyes flashed with anger and I exhaled a sigh of relief. There was the spark of shifter aggression I needed to get us all out of this funeral pyre alive.
“You’re a bitch,” Ginger grated out.
“Your call,” I answered evenly. I wanted to tell her that Hunter was quite capable of carrying her brother and that my mate would definitely come for him too...just as soon as he thrust the last rogue out the kitchen window. I also wanted to tell her that Cinnamon would tell her to save his cousin rather than himself.
&nbs
p; But I didn’t try to sway her with rationalizations. Ginger needed to follow her own heart if she was going to have the gumption to brave the inferno that was even now encroaching upon the stairs below. I’d lost my right to lay down the law as her pack leader a month ago, so any choice now had to be Ginger’s and Ginger’s alone.
And, as usual, when push came to shove the trouble twin made the right decision. “How do we do it?” she caved, pushing herself into a crouch but not yet raising her head into the cloud of smoke that coated the room’s upper atmosphere.
“First we’re going to roll the guys onto the floor,” I told her, making it up as I went along. “That way they’ll be able to breathe a little easier while they wait. Maybe they’ll even wake up while we’re gone.”
“Don’t lie to me,” Ginger interjected.
And, yes, maybe I was lying to both of us. Maybe I was lying to even suggest we’d be able to carry the dead weight of two women to safety, let alone make it back in time to save Cinnamon and Glen.
But lying was the only way to keep us both moving. So I lowered my eyebrows and stared down a shifter whose body housed an animal ten times more powerful than my own.
Then I bluffed. “Don’t you dare doubt me,” I commanded.
To my relief, it worked. Ginger’s face was now stoic, her previous bout of depression fled. So I took one last deep breath and sprinted toward the bed where three comatose shifters curled together in human form.
It was time to act like an alpha.
GINGER HAD ALREADY started down the stairs, Lia slung over one shoulder, when I entered my mother’s room. It was hotter here, directly above the fire, and at first I didn’t think I felt a pulse when I pressed trembling fingers into the indentation at the base of the human’s slender throat.
Sluggish, my wolf whispered. I breathed out a sigh of relief. My animal half was right—Celia’s heart continued to pump even though the rhythm was slower than I would have liked.
How I was supposed to get the one-body onto my back, though, was beyond me.
Lia had been easier. The teenager was more slender than my mother, and there’d been two of us manhandling the floppy limbs of her dead weight. Only after sending Ginger down the stairs toward freedom did I realize the flaw in part two of my plan. I might be able to carry Celia if I was lucky...but I couldn’t lift her.
“Fen....”
At first, I thought I’d imagined the word. Celia should have inhaled even more smoke than her house guests had due to her location above the dining room. Similarly, her human body was less able to handle damage than ours were, further stacking the deck against her. Still, my mother’s hand reached toward me across the bed and I didn’t hesitate before clasping her fingers within my own.
“Mom,” I answered. I could barely speak through the lump in my throat. Because, yes, Celia was alive. But I was still no closer to dragging her from the flaming house than I had been before.
Is this really how I’m going to lose the parent I hated for most of my childhood? I mused. Standing by and doing nothing as she succumbs to a fire lit—I was becoming certain—because werewolves invaded her life for a second time?
She wasn’t dead yet, though. Nor was she dying. Instead, Celia’s mouth curved into a gentle smile and her eyes slowly fluttered open.
Unfortunately, the orbs in question were glassy and unfocused, and I wasn’t entirely sure she recognized me despite having voiced my name. Still, she uttered words that were really only a whisper of air...yet felt like a strong wind buoying me kite-like into the stratosphere. “I’m proud of you,” she breathed.
When I was four or fourteen, my mother’s verbal acceptance would have wiped every other item off my bucket list, allowing me to die happy. But her approval wasn’t what I craved now. Instead, I wanted to ensure that Celia could say whatever she wanted an hour from now, a day from now, and for the rest of her life.
Proud or ashamed, I wanted her to live.
“Hold that thought,” I said, my tone just as firm as when I’d forced Ginger to reclaim her destiny. “You’re going to crawl onto my back and we’re going to get you some medical attention. Then we can finish this conversation later.”
My mother’s eyes crinkled up at the corners, reminding me that we’d shared a similar exchange on the first night we met as adults. At that time, Celia had wanted to tell me about Harbor’s death and I’d done everything in my power to evade her explanation. So my mother had moved mountains, had ensured I finally felt safe surrounded by pack, and we’d eventually bonded over our joint past.
Time for me to move mountains in return.
Except Celia was shaking her head sadly, her voice having dropped to nothing as she mouthed another string of words. “I don’t think I can do that,” she whispered near silently.
Taking in the way the human hadn’t even managed to lift her upper body off the bed, I had to admit she probably had a point. But I wasn’t willing to take no for an answer. So I merely shook my head in rejection and manhandled my only mother to the edge of the mattress.
Celia weighed every bit as much as Lia did plus some, and I was out of breath by the time I assembled her limbs in a semi-seated position on the edge of the bed. I could tell she was straining to keep from toppling over as I turned my back and prepared to heft her onto my shoulder. Somehow, though, she managed to remain in place long enough for me to reach for her arms.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” I said even as I dragged her body up the incline of my sloping back. My spine threatened to crack under the pressure, but I gritted my teeth and ignored the shooting pain.
“Almost there,” I panted a moment later. “Just wrap your legs around my waist.”
But the smoke was beginning to seep into my brain now that I was standing. In a sudden flash that felt more dream than memory, I was riding piggyback atop my father, his booming laugh echoing across the valley. Above his head, I peered downhill toward our trailer. Celia was sweeping my tracked-in mud away from the front porch, her mouth pursed into her then-characteristic frown.
Blinking my eyes furiously, I returned to the present. That Celia might not have been worth fighting for but this Celia was.
She hadn’t obeyed my order, though. Instead, the human hung like a dead weight atop my bent-over frame and I knew I wouldn’t be able to maintain the posture much longer.
“Grab my neck,” I begged, trying to wrap her arms around my throat with one shaking hand. Who cared if she cut off my air flow as long as the two of us were held together as a single unit?
Instead of responding, Celia’s right arm slipped out of my grasp and plummeted toward the floor. Caught off kilter by the change in center of gravity, I tripped over my own feet and we went down together in a tangle of limbs.
I heard a crack as some part of Celia’s body—Please, not her head—collided with the hard bedpost. Then the air was instead filled with the crackle of flames and my own harsh breathing.
“Mom, Celia, you can’t....”
I’m not sure exactly what I wanted to tell her not to do. But it didn’t matter anyway, because my one-body mother had finally drifted into the same dreamland that had captured everyone else here on the upper level of the house.
And to make matters worse, she was not only unconscious but also unconscious on the floor. There was no way I’d be able to lift Celia’s dead weight onto my shoulder now. Not when I’d failed miserably at getting her onto my back when she was semi-lucid and elevated two feet above the ground.
I failed, I thought tiredly. Then, half unwilling, half relieved, I allowed my eyelids to drift shut.
Chapter 25
“I CAN’T CARRY YOU both.”
The male’s voice was angry, and even when I opened my eyes I couldn’t quite figure out who it was. The small amount of light that had filtered through the window earlier had faded, so all I saw was a silhouette with some sort of complicated headgear confusing the man’s profile.
Firefighter, my wolf whispered. I blinked t
wice and, sure enough, the dark shape above me came into sharper focus. Helmet, breathing apparatus, heavy coveralls with reflective stripes encircling the arms and legs. Chances were good the fabric would be neon yellow in daylight.
But beneath all of the paraphernalia, the human looked strangely familiar. “Officer Lambert?” I croaked.
I wasn’t sure if the reaction came from me or my wolf, but our shared body abruptly cringed away from the intruder’s outstretched hand. Because wasn’t it strange how Lambert kept turning up in the wrong place at the wrong time? First he’d been Johnny-on-the-spot at the bomb threat, then he’d taken me into custody outside the high school, and now he was decked out in firefighter gear despite supposedly being an officer of the law.
Add in Lambert’s intense interest in my mother, and I was abruptly certain the witch hunter and the man in front of me were one and the same.
No. The voice in my head, my mate’s voice, was rougher and more frantic than usual. Through our bond, I could feel his proximity to the flames, the way his lungs burned as he took the stairs two at a time, rushing toward my location.
Flashes of memory caught me up to speed on past events in milliseconds. A rogue wolf somehow shoving the kitchen door open and evading the uber-alpha’s grasp long enough to dart down the hallway and into the living room. Hunter following in the beast’s footsteps even as he used the pack bond to monitor my reality and that of the other wolves he’d recently loosed on the sleeping neighborhood.
Outside, the majority of the uber-alpha’s clan hadn’t scattered as I’d initially assumed. Instead, they sniffed and circled and finally caught the scent trail of the witch hunter. Gasoline, smoke, anger, madness. The half-feral werewolves put their noses to the soil and followed, baying out their intent to stop the enemy in his tracks.
One block over, the wolves cornered a one-body who lingered to watch the plume of smoke rise into the dark sky. I gasped as the witch hunter’s face was illuminated by a streetlight in Hunter’s borrowed memory.
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