Page 36 of Wolf's Endgame

“Fuck,” Nikan hissed. “Is that them?” When I nodded, he cursed again. “How do we get them out of that?”

“Painfully.” I approached the cells, careful of Kris’s tawny wolf. His body lay protectively over the smaller gray wolf. The protection he offered was little. He was half-dead, the she beside him more dead than alive, I feared.

“Cannon? How do we get them off?”

“We need a human.”

“Well, I’m fresh out of carrying humans around in my pocket!” Nikan snapped.

I sent the command. “They’re bringing Doc.”

He gaped at me. “That will take hours.” Both of us turned to the sound of running feet behind us. “And them?”

“Something to pass the time?” Rolling my head on my shoulders, I stretched my arms over my head. “I came here for a fight. You?”

Nikan’s answering grin was wicked.

Four approached us; two shifted just as the other two attacked. They were skilled fighters. They weren’t me or my brother.

It had never been a boast to make Kezia feel belittled. My pack was a pack of superior fighters. We trained extensively, and when I killed Rek, we had all thought that there would be retaliation from other packs. A pack with a new untested alpha was just as vulnerable as a pack without one. My pack wanted me as alpha, and for that, every single one of them had gone through emergency combat skills. It was one of the reasons we had been so eager to attend the Luna Ball. I’d put them through the training, and then no one had challenged us.

It was ironic.

The games at the Luna Ball were their outlet, or they were supposed to be. Right up until Kezia went into heat and I knew she was my mate, and all thoughts of the games vanished like smoke on the wind…the same way my mate did.

Bale had filled his pack with fighters, I could see. But they weren’t my fighters.

They didn’t stand a chance.

CHAPTER 10

Cannon

Nikan looked at me as the pile of shifters finally stopped growing. “You think that’s all of them?”

Surveying the bodies of the fallen, I glanced over my shoulder at the two wolves. Kris had tried to get to his feet, but he was too weak and was lying back on the ground, his body as close to his mate as possible. “No, there will be more. Once they’ve realized we’re not moving from this cage, they’ll have us where they want us.”

“We need Doc,” Nikan muttered.

Turning, I looked at the locked cell that held the two wolves. It was sealed shut with a chain wrapped around the door and the bars. The chain was made of silver, but the cell door was not.

“That look sturdy to you?”

Nikan eyed the heavy silver chain and then me. “Yes. It does. Don’t even think about it.”

He was right, what shifter would try to open a silver lock…when you could kick the door down instead? You needed strength to kick the door down. Not much strength in you if you were wearing a collar made of silver.

“Cannon!”

My brother’s cry of protest was lost in the noise of my kick against the bars of the cell. I aimed my kicks at the iron hinges. They were sturdy, but nothing spectacular, in a cell that had been created in the tunnel of an old mine. When Nikan saw I wasn’t going to stop, he joined me.

I grinned at him when the metal warped, and I grinned even more when the force of our kicks loosened the bolts, and then between us, with more luck than strength, we managed to pry the door open, enough that the she would get out. I had my doubts about Kris, but where there was a will, there was a way.

“Strip them,” I commanded my brother, jerking my head towards the fallen members of Bale’s pack.

“Why?” He was already doing it. That was his way—he followed orders, asking his questions as he did so.

“We’ll use their clothing to shield our hands,” I explained. “The collars are wide, but they don’t look that thick.” Stretching my arm through the gap we’d made, I tried to reach for the fallen she. “What’s her name again, Nikan?”

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