Page 95 of Cursed Bonds: An Alpha's Destiny

“You’re smiling. Is that a good smile?” Shayna asked, still eyeing me suspiciously.

My wolf howled in joy, the sound echoing through my mind. I nodded. “Yes. It’s good. It’s gone. I think I’m… free.”

“Well, how do you feel?”

“I feel great.” I laughed.

In fact, I couldn’t remember ever feeling better. Honestly, this was the best I’d felt since Mom and Dad died. And all I could think about was getting to Kirsten. I was ready to run, to shift and sprint toward her cabin, but before I could, my cell rang.

“Dammit,” I grunted, pulling the phone out. Waylan.

“What do you need, because I gotta—”

“Jace, the town hall’s on fire!” Waylan shouted.

“What?” His words barely registered, so out of the blue and bizarre that my brain was having trouble comprehending them.

“The town hall is on fire, dammit. Get your ass down here, there might be casualties. We don’t know yet. Fucking hurry.”

Before I could respond, he’d hung up. Shayna shook my arm. “What the hell was that? You look like you saw a ghost.”

“Drive me to town hall. It’s on fire. Hurry.”

Shayna’s jaw dropped in shock. She must have looked just like I did. Rather than question me, she simply obeyed, rushing to her car and flying down the driveway with me in the passenger seat. For the moment, my need to see Kirsten was trumped by life or death. Waylan had said there might be casualties. Who could have been in the building? Langston had a small office there; there were a few ladies who took payments for the area utilities, a janitor. Who else?

As soon as we rounded the corner and hit the road that led to town, a column of smoke became visible in the distance. My stomach sank. It was huge, massive black plumes rising into the sky. That did not look like a good sign.

“Hurry,” I whispered.

“I’m going as fast as I can,” Shayna hissed. “It’s a Jeep, not a Corvette.”

Sirens wailed in the distance. The county fire trucks must have already arrived on the scene. I clenched and unclenched my fists as Shayna took a right onto Main Street, and that was when the town hall came into view. My brow furrowed. No flames engulfed the building, just massive columns of dark black smoke pouring from three of the back windows. How could there be so much smoke yet no flames? Maybe the actual fire was deeper inside the building?

I leaped from the Jeep before Shayna had even come to a stop and sprinted toward the building. Spotting Waylan, I veered toward him.

“What the fuck happened?” I shouted.

He turned, relief at my arrival evident on his face. “Firemen are in there now. Not sure how it started. I saw the smoke when I was at the grocery store and just came running.”

“Where’s Langston? The employees?” I asked, clutching Waylan’s shoulders, trying not to shake him but failing.

He gestured toward an ambulance behind me. “Over there. When I got her, Betty Daniels had gotten out. She told me Langston was still inside, looking for any stragglers. That’s what I meant when I said there might be casualties. We’re good, though. Langston got everyone out. They’re treating him for smoke inhalation now. That appears to be the extent of his injuries.”

Betty had been the secretary here since we’d built town hall back in the ‘30s. Even for a shifter, she was getting older. I was glad to hear she’d gotten out okay.

Leaving Waylan, I rushed to the ambulance. Langston sat on the bumper, an oxygen mask pressed to his face. In the back, three women and another man were doing the same.

“Langston, are you guys all right?”

He removed the mask and nodded before a cough racked his body. “All good, boss,” he said when he’d recovered.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

He took another pull from the oxygen and shook his head. “No clue. The building was just suddenly full of smoke. I yanked the fire alarm and hollered at everyone to get out. Some kind of fire, I guess. No clue where it started or how it began.”

“You didn’t see the fire?” I asked.

“Nope, just the smoke. It was everywhere, thick as all hell. Gotta be a fire. What else could do that?”

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