Page 33 of Heartless

The car door popped behind me like a starter’s gun, and I really began to struggle. I got a foot hooked around Topper’s ankle, but he kicked me off like a clinging cat. A casual tap on my broken wrist dropped me to my knees, tears burning in my eyes as the obvious answer dawned on me.

Trey had set us up.

He’d insisted he come with us, even decided the path we took because we were following the tracks he’d made up the mountain. And I’d been so stupid, I’d driven us straight into his trap.

Topper put a heavy hand on my head as he yanked the door wide. Not the door - I glimpsed the gaping trunk out of the corner of my eye - but I was too focused on the other alphas hovering over Jasper. They weren’t so much arguing, as talking something through, until I could tell from their body language they’d come to a decision. One tapped the other on the shoulder, a half-excited, half-nervous bob of his head as he lifted his dart gun. It was enough to make me surge up from my knees, even as Topper lunged forward and tore a chunk of hair from my ponytail.

“Trey!” I screamed, my throat burning almost as bad as my scalp. “Come out and show yourself, you asshole!”

My furious cry made one of the shifters look up, but the other one was too busy grinding the side of Jasper’s head into the snow. I thought I saw his palms twitch, the glimmer of gold fur on the back of his hands. But it was too little. Too late. Because the Denner was slowly, deliberately pushing his claw into the side of Jasper’s neck.

“No!” A deep crimson mist exploded across my vision. Topper was trying to wrestle me into the trunk, but I jammed my elbow in his ribs, then stomped hard on his shin. The heavy tread of my boots made him curse, but he was almost an afterthought. All I could see was red. Not my fury, which made me clench my good hand into a hammerfist and slam it into his groin, but the spray of blood that arced across the snow.

I felt it like a thousand knives. A scream tore from my throbbing throat, only to be drowned out by a rippling sound coming from the trees behind me. It was almost like a revving engine, only it quickly built into a spine-tingling roar. The hair stood up all over my body, every nerve tingling as something came out of the trees in a leap that broke the Denner’s neck. A swipe of long, pale claws almost took his head off and that red mist was suddenly on my face, a coppery warmth painted across my lips.

I stumbled back, bouncing off the side of the truck, before I fell sideways into the snow. My full weight came down hard on my broken wrist and this time, my howl was an animal in a trap. Tears and blood and icy slush swamped my face, even as my eyes fluttered shut. But something else was tickling my cheek, and I peered through lowered lashes as the black head of a panther chuffed in my face. His broad nose nudged me for a moment, before he tore away in a flash of bristling whiskers and sharp white teeth.

I rolled onto my hip just as they fired another shot. It must have gone wide, because when I forced myself up onto my good elbow, I saw the panther launch himself at the Denner with his claw in Jasper’s neck. The guy with the dart gun tossed it aside, bursting out of his clothes as the panther savaged the other shifter. He was a dark gray wolf, a dirty smudge against the snow. Big, and rippling with menace, but he didn’t throw himself into the fight. Instead, he turned and bounded towards me.

I didn’t have a hope. The last time I’d run from Denners on this mountain, they’d been playing with me. Driving me down towards Driftwood’s cabin like it was a hunt, and I was the prey. But this wolf was all snarling teeth and narrowed eyes, and the focused desperation of an animal with a predator at its back. It would tear through me – or damage me enough to slow the panther down – and all the while Jasper’s blood was pumping into the snow. I wasn’t naïve enough to think there was anything romantic about dying together. If we were to go that way, it would be on our feet, back-to-back. I’d get to tell him I loved him, that I’d fight for him even after my last breath.

“Vail!” A voice cut across me, fierce as a whip, but also as sensuous as velvet. “Shift, macska.”

I locked eyes with a grim, bloody Trey a moment before the change took me. I’d thought Callum had been brutal when he shoved his power into me by the mineral pool, but this was like opening a door to a hurricane. There was no slow rippling of dark fur. No bone-rattling shiver as my body morphed from one form to the other. One moment I was me, dizzy and terrified and aching, and the next I was a panther, and the entire world narrowed to the enemy bounding towards me.

The wolf hesitated just a moment, its muzzle jerking back in surprise at my transformation. It was enough for me to leap, and over its bulging shoulder I saw Trey doing the same. He was too far away to reach the Denner in time, but the sight of his enormous, rippling body gave me the confidence to lash the wolf with my claws. It howled, but side-stepped me, throwing its body over mine to drive my head into the snow. I twisted, rolling through the slippery sludge, and clamped my jaws around its leg. The bone shattered so easily I lost my grip, and yellow teeth snapped in my face. It reared up, a dominant pose, but being low felt right to me. I rolled all the way onto my back, before clamping my paws around the wolf’s torso and pulling it close. Its hind legs kicked against my ribs, raking across my belly, but I dug my claws deep, and sank my jaws around his head. I could taste fur, the sting of his sweat, but mostly it was his fear rolling across my tongue. A dark pleasure curled in my belly, a moment before I let my teeth snap closed and the wolf went limp on top of me.

It was dragged away so quickly, I growled in disappointment. But as the broken gray body was replaced by a heaving black one, I choked on the sound. This, my instincts screamed, was a different kind of attack. I only had a moment to snap my fangs at Trey before a huge paw pressed against my head and his teeth bit down.

This wasn’t a killing bite. It was careful. Almost delicate. And the whole ritual of it made me want to both buck him off and go deadly still. There was a razor sharpness to my awareness, and I could feel each tooth embedded in my flesh, the trembling arch of his jaw as he held it open. Just moments ago, I’d fought the opposite. A beast that wanted to tear and rip and shatter. And I’d given him the same back, a violent thing half-mad with the need to put him in the ground. But to my disbelief, I didn’t want to fight Trey at all. Instead, I went as limp as that dead wolf, until a half-hearted growl rolled out of my chest.

He immediately backed off. Not moving his body from mine, but shifting mid-bite, those pointed fangs morphing back into human teeth. I swung my head towards his, ready to tear out his throat with my powerful panther jaws, but I was suddenly caught in my shift. It was slower than before, more the grinding of bones I remembered under Callum’s rough command, and I was panting when it was over.

But it didn’t stop me from curling a fist and slamming it into Trey’s jaw. “What the fuck was that, you asshole?”

He took the blow with a grunt, before pressing his hands to my shoulders and holding me flat against the snow. At first, I thought it was his usual stalker tendencies, his gaze raking over my naked body before I could hide it from him. But there was more relief in his eyes than heat, and he gave me a satisfied nod. “It took. You’re healing.”

“You bit me!”

“A mate bite,” he said, rubbing a thumb over his bloody teeth. “If I didn’t, you’d have bled to death from that stomach wound.”

“What? We’re mated?” I scrambled back, only stopping when I realized I was putting pressure on my broken wrist. But there was nothing now. No searing pain or dull throb. I ran a hand over my middle, where the wolf had gouged me with his hind claws. There wasn’t so much as a mark, and I stared at Trey in shock. “You can heal with a bite?”

Before he could even dip his chin, I was up and dragging him to Jasper. Every step was both too slow and too quick. Too slow, because I felt his fading pulse in every ragged puff of breath. And too fast, because my heart couldn’t take the sight of him pale and motionless in the growing circle of blood. “Fix him! Please, Trey!”

Without a word, Trey dropped to his knees and inspected Jasper’s neck. Lowering his head, he swiped his tongue from one end of the cut to the other. A faint shudder went through him at the contact, but Jasper didn’t react at all. So cold, so still, even as I sank beside him and ran a trembling hand over his brow.

“Open your eyes, Jasper. Please, sweet wolf. Open your eyes for me!”

But despite all the desperate, pleading things I whispered in his ear, Jasper didn’t react, and Trey shook his head. “I’ve stopped the bleeding, but that was a blood claw.”

I grabbed his hand, shaking him hard. “There has to be something else we can do!”

“He needs his wolf. Draw him out with a bite, and he might be able to bring them both back.”

My eyes widened. There was so much blood, I was kneeling in red icicles. The idea of biting Jasper again, of spilling more of his precious blood, made my stomach pitch. “No! Are you crazy? We have to get him off this mountain. Take him straight to a doctor.”

“They won’t be able to do any more than I have. And no healer can bring out his wolf. He needs his beast back on side if he’s gonna recover from this.”

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