Page 114 of Junk Magic

I suddenly didn’t care that this was beyond foolish, and would have been even under normal circumstances. As it was, with stubbornness and fear the only things keeping me on my feet, it was suicide. I would die, and Jen and Chris shortly thereafter, and none of this would do a damned thing!

My mind knew that, but surging through my veins was something far more primal, something from before higher mental faculties emerged from the primordial ooze, something from the lizard brain that said protect, protect the children at all costs, protect them with blood, with life, if need be, and I couldn’t turn away. Didn’t even want to. The wolf brain took over and I felt the Change spill through me, not physically, but in every other way. I was suddenly a mother wolf whose cubs were being threatened.

Making me the most vicious animal alive.

The others felt it, too. A shiver went through the surrounding wolves; Farkas yelped and tried desperately to drag his master back; even Whirlwind hesitated. But only for a second, because his honor was on the line. He’d been challenged twice, and before the council.

He couldn’t back down.

This was happening, it was happening now, and nothing on Earth could stop it.

Only someone else didn’t seem to know that.

“On what grounds?” A woman said, and pushed between us.

That was a good trick, because we’d been all but an inch apart, breathing in each other’s faces. But I clearly wasn’t the only one who could move fast when she wanted. Although the Lupa of the Red Mountain Clan was looking a little different than the last time I saw her.

The attractive, elegant woman with the silver bracelets and the smooth dark braid now had no jewelry, wild dark hair and a face full of drying blood. She was also wearing an incongruously cheerful, flower embroidered caftan that she’d sourced from somewhere, making it clear that she had Changed during the battle. And the arm she’d reached out to me with was covered in acid burns from a potion bomb that had come a little too close.

But she still had the arm, meaning that it hadn’t been that close.

Many of the others behind her weren’t so lucky. I finally noticed that I’d stumbled into the middle of a triage area, where people like Laura Brightfeather, Sienna’s cousin, were trying to help the wounded. There were a lot of them, and were about to be more if the Lupa didn’t get out of my way!

But she didn’t. Instead, she put a hand on both our shoulders, with a grip painful enough that it helped me surface slightly from the wolf mind. But not all the way.

“Move,” I told her, my voice as guttural as I’d ever heard it.

She didn’t try to reason with me; she could see that I was past that. Instead, she asked the only question that might have gotten a response. “Why? On what grounds do you make this challenge.”

“My cubs,” I snarled. “Mine.”

“What cubs?”

“There!” I gestured wildly at the two atop the rows of seats. “The ones being attacked—by his wolves! He stands them down or I rip out his heart!”

Considering that I’d already done that once today, it wasn’t an idle threat. And Sienna seemed to get that. “The necromancer?” She frowned. “She’s with you?”

“She saved you, fought for you! And now his wolves want to tear her apart. Call them off or die!” I snarled at Whirlwind, who snarled back.

“Her creatures threatened a council member,” he said harshly. “She used the bodies of our dead, in our sacred grounds—”

“Call them off!”

“—to attack us! That’s a death sentence—”

“Call them off, goddamn you!”

Dark gold eyes gleamed at me through strands of gray fur, and then the beast grinned. His back was to the others; they couldn’t see him. But I could, like I could see the contempt in his eyes. “No.”

And that was it. I couldn’t Change, but that hadn’t stopped my wolf before, and it didn’t this time. It leapt, in a movement so fast that I didn’t even know it was happening—

But someone else was faster.

The next moment, I was knocked on my ass and a massive wolf stood over me, but it wasn’t Whirlwind.

That was a surprise because it was huge, too, as big as Sebastian only with a pure white coat. And a bloody maw, one that snarled and snapped in Whirlwind’s direction until he backed off, too. And then the enormous creature stood between the two of us, tail thrashing.

“Stop it, both of you!” It was Sienna’s voice coming from the wolf, and she was looking at Whirlwind. “Call them off. We’ll hear what Lia has to say, then pass judgement.”

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