Page 101 of Scars of the Sun

Wolves were messy. Intense. Cries of pain rang out into the night as they started lunging. No quick, killing bites, but ones meant to take down and incapacitate. Three of them went for a shifted Tiger, another one releasing a thick spurt of blood from a soldier in human form.

All kept me observing. Waiting for my time, and when a torrent of the Leader’s scent, a warm winter’s night, slashed into the air as someone landed a blow, I coiled.

And pounced. Leaping into the air with my destination a murky mix of white and red and black.

More soldiers were biting at Leader, trying to take him down, and I landed on the first one’s back. Opening my jaw to crush the back of their skull was quick. The spurt of blood and tissue I barely even tasted as I pounced on the next one.

We were outnumbered, but they were the unarmed shifter reinforcements. They were unprepared on the pack’s home, and once we finished off those that’d attacked Leader, it was a frenzy. The Wolves pulled at limbs, silencing screams and death gurgles like afterthoughts.

Until a shrill cry rang against the treetops. “Mommy!” I felt Leader tense near me—we all did.

We were close to the house, and with a few yips, we split off, leaving some behind to stand guard while we inched closer to the Leader’s yard. Where the scents of my mate and sister made me want to growl.

Instead, I went back to that place. Where I knew my sisters and that they’d shoot first and not bother to ask questions later if we tried on them what we did to their soldiers.

Hell, I half-shifted,they’d probably shoot me anyway. “I’ll protect them,” I whispered at the white Wolf, whose out-of-place coloring was easier to see than everything else, “Wait here, or else you’ll be their first target.” He grumbled, tension thick around him, and not just because of his injuries. But he didn’t follow as I broke through the trees with my hands up.

And if I thought my sister had any soft spot for me, that was quickly erased. I tried urging her to leave, still unsure where the fuck Mara was, but when she shot my best friend who took a bullet for my mate, I saw more than red. Her spine shattering beneath my fangs, body giving last twitches before stilling for good. Fuck everything, I’d kill her and not regret it in the slightest?—

“I’m okay, baby. I’m okay. Te amo, te amo.” Ramona. Her voice, shaking a little but alive and strong pulled me away from lunging on Catalina and blowing all of this up. It wouldn’t take much for her to keep on shooting instead of toying with us.

My nose picked up on a shifting cold, like a harsh winter wind, but it was coming from the wrong direction. My mate lunged at Catalina, the witch and shifters near the porch clashed, but my instincts forced me to relax. To watch. And as my head turned, finding what was so important that kept me from helping them, I sprinted. Where what looked like Orion leading his daughter away from the bloody confrontation filled my chest with sharp panic and dread.

Dahlia screamed for her mother, and I pounced again. I directed Dahlia to the trees and kept the pressure of my claws and arms, refusing to let the jerking body go. With a confirming glance to the forest where Dahlia had gone where I commanded, I returned to the bright green eyes that were switching back and forth from an endless black.

More dark red blood spurted and drenched my wrists, but this was going to fucking end. Now.

Voice deep and gurgling, my tormentor somehow grinned even wider. “Oi, Yoyo.”

My mate’s distress—hell, the distress of everyone around me—threatened to pull my focus, but I kept true. If there was anything to stop this, to make sure Pai left all of us alone, it was to use his greatest prize to bargain for our lives.

Xiomara’s body was dueling with itself, whether to heal, shift, or both, but I just sank my claws further into her neck, her side. Through it all, my big sister stared at me, her eyes that I knew like my own, were easy to recognize through the blur of my vision. She didn’t try to fight, nor did either of us react when the rest of the Wolves started to emerge from the woods. Fabric and bodies rustled over the ground as the pack members carried in their kills. I sensed the Pack Leader, pretty wounded but okay from fighting the shifters that’d been hiding as reinforcements.

When I’d scented an uncanny copy of his winter aroma emerging from the cabin with a Dahlia that tried her best to dig in her heels, I just reacted.

Now, Mara’s scent was slippery again, intangible and impossible to completely grasp. To my surprise, with Orion’s voice, Xiomara whispered, spraying blood on my face with her words, “Te quiero, Yoyo. Hazlo.”

Incredulous rage coursed in my chest, tightening my squeezing her and forcing up more blood. What fucking trick was she playing? Though I couldn’t truly see it, the please was an unspoken supplication in her eyes that were inky pools.

“Everyone’s different, but I try to relate the scents of emotions to things that are familiar to me. So that when I encounter them, I have like… an internal catalogue to refer to. If that makes sense?”

On my inhale, I was flooded with the surrounding blood and rage and… and the stale, damp of despair that I first noticed on Ramona the night we crossed paths at Vinny’s.

The wrath that’d been carrying me flagged—had Mara always smelled like this underneath the elusiveness of her scent?

As Orion, Xiomara had some height on me, and with her feet still on the ground, she jerked, twisting our bodies just before I had to steady us against a punch of pressure that released a fresh torrent of her blood.

I blinked furiously, trying to make sense of what just happened and clear my vision in a futile effort. Using the blur of shapes and scents, I quickly took in my mate on the ground, rubbing her face and surely glaring up at Catalina who was no longer fighting unconsciousness. She held two guns, now, one pointed at us and one at my mate.

My roar shook the trees, and I fought to keep myself from trembling. If I made a move, she’d kill Ramona before I could truly take a step. If I killed Xiomara as I’d intended, she’d kill us both.

“Déjala ir, Río.”

“Déjanos ir a todos. A mi alma gemela, esta manada, a todos nosotros. O voy a matarla.”

Cata was usually composed, even when she was raging, but I caught the telltale hitching of her breathing. Xiomara was already flagging, her heart slowing with the wounds I inflicted and Catalina’s gunshot.

“Ya tu perdiste esta pelea. Tu puedes explicar algunos tratos de negocios fallados, pero la muerte de su arma sagrada? No.”

---