Page 62 of Veil of Shadows

I thought back to Ronyn’s training. To the way I had to roll my hips and clench my thighs just to stay on his back in the woods. Fire broke out on just about all sides of the compound. The flames mounted as we continued gathering the children who hadn’t hit their shifterhood yet. They were helpless without the ability to shift, and I held them close as a war raged in front of me. Wolves of all shapes, colors, and sizes squared up to motion blurs that never stopped until the wolves themselves knew thatthey could kill those vampires. I’d never seen a race of humans so bloodthirsty in all my life.

No wonder shifters hated vampires.

Dom took off randomly, and I yelped as I clung on for dear life. I scooped the five kids close to me, feeling them tugging my dress as they hung on for dear life. Fire encroached upon us. Trees went up in flames. Fiery leaves floated through the air as that damned healer continued to cast miniature tornadoes like it was her motherfucking job. We bobbed and weaved through it all, and that’s when I realized exactly how nimble on his feet Dom really was.

It was honestly impressive.

That is, until I figured out where he was leading us.

“No!” I exclaimed, tugging on his fur.

I heard his growl as he continued sprinting toward the one opening in the fire.

“No! It’s a trap! We’re being funneled!”

I continued yanking at him, but he continued storming toward the opening.

“Dom!” I exclaimed.

“Alpha?” one of the panicked kids asked.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, you guys,” I said breathlessly as I reached up Dom’s neck and hooked my finger into his jowls.

I pulled with all my might and that brought him to a grinding, glowering halt.

“We can’t go that way!” I exclaimed above the roar of the flames. “Look!”

I pointed all around us before Dom’s wolf stared back at the only exit we had.

“She’s funneling us with the fire! It’s a trap! We can’t go that way!”

“Then, what the fuck do you suggest we do!?” Voss exclaimed as he quickly shifted back into his human form.

Ronyn sprinted toward us and came to a skidding halt in his human form. “She’s right. They’re funneling us. We can’t go that way.”

Voss held his hands out as chaos rained down around us. “Then where the fuck do you suggest we take the pack!?”

Dom stood there, tall and strong, with his gaze locked onto the only exit we had from the forest burning around us. The kids clung to him, and the longer we waited, the more he dipped his nose to the ground.

“He’s going to take off if we don’t do something,” Ronyn growled.

Then a plan formulated in my mind and I pointed at Ronyn. “Get two sets of your troops to go through first. They’ll fight off whatever first wave is headed for us.”

“On it,” he said as he shifted back into his wolf form.

“Voss,” I said, whipping toward him, “get the healers working on this fire. We can’t put it out, but one of those healers is spinning tornadoes. Get her to put out the perimeter. We need an alternative exit, or at least we need to look like we’re working on one.”

Voss nodded. “What does Dom need to do?”

I walked around to the front of his wolf and gazed deeply into his blue stare. “You keep running with those kids on your back and you don’t stop until we’ve got somewhere for you to take them. Understood?”

He nodded his head, so I pressed a soft kiss to his snout. “Good boy.”

I swear his eyes glinted with deviousness. And I swear, even with hell raining down around us, Dom made me smile.

Almost like it was his talent to be able to make me smile in the direst of situations.

“Down boy. Now, get out of here. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” I exclaimed.

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