Page 63 of Veil of Shadows

Then I was scooped off my feet. “Ah!”

The fiery red wolf beneath me didn’t even have to turn her fucking head for me to know who it was. And in a few bounds, Merida had me up on the roof of the bath house. She pinned me with an icy look from her blue eyes that told me to stay put, and for once in my life, I didn’t have to be told twice. It was a tactical advantage, too. The bath house was removed from the rest of the compound. It sat in the corner, which meant it had a great view of everything. God, what I wouldn’t have given for a bit of groupthink just so I could give everyone a bird’s eye view of what I saw.

The moment didn’t last long, however.

Aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-OOOOOOOOH!

Aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-OOOOOOOOH!

Aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-OOOOOOOOH!

The look in Merida’s wolf’s eyes made my heart stop in my chest. For a brief moment, everyone stopped. Everyone stilled. And as the echo of the howl reverberated across the compound, I saw Voss and Ronyn’s wolves galloping toward the sound.

Dom.

“Merida!” I exclaimed as I leapt onto her back from the roof. “Get me to him, now!”

She took off in the direction of the whimpering howl, anger flushing its way through my veins. My heart slammed so hard against my chest that I thought it might shatter. I had to get to him. I had to get to Dom. That howl wasn’t good, and it didn’t take a genius to know that if Voss took off running, it was bad. Merida pumped her legs as quickly as she could go, tearing across the compound even with vampires hot on our heels. Desperation filled me to the brim. Dear fucking God, if Delilah got her hands on him, I’d torture her myself.

I’d string her up in that fucking cave and treat her like one of her fucking vampires.

19

DOMINIC

I tore through the woods as pups clung to my back. I growled as they tugged at my fur, ripping it out by the handful. I skirted around trees and dodged flames that seemed to come after us as if they had a life of their own. My feet thundered beneath me. The sounds of crying children spurred me on as I leapt over a ditch and kept putting distance between us at the fire. We were growing closer to the cave. Closer to safety. Closer to an emergency hatch Voss, Ronyn, and I built into the mountain we perched at the base of just in case we ever needed a place to store the pack away. The smell of smoke faded away. The stench of death didn’t hang quite as fiercely in the air.

That is, until smoke started swirling around us.

“Dom?” one of the kids asked.

“What’s going on?”

“What’s happening?”

“I want Mommy.”

I tilted my head up toward the sky to figure out what in the fuck was going on, and that’s all it took. The air kicked up, whipping that disgusting scent of rotting flesh toward my nostrils. Then, the blurs began. They wrapped around us,causing the little pups on my back to cry out as I tried to assess the situation.

Fucking hell, why did I think we could have outrun them?

“Dom!” one of the girls shrieked.

I did the only thing that I could, and I scurried into the tallest tree. I dug my talons into the bark and leapt from tree to tree, hearing the children scream for dear life. I knew they’d never shut up. I knew I’d never be able to get away from these vampires. They were too fast, too strong, and they smelled too fucking bad for me to concentrate on anything else. So, I abandoned the pups at the top of the tree, pleading with them to hang on as tightly as possible.

I leapt back down to the ground, slamming myself on top of a vampire, and ripped its fucking head off.

The smell of burning wood made my eyes water. The fire crackling all around us put me on edge. We didn’t have a hell of a lot of time, but I had to keep fighting until someone talked to me. Groupthink was completely shut down. It was as if that entire part of our pack was put on silent until further notice. And as I continued slaughtering vampires that kept jumping through the flames charging toward us, something sank against my back. Something hard. Something forceful. Something that burned so greatly that it fucking took me to the ground.

Before someone hauled off and slammed me against a tree.

“Son of a bitch,” I gasped as I slowly waned back into my human form.

Pain ripped through my back as I stood there with vampires surrounding me. They snarled at me with their fangs and their pale ass skin. Their red eyes glowed with the embers of the fire kicking up all around us. I heard the kids yelling at me from the tree. I heard the screams off in the distance from my pack. A howl pierced the air, and I recognized it as Ronyn’s cry for help.

But the searing pain around my wrists pulled me from my trance.

“Holy fuck!” I cried out.

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