Page 69 of Veil of Shadows

“You’re safe, and that’s all that matters,” I said breathlessly as I turned back toward the woman who chased me into the woods in the first fucking place.

But once that bitch flicked her hand in the air, I heard Dom grunt as something dropped to the ground. I felt myself levitating through thin air as something hot and wretched spun itself around my wrists and ankles. I saw Dom, trying to press himself up from the forest floor. His hands, freed from the cuffs. Tears of joy sprang to my eyes as I looked down at my ankles, watching tendrils from the fire wrap around my skin. The searing heat forced pain through my veins, but I bit down onto my tongue. I wouldn’t give Delilah the satisfaction of hearing me cry out like I knew she wanted.

But when that same heat wrapped around my ankles and neck, it was harder to keep it together.

“Oh, God,” I choked out.

“Let her go!” Dom yelled.

My body rose higher into the sky as Delilah’s cackle grew. I saw Ronyn’s gray wolf jumping over the heads of a throng of vampires, trying to get closer to the ring of fire that blocked us away from the world. As Deliliah’s flames of restraint continued to shove me higher into the air, I saw Voss’s wolf leaping over the heads of vampires just to slam down into the middle of them. He was brutal, yanking them left and right. Snapping their necks with his jowls. I watched Dom bite the head off one before slamming his back legs into another one that Ronyn tossed hisway. Merida’s bright red wolf jumped into the air, snatching a vampire out of a tree before it landed on someone else’s back.

Then, as if someone had alerted them to what was happening, I watched all of their massive wolf heads turn toward the sky.

But Voss was the first one to change back into his human form while he continued snatching vampires out of thin air and snapping their necks with his bare hands.

Jesus, he didn’t even need to be in his wolf form to kill them off.

“Bexleeeeeeeeeeeey!” he thundered.

Ronyn’s gray wolf turned his equally gray stare toward me, and I saw all of the hairs on his skin prickle at once. They stood so far on end that, honest to fuck on high, he looked like a goddamn furball. I couldn’t help but giggle as the bindings tightened around me. The one around my neck choked off my ability to breathe as everyone’s yelling blurred into one fantastical sound of chaos. I closed my eyes and steadied my heartbeat. I couldn’t let her kill me, and that meant I had to steady my body’s reactions to her movements. And even though that flame rope tightened around my throat, I managed to still my body enough to conserve the oxygen I needed.

That is, before I heard Ronyn’s booming voice echoing across what felt like the entire goddamn forest.

“For every mark you leave on that woman’s body, I’ll slaughter one of your soldiers just to show you that I can!” Ronyn erupted.

My body got yanked through the air, away from the ring of fire, and deeper into the pitch-black darkness of the woods. Everything rushed past me in a blur, as if we moved at lightning speed through space. And as the sounds of everything quickly faded into the background, only one sound stuck around.

The terrible, no good, very bad cackling of the psychopathic vampire that was once my boss.

22

VOSS

The second Bexley disappeared from sight, a war raged within me. My mate was being dragged off by my mortal enemy. Or, by something, at the very least. We still hadn’t figured out where in the fuck all of the fire came from. I had two entire packs to get to safety, and we couldn’t figure out who in the fuck set fire to everything. Plus, we had to get Dom back to safety, and he’d have to be hauled. We couldn’t figure out who in the hell had that kind of legitimate firepower within Delilah’s ranks. Vampires weren’t capable of that kind of nonsense. At least, they shouldn’t have been capable of it. And as I snatched one trying to rush by me out of thin air, I kept a tight hold on that fucker’s neck as I shook my hand.

I dropped its body to the ground.

Ronyn’s voice growled beside me. “Go get her. We’ve got this, Alpha.”

He sure as fuck didn’t have to tell me twice, either.

Immediately, I shifted back into my wolf form and sprinted around the ring of fire standing tall and proud in the middle of the goddamn woods. I placed my nose to the ground, scenting Bexley every step of the way as I pushed on as quickly as I could.

Merida. Lieutenant Reggie. Get Dom back to the compound. He needs medical attention.

Troops A and B: tactical sweep. I want this entire forest cleared.

Troops C and D: inner emergency plan. Get everyone into their homes and no one comes out until I give the order.

As I listened to Ronyn bark orders at everyone in groupthink, I pounded the forest floor in search of my mate. Miles and miles of landscape fell behind me in a flash as I jumped from tree to tree, keeping my nose to the bark and the ground wherever I smelled my woman. I no longer had them in sight, but I saw the glow of Bexley’s restraints off in the distance.

I let the wind carry me, as if it pushed me forward even quicker than my legs could propel me.

But even the glow fell away from my vision after a while.

I growled to myself as I picked up the pace. Never in my life had I run that hard or that fast or that far. I leapt over hilltops and trudged up mountains. But after a while, it felt like Delilah intentionally took the harder routes. I didn’t let it stop me, though. I kept pulling her scent from the ground and leaping into the air to check things like tree branches and leaves.

I’d catch up to them, one way or another.

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