Page 77 of Rejected Exile

A pained howl rips through the air. I feel something stir in me, an answering call of sorts. Blinking, I see an explosion of light behind my eyes, searing my retinas. The light forms a picture like a television screen: two wolves, one dark brown-black with cunning black eyes, one grey with sorrowful yellow eyes, backs tight and lips bared, fighting for their lives.

Come,the howl whispers in the air, thrums in my blood,your young master calls to you.

I blink, and tears roll down my cheeks as my vision clears.

The vampire Demetri doesn't seem to hear the words beneath the howl or see the picture. He just sighs as the last of the howl echoes in the night air.

"Werewolves have a stubbornness to them," he tells me, stalking forward to take my chin in his hand. The knife eases at my neck as he grabs onto me. "While you may tell them not to follow, and they may even swear it to you, it's a vow meant to be broken. When it comes to their mates, these males are like rabid creatures. The only thought that would occur to them is of chasing after you—and they would follow you to the ends of the earth, even if it were the last thing they ever did."

A deep voice rumbles in the darkness, "They're not the only ones who would."

Lance.Hope makes me jerk against the hands holding me. They restrain me harder, grabbing me and pulling me into the darkness as two new forms crash into the fray.

One, a large white wolf with a black nose and blue eyes, reminds me strikingly of Lance. His huge form streaks through the darkness and leaps at Demetri, who grabs onto his legs with a grunt, wrestling him away. I smell the sharpness of pine and mint, with a deep undertone of snowfall, and my heart soars.

The other wolf follows quickly, darting towards the vampire coven converging on Kieran and Roarke. Finn's form is a shaggy black wolf with a white shape on his chest and silver eyes. Even from a distance I get a hint of his sensual scent, reminding me of smoke and sweet vanilla.

"Stupid mutts," Ambrosia mutters in my ear, tugging me back against her. "Stay quiet, little thing."

"You can't make me—"

"Oh but I can." She hisses and darts her lips against my cheek. The chillness of her skin on mine makes me shudder. "This will hurt you more than it pleases me."

I'm about to part my lips and make a noise of protest when her fangs slip out and pierce my skin. My cry of pain is silenced by the sudden flush of numbness that suffuses me, its chill spreading from my head to the base of my neck and down. I struggle, but by the time a few seconds have passed even my toes are numb.

She withdraws and licks the wound, humming beneath her breath. "Good little doggy. You see? There's no reason to cry or scream. Soon you'll be warm and safe... for a little while. You areexactlywhat we need."

I don't know what she's talking about. I do know that I have no idea how Kieran could ever stand this feeling. It's as if I'm trapped in my own skin. Then again, I get the sense that what she just did to me isn't what she did to him—especially because she makes a pained, hungry sound against my neck, like she just gave me all the venom in her body and has little left.

The numbness means I'm incapable of even blinking as a horrible scene unfolds in front of me.

First, Finn is gouged by vampire claws from shoulder to haunches. He screams in pain, only to turn on wicked-fast legs and launch himself at the vamp who did it. Though his canines sink into pale skin and tear a throat apart, moments later he's attacked from behind, and has to whirl around to do it again.

Meanwhile, Demetri has thrown Lance off and is fighting him in a blur of ashen flesh and white fur. While it seems like the large white wolf has the advantage, and I internally cheer, moments later his fur is streaked with red. Demetri is a blur of teasing and dancing, attacking him from one direction only to get away just as Lance's teeth close on air.

What's most heartbreaking of all, however, is how Kieran and Roarke keep fighting. Even as Roarke's tail is nearly torn from his body, he limps forward and bares bloodied teeth to tear more vampire appendages from their undead bodies. And Kieran—the once-limp wolf is alive with anger, bounding through the woods, twisting off tree trunks to launch himself teeth-first at his enemies. But even I can see from a distance how his claws hit flesh with more and more exhaustion with each swipe.

They're outnumbered and quickly losing strength. With no one to rally them, no alpha to give them strength, their wolves tire easily. And the land beneath us, once fertile from the bond of the pack, might as well be salted earth. It has no warmth of werewolf magic in it, and no defenses rise to protect the pack.

In the old days, when the pack was strong, the very trees would have jerked their roots up from the ground and walked across the earth to smack the vampires in the chest. Ivy vines would lash their skin, and the lakes would rise to drown them.

Now it feels as if the dead leaves that crunch beneath my feet as Ambrosia drags me away are mocking me.

"You see, special little wolf?" Her voice is a dreadful whisper against my ear; revulsion fills me at the stink of blood on her breath. "It is almost over."

It is.

Lance falters, and Demetri pauses in his teasing to sink two claws hands into his neck, making me wish I could kill the vampire myself.

The scream of Roarke as fire lashes at him from a vampire torch is like torture to my ears.

Finn's teeth close on air as the vampires double their effort to evade him. One grabs his injured rear leg and twists it to the side until a sickeningcrunchfills the air, and white bone jerks out of skin.

Kieran. Poor, desperate Kieran, who ran out here and somehow started this all—or who led me here, and something about me started it—fights as if he isn't bleeding from a dozen wounds. As if he doesn't drip with his own blood as well as that of his enemies. Even his tongue is cut, lolling sideways from his mouth, the red rimming his lips and teeth a mixture of vampire blood and his own.

As Ambrosia drags me back one step, two, ten, twenty—they keep fighting. Surging. Leaping, biting, snapping, clawing. Doing their best.

And failing.

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