Page 7 of Fated Exile

Instead I surge into the fray next to Delilah, her white-furred body a reassuring presence in my peripheral vision. Whipping around the corner, we come face-to-face with carnage. The first thing I do is attack the closest bloodsucking vamp I can find.

He attacks back, burgeoned by a strange, frenetic energy, his claws and fangs bloodied. I dig my teeth into his neck and sever much of his rotting flesh, spitting it out.

Throwing me to the ground, the vampire whips around to hiss at me. He raises his hands to attack.

I rush around him and leap on his back. Throwing him to the ground, I put my jaws around his neck again—and sink my teeth in deep. Shaking him back and forth like a rag doll, I separate his head from his body completely.

Blood goes flying, not all of it his own. My paws slip in the stuff, red and warm on the cave floor beneath me. But a moment later the vampire is truly dead, and his entire body sinks into ashes beneath me.

As soon as my own battle is over, I take stock of my surroundings. We're in a large space decorated like a worship hall, with an eerie candle chandelier hanging from a chain on the ceiling, throwing long shadows against the cave walls. There's an altar in the distance, two heavy doors on either side of it, one propped open.

Blood is slick on the floors, and covering several bodies thrown around like meat. I catch the scent of bloodsucking vampires through the open door beside the altar. The attackers have already escaped.

I sniff the air for Ambrosia, only to be distracted by another battle that grabs my attention. The youngest werewolf warrior, Ian, has his back against the wall. I leap to his aid—but Lance gets to his attacker first and takes care of things.

With all the vampires gone or vanquished, and all their victims dead, all is quiet for a moment. Which gives me the space to pace over to one of the victims and nudge her with my nose. She's dead alright, her blood human-scented, the smell overlaid with the thick scent of magic. A witch.

Staring around the chamber, I find artifacts of spellcraft: large, open books on the altar, crushed dried rose petals beneath the feet of another victim, and, most unnerving of all, a large, human-shaped cage made of iron whose bars have been bent.

The cage is propped up against a far wall, near the open door by the altar. It stinks of dark, foul magic and treachery. My hackles go up at the sight of it, so I skirt around it, my wolf wary of the thing.

Nothing good came out of a device like that.

And it's clear from the bent bars and trail of destruction leading out of the cage that somethingdidcome out of it.

I look towards the open door, prepared to give chase, but before I can I hear a moan of pain. Startling forward, I realize that one of the victims I thought was lying dead on the ground is actually alive.

A moment later, Delilah has shifted back to her human form, and I follow suit. We both kneel beside the moaning woman. She's surrounded by blood, face-down on the ground, a formerly white dress bunched up around her knees. I take her shoulders gently between my hands and lift her up, sliding her onto my left arm.

"Careful, careful." Delilah grabs the woman's head and supports it, brushing salted brown hair away from her face. "She's injured badly. We'll need to split up, carry her back—"

Her voice catches at the end of the sentence, and she falls silent. Eyes wide, she stares down at the woman. I lick my lips, glancing in the same direction, and feel the earth shift beneath me.

Delilah's face is staring up at me.

With bright blue eyes, a few wrinkles, and faded long hair, but there's no mistaking the dimple on one side of the woman's mouth, the sharp cupid's bow of her upper lip, or the slight asymmetry to her button nose. Even if I doubted it, Delilah's reaction makes it clear.

"Is it just me, or...?"

"She looks like she could be your—your sister."

"Or mother." Delilah gulps, as the woman struggles to breathe in my arms, her eyes fluttering closed. "Do you think...?"

I don't know what to say. It would be terrible to get her hopes up, but there's no denying what I can see with my own two eyes. "We have to get her medical attention. But the vampires..."

Roarke has also shifted back to human form, and he paces over to stare down at the woman, then does a double take. "She does look just like you, Delilah. But that's a topic of discussion that'll have to wait. The vampires who led this attack have gotten away—along with whatever was in that cage, and the answers we've been looking for. We need a search party."

"I'll go," Marcus says, lifting his chin, he and the rest of the warriors all in human form again, along with Lance. "I'll take Wally, Ian, and Lance with me. We can pursue the vampires until we find them or the end of the tunnel, then report back."

Delilah frowns, a crease crinkling her brows, and I can tell she's torn. Looking down at the woman, she pushes hair back from her face with delicate hands. Roarke kneels, rips a stretch of stained white fabric from the woman's dress, then uses it to bandage a wound high up on her thigh.

"I'll go with the warriors," she says finally, glancing up at me. "Will you get her to safety?"

"I will." All of me wants to protest, to insist on staying at Delilah's side. My wolf wants nothing more than to protect her. But the man in me knows that it's a big step for Delilah to entrust me with this woman's safety, and I take it as the gift that it is. "I won't let you down. Just—promise me that you'll stay safe. If it looks like a trap, turn around. You're more important than finding this woman."

Delilah hesitates before answering, "I will."

Then she leans across to kiss me on the lips, her mouth warm and soft against mine. It takes everything in me to let her pull away from the kiss, a growl growing in the back of my throat, possessive and insistent. All I want to do is keep Delilah here, with me, where it's safe.

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