Page 18 of Ranger's Honor
I drop to a knee, pivot hard, yank the injured one into my line of fire. He becomes my shield, dead weight and soft resistance. Knife guy lunges, and the blade glances across my shoulder. A flare of white-hot pain burns down my arm, but I shove it aside. Adrenaline kicks in. No time to register pain. No margin for error. These aren’t street thugs. They’re trained. Fast. Precise. Like they’ve done this before—and survived.
My breath saws in and out, every muscle coiled, heart hammering like a warning drumbeat. One wrong move, and I’m done. But I don’t back down. I twist, shove, brace for the next strike. I’ve been here before. I know how this ends. The only question is how many of them can I take down. I’m outnumbered.
The pressure builds in my chest, primal and absolute. I fight it down, but my control slips. I feel the shift ripple through my bones, a deep, instinctual realignment that shudders straight into my core before the mist rises—rolling across the floor like fog with a mind of its own. Thunder cracks in my skull.
"No," I grit out, voice rough. "Not here."
But it’s too late.
The mist coils around me, thick with color—deep amber and storm blue—before it surges upward, blinding and alive. My body doesn't break—it re-forms. Sight sharpens. Scent blooms. Sound roars.
The warehouse vanishes in a rush of instinct. The floor beneath me vibrates with footfalls. My ears flick, zeroing in on the staccato breath of my attackers. The tang of sweat, adrenaline, and copper floods my nose. I smell panic—and it smells like victory.
When the mist peels back, I stand on four massive paws. My senses explode to life—scent hits first, sharp and complex. Blood, fish guts and something sour lingers in the air. I hear the scuttle of a rat through rusted ductwork, the flap of a tarp in the rafters, the near-silent racing of three human hearts, one of them staggered and uneven.
Adrenaline hums through me, but it’s sharper now, more primal. The wolf feels it all—each vibration of air pressure, every change in temperature, the echo of danger carved into concrete and steel. I bare my teeth, muscles coiling as instinct takes over. A massive wolf made of rage, bone, and intent. My claws scrape the concrete. My lips curl back.
They freeze.
A shot cracks—the impact stings my shoulder, but it’s a gnat bite. I roar and surge forward.
The first crumples beneath me, ribs caving under the force of my strike. He lets out a strangled grunt—more reflex than cry—before he collapses in a heap, motionless. I barely register it before the second makes a break for the exit.
I give chase, paws thundering across the concrete. He doesn’t make it two steps. My jaws clamp down on his thigh, tearing muscle from bone. The scream that erupts is brutal, primal. I yank him down hard—his body skids across the floor, blood blooming fast beneath him like an oil slick.
The third—the one with the blade—charges. Wild-eyed. Desperate. I launch at him mid-lunge, my full weight smashing into his chest. He crashes into the wall with a dull, wet crack thatechoes through the rafters. He slides down, unmoving, breath ragged if it’s there at all.
I stand over them, breath coming hard, heart a thunderclap in my chest, blood hot on my tongue. I’m panting, blood on my muzzle, heart hammering like a war drum. But it’s not over.
Sirens rise in the distance. Someone must have heard something and called it in. I can already imagine the headlines—massacre at the docks. Local law won’t know what they’re walking into, but someone else might. Someone watching. Someone who won’t miss the trail I left.
If they trace it back to Kari—her files, her IP, her name—it won’t just be a scandal, it’ll be a direct line to everything she’s uncovered. Every target she’s flagged. Every connection she’s chased. She’ll be caught in the crosshairs of a war she didn’t sign up for, and it’ll be my fault for walking her straight into the blast radius.
I can’t let that happen.
I bolt, crashing through the back exit into a patch of wild growth long forgotten behind the dock’s boundary line. Pain knifes into my ribs, sharp and sudden, but I push past it, running fast and low, my heartbeat matching the rush of wind tearing past.
Not fear… urgency.
If Kari sees me like this—sees the wolf prowling behind my eyes—she won’t flinch. She won’t run. She’ll understand exactly what she’s looking at, because it’s what stirs under her own skin.
Gideon had wanted her safe, tucked behind steel and code, layers of protection and locked doors. But Kari refused; she wouldn’t hear it. Said she wouldn’t live in a damn fortress while people like Sookie died for speaking the truth. She even told him she'd rip the locks off herself if he tried to override her wishes and upgrade her security.
Even though we share a wolf-shifter commonality, it doesn't make it any easier. I’m not ready for that look yet—the one that says she sees too much. That she sees me, all of me, even the parts I’ve spent years trying to chain down and silence. The wild. The lethal.
But if I don’t get to her in time… if I don’t get between her and whatever hell the Reaper's about to unleash, if I don’t show her what she means to me, then everything I’ve fought to control will mean nothing.
No. Not an option.
I weave through a line of scrubby trees and tangled brush beyond the fence—a narrow buffer of overgrown foliage and wind-stunted trees whose wiry branches whip at my flanks. Blood, salt, gunpowder fill the air behind me.
But one scent cuts through it all like a beacon. Kari—citrus, ink, and that sharp scent that is only hers. It tightens something deep inside me. My lungs seize around it, the wolf inside me howling at the tether it creates. She’s frightened, and that undoes me more than the blood on my muzzle or the ache in my shoulder.
That one time together was enough to etch her place into my soul, deep and permanent. The bond isn’t sealed—not yet—but I know it’s there, waiting. She’s mine. Always will be. I don’t need the bite to prove it. I feel her fear, sharp and unshakable, but it’s not for herself—it’s for me. And that… that cuts through everything. It shoves every hesitation aside, hones my focus to a single point. Protect her. Keep her breathing. Whatever’s in our way, I’ll tear it down.
Citrus. Ink. Fear.
Kari.
