Page 7 of Magic Hunted
It was the only way to save these shifters. I would get the grimoire out of me and untie our fates. The panther alphas wouldn’t understand. There was no time to explain, and even if I did, they wouldn’t listen. They were males who had found their mate. They would want to bond me without understanding what they were giving up.
I dug my new lethal claws into the trunk and dragged myself from the water, away from them. An urgent snarl had my head twisting to see them clawing onto the tree trunk after me. Their eyes glowed, trained on me as they stalked toward me, so I did the only thing I could do to save their lives.
I sprang over the twisted snarl of branches into the center of the rampaging river and the most forceful of the current, sinking beneath the chopping surface where water wrapped icy fingers around my body and pulled me toward the waterfall. I let it drag me under into its churning depths and sweep me over the edge.
Chapter Four
Waking was not a gradual drift through gray layers. Instead, it was a knife through my lungs alongside a shock of agony rising up my throat. I gagged and hacked up water, choking until I could drag air into my lungs. My throat burned with razor blades until my vision cleared, but when I returned to my senses, the blades sunk into my stomach.
I stumbled backwards, but I still had four legs instead of two. My tail tripped me over and I collapsed to the damp earth. I tried to get my paws under me, but my body wouldn’t work the right way. My senses exploded around me. Colors too bright. Insects too loud. The earth too rough. Too much of everything overwhelming me.
Ashir sprung on top of me, holding me down by pressing his naked chest against my furred back. I was still a panther, trapped in this body while they had all Changed back to their human forms.
“Calm, my mate.” Ashir squeezed my nape with his large, firm palm. The pressure of his hand and body helped calm my body, while my mind still spiraled out of control.
“How is she alive?” Savvas said, his words no more than a breath. He knelt within my line of sight, his hand reaching for me before forming a fist and dropping to his thigh. As though he wanted to touch me, but didn’t know how. As though I scared the shit out of him.
“She was dead when I pulled her from the water,” Dias said. “She wasn’t breathing. Wasn’t moving. She…” His throat bobbed when he swallowed. My chest lurched, his panic pressing against me.
The rushing in the background wasn’t only in my ears. I glimpsed the waterfall through the canopy. The lapping waves on the nearby bank. A mess of track marks and footprints lined the bank leading to where we huddled. My fur was damp and uncomfortable, matted with leaves and dirt.
“We’ll get the answers to those questions, but first our mate needs to be tended,” Ashir said.
I panted through my open mouth, chest heaving like bellows. Ashir’s hand was a grounding pressure, his breath a warm caress on the side of my face. “Easy now.”
“You have to let me go,” I said, still trapped in the body of an animal with no idea how to Change back. My lips didn’t move the same way, and all that came out was a high-pitched sound of distress.
“We won’t hurt you. You’re safe with us. You can Change back to your human form,” Ashir said.
But he didn’t understand. I wasn’t safe with them and they definitely weren’t safe with me. Nowhere would be safe ever again. I pushed away from him, paws slipping in the mud, panic making my movements rough and jerking. They pressed their bodies more firmly against me, caging me with alpha strength.
“There’s no need to be scared. We’re your mates. We’ll do anything for you,” Savvas said. That was the problem. They no longer had autonomy over their lives. They no longer had a choice. To shifters, mates were everything, and I was the panther alphas’ mate. If only they’d let me go. I was nothing but a target. Something disposable, and now….now they would never let me go.
And that would be their downfall.
The weight of Ashir’s muscular body on my fur sent tingles racing through me. His heat sank into my veins, his scent of oranges and cloves fogged my mind. Made me want to roll onto my back and bare my neck in submission. The largest part of me didn’t see anything wrong with it. The part that had jumped off the biological cliff. Languid need stirred deep in my belly, my body calling to bond to my mates alongside the jagged shard of reality. I locked onto the part of me that understood it was a bad idea and clung to it, bloody fists and all.
“If you think we’re taking you back to Titan, think again. He’s not getting anywhere near you. You don’t have to worry,” Ashir growled.
But I did worry. I worried so much my heart hammered and adrenaline flooded my system. He’d endanger his people for me. The need to protect his mate was hardwired into the DNA of his being, over the consideration of hundreds. The grimoire, for so long asleep inside me, burst into life, reacting to my mind-numbing panic. Golden light trembled deep within my chest. Magic erupted, fizzing on the tip of my tongue; out of control. If Titan hadn’t felt the pulse before, he would now. My presence endangered them.
I dug my claws into the mud and slipped free from Ashir’s hold. I bolted into the underbrush, pushing my sleek new body to the limit. Green rushed past in a blur as I ducked beneath branches, sprang over fallen logs and darted around thick trunks. I had a head start. I used their shock to my advantage because mates never ran from each other. If I could get away fast enough, I could hide from them. The wastelands were close. I would hide there.
My claws dug into the earth when leaf debris slipped under my feet. I came down onto my shoulders, paws scrambling beneath me before I found purchase and jumped over a fallen trunk.
Powerful footfalls thumped after me. A branch snapped and a hiss behind me made my blood run cold. My mates were pissed. For all of their talk about keeping me safe, they were alphas. They would never forgive a mate who ran from them. They would demand answers and force me to tell them why I was trying to get away.
Gulping air, I pushed myself as hard as my body would go, but I had no reserves to call on. I’d died twice. Injured from the fall. Weakened because of a shift I never wanted.
My limbs trembled and my lungs burned as I fought the exhaustion deep in my bones. Bright sunlight broke through the thinning canopy, and the yellow sands of the wastelands glimmered through the vibrant green of the jungle. We were at the edge of the magical border of the panther territory. The Six’s magic defined their territories. The very thing that kept their inhabitants safe also imprisoned them.
They wouldn’t follow me into the wastelands. No sane creature voluntarily went there. The wastelands were the only place I might be safe. It was nothing but barren dust, rocks and emptiness for miles. I could die there, but I would regenerate. Unlike my mates who had to know stepping foot out there would mean their death sentence.
I streaked toward the desolate plains, putting everything into my powerful strides. My muscles pulled, bunched, and propelled me onwards. I tasted the heat in the air that dried the humidity of the jungle the closer I ran. Freedom was so close I wasn’t prepared for the large, heavy body that barreled into mine.
I rolled over the ground, the earth battering my already beaten body. Stars burst behind my eyes when my cheek struck a stone lodged in the ground. I shook the haze from my vision when I finally stopped rolling to see three alpha panthers lunging toward me. Their sleek black forms Changed to delicious male bodies as they dove on me.
“Change!” I couldn’t resist Ashir’s alpha command. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but one born of hierarchy. No panther could go against the alpha of alphas. Pain rocketed through my body as my bones cracked and reformed.
