Page 78 of Furever Loyal
“Why the hell would I do that?” she spat, trying to avoid all her pursuers. They were quickly closing the noose around her, though. There was nowhere she could run, no lucky sewer grate to flee into or hole in the wall to jump through that only she could fit. Haley was well and truly trapped. Shit.
“We’ve got you now. There’s no point in trying,” one of them said, coming around a large piece of machinery. It was the same asshole who had lifted the bed off her at the safehouse.
Haley set her face in a grim line and raised her tiny hands in fists. She wasn’t going down without a fight, however useless it might seem.
“Your courage is admirable, but it won’t…” the man said. No, she corrected herself,he’s a shifter. A Canim. A werewolf.
She was so busy thinking, that it took her an extra second to realize he’d stopped speaking and was looking around. Haley was momentarily lost until she picked up on what was going on.
“Why the hell is the ground shaking?” she asked.
A split second later, the far wall exploded inward in a hail of brick, wood, and metal as a bone-white behemoth came barreling inward, announcing its presence with an ear-shattering roar.
Kincaid had arrived.
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Seven figures scattered as he made his entrance, diving for cover behind any sort of machinery they could find. Kincaid didn’t care about six of them, he had eyes only for the seventh.
Haley!
His bear translated that into a bellowed roar. She might not understand, but the Canim in the room certainly would. It was doubtful that another reminder was needed of who he was and why he was there, but Kincaid wasn’t leaving anything to chance. This was his mate, and he wasn’t leaving without her.
Charging forward, he crashed into the closest piece of machinery that he knew hid a shifter behind it. The massive metal construct ripped free of its anchors and slid backward against the floor, crashing into another hulking pile of steel, pinning the werewolf between them. It must have caught the shifter mid-change because the scream that filled the warehouse was neither wholly human nor wholly animal.
There was no time to gloat though, because he heard the scrabble of claws on the cement floor and knew that at least one of the others had finished shifting. Five on one was not ideal odds, but it would have to do. Kincaid hadn’t waited around for Melanie to give up any more information. The instant she’d uttered the location, he’d taken off, ignoring both Kaelyn and Kvoss’ protests. There was notime. If they showed up, they showed up, but he wasn’t going to wait on them.
A white wolf leaped onto a workbench nearby, snarling at him, lips pulled back to expose the three-inch-long canines. Saliva dripped from its jaws as it snapped and challenged him. More shapes moved in the darkness—he only belatedly realized his entrance had killed the power to the building.
“Kincaid?”
Be quiet!He sent the mental command knowing Haley would not hear him but hoping she’d understand. Staying quiet was her best bet now. If the wolves were distracted from his presence, they’d realize all they had to do was go after her to get him to surrender. Kincaid was banking on their long-seated hatred of his kind to keep them focused on fighting his bear, but he feared it wouldn’t be enough.
And it won’t be if you just keep sitting around doing nothing. You have to attack. Keep them on their heels.
Kincaid swiped at a loose metal box, a toolbox perhaps, and sent it flying at the white wolf. Before he was even done with that, he was charging to his left, at a wolf as black as night, a huge beast even bigger than the white. It had to be nearly five hundred pounds of lethal killing machine. If he let it get around to his rear, Kincaid would have a hard time holding it off.
The wolf waited as he bore down on it, only dodging aside at the last second. Kincaid knew that was going to happen, it was a standard tactic for a wolf when a bear was coming at it. Which is precisely why he flung all his body to the left a fraction of a moment before the wolf engaged its trigger muscles.
Gotcha, he thought triumphantly, only to sail past the huge beast as it went the other direction.
Kincaid hit the empty ground and slid for twenty feet before hitting a big metal storage cabinet of some sort. The metal side panels crumpled inward under his impact. Quickly getting to his feet, he spun and met a leaping wolf with a meaty paw. The hapless wolf had misjudged his speed, thinking it had time to jump onto his back and hurt him.
Claws dug to open the skin, blood spraying from the grievous wound as Kincaid flung the shifter down. The wolf bounced off the concrete and rolled out of his grip, very slow to get to its feet. Blood matted the stone-gray fur, swiftly running down its face and chest. Kincaid had time to see its legs wobble and the wolf go down, leaving a huge red mark on the floor as it tried to get up again. It might survive, but it was out of this fight.
Two down. Four to go.
He was reminded of that fact as another wolf lunged in from one of his blind zones and ripped a chunk of meat from his hind leg. Kincaid whirled instinctively, but the wolf was already done, ducking back out of range as it spat its prize onto the ground.
The wolves were organizing. Another came at him as he’d turned, but Kincaid was ready for that one, kicking out with his other hind leg, forcing the wolf back unless it wanted its skull crushed in.
Staying on the defensive would ensure his doom. A wolf was no match for a bear, just like in the wild, but that was why the wolves didn’t run alone. They moved in packs. Kincaid needed to go on the offensive. The one thing that differed between him and his feral cousins, besides the size difference, was that he was powered by a human brain. He could think of things that normal bears could not.
Using his strength, he grabbed the entire metal cabinet, puncturing it with his claws to get a grip, and spun, tossing it in the direction of two wolves. The huge canines yelped in surprise and ducked out of the way of the half-ton of flying metal. Tools spilled out of it as it whipped through the air, striking the wolves.
The wrenches and other implements didn’t do any damage, but they did serve to distract the Canim. Exploiting that to its fullest, Kincaid charged forward. The metal machinery limited the directions the wolves could use to get out of the way, and he had one of them now trapped between two rows. There was no time for the obsidian creature to turn and run. Its only option was up. It would have to jump onto the assembly line if it wanted to escape, and Kincaid knew this. He was planning for it.
The instant the creature jumped, he altered his direction and slammed into the conveyor-belt-like apparatus. The entire thing jumped and heaved just as the wolf landed, spilling it back off to the side.
