Page 163 of Moonlit Nights & Northern Lights
“The only traitor here is you,” I spat back, anger overriding common sense. “Working with outsiders—withhumans—to betray your own kind.”
Callum’s face darkened. His hand moved to his belt, fingers wrapping around something black and angular. “Should have stayed in London, Rory.”
He raised his hand to reveal a bulky pistol-shaped device—a dart gun. I caught the faint chemical smell of sedatives on the air.
Maxwell tensed beside me, muscles bunching, preparing to move even through our shared terror.
Callum looked at the three men flanking him and jerked his chin towards us.
“Take care of them.”
27
Theodore
The tranq gun swung towards my chest, Callum’s finger tightening on the trigger.
“DOWN!”
Rory slammed into me with the force of a freight train, sending us both crashing to the forest floor. We rolled through bracken and dead leaves, my shoulder striking something sharp—a root, a rock. The world spun in a kaleidoscope of brown and green.
Then the agony hit.
It wasn’t just pain—it was invasion. Ten times worse than before, Rory forcing himself to shift ten times too quickly. His bones became mine, fracturing and reshaping with sickening wet cracks that I felt in my own marrow. It felt so real, every snapping tendon and stretching sinew. The transformation was happening inside me and to me, my mind unable to distinguish between his body and mine. Muscles I’d never had tore themselves apart and rebuilt, alien and wrong.
I screamed.
The sound that ripped from my throat was barely human, scraping my vocal cords bloody. For a long moment, nothing existed except the white-hot torture, then—
Whizz.
A dart sailed past my ear, so close I felt the displacement of air. Pure instinct kicked in, muscle memory overriding the chaos in my head. Assess. Move. Survive. My father’s voice echoed through the years:“We never freeze, son. The moment you freeze, you’re dead.”My body rolled before my mind caught up, every movement precise despite the lingeringecho of transformation tearing through my nerves. Despite my exhaustion from sprinting here like my life depended on it.
My Glock was in my hand before conscious thought caught up. Training overrode everything else—stance, grip, sight alignment.
Where Callum had stood, a massive black wolf now circled a smaller golden one. Rory. Christ, his wolf was so much smaller than I even understood—absolutely dwarfed by Callum’s bulk. The bigger wolf feinted left, then lunged, jaws snapping at Rory’s throat.
I turned my attention to the three men. “Drop your weapons!”
They froze. The blond one’s tranq gun clattered to the ground, hands shooting up. But the dark-haired man beside him didn’t flinch, raising his weapon towards me.
I put a bullet through his arm.
Blood sprayed across the clearing in a crimson arc. His scream echoed off the trees as he dropped, clutching the ruined limb.
“Maxwell!” Isla shouted, though she made no move to help her associate.
Callum’s massive form struck Rory square in the chest. He flew backwards, hitting the ground hard near the third man. Steel flashed as he drew a knife from his belt.
“Drop all your weapons,now!” The words ripped from my throat. I’d never shot to kill anyone before. Dad had. He’d told me about it, voice heavy with something I hadn’t understood as a child. Now I did. The weight of crossing that line settled over me, suffocating, but Rory’s stream of pain through our bond burned it away. This wasn’t about my conscience—this was about survival. “Last warning, or I shoot!”
Ooof.It crashed into me again—sharp, breathless agony that made my own ribs ache in sympathy. Through the bond, I felt his desperation, his fear not for himself but for me. The golden wolf struggled to rise, one leg trembling beneath him, and Callum prowled closer with predatory patience. Every second I spent dealing with these bastards was another second Rory spent vulnerable, outmatched, bleeding.
The cold mathematics of survival crystallised in my mind: three armed men between me and helping him. Three obstacles that needed removing. Now.
The blond man’s arm drew back, knife glinting.
I didn’t hesitate.
