Page 107 of Their Mate
It was like being pinned by a spotlight. My pulse jumped. I couldn’t look away.
Jamie darted in front of me, snapping at the Elder’s line of sight, snarling. Logan joined him, his black wolf rigid with fury. Aidan bristled, teeth flashing. Declan growled deep, the sound a little unhinged. Edward stood steady, not a flicker of fear in his gray eyes.
They didn’t speak, but they didn’t need to. Their bodies said it for them.
She’s ours. You will not have her.
The Elder’s head lifted, his nostrils flaring. His grin widened slowly, knowingly, and a chill skittered down my spine.
He could smell me.
The Elder raised one massive, clawed hand.
And the swarm moved.
All at once, as if some hidden command had been loosed, the lycans clawed over the edge in a frenzy. They no longer climbed one by one, slow and desperate. They poured upward like a living tide, bodies shoving, clawing, leaping, crawling on eachother’s backs to crest the cliff in a mass of howling hunger. It wasn’t natural.
They hit us like a rogue wave, all claws, teeth, and frenzied bodies crashing toward us in a single, horrifying surge.
My wolves met them head-on, snarling and snapping, teeth tearing through flesh as the tide broke against us. Blood flew hot and wet, painting the stone, but the swarm only kept coming.
I fought too, blade slick in my grip, stabbing, slashing, ducking under swipes meant to tear me in two. Tamsin and her men fought at my side, her knife flashing silver in the light of day.
Renewed mayhem engulfed the cliff.
A lycan’s claw grazed my shoulder, but Declan slammed it down before it could finish me, jaws ripping its throat. Another lunged from the side, but Aidan barreled into it, throwing both of them over the lip. My scream tore out of me, but a moment later his dark wolf hauled back up over the edge, bleeding, furious, but thankfully still alive.
“Hold!” Tamsin shouted, though her voice was barely a whisper in the storm.
I slashed another lycan’s arm open and sucked in a ragged breath.
This is what Dane wanted, I thought.The Elder Lycan here, drowning us all in blood. He’s watching. Waiting for us to fall.
The cliff shuddered again, dust raining down. Somewhere below, men screamed. My wolves bled, teeth stained red, fur matted, but still they fought, forming an unbreakable wall around me.
And for the first time, I wondered if even that would be enough.
Aidan, shifted back into human form, yelled out, “The Elder is coming!”
The Elder Lycan climbed up the cliff toward us, but there was nothing we could do to stop him. When he crested the lip, the grin on his face widened and he cocked his head, his gaze leveling with mine.
“Tonight,” he roared, and the sound carried over gunfire and helicopter rotors, over the howls of his army. “Tonight, I finish you. Wolves, humans, andthe Watch.You’ll all die together.”
The words slammed into me like physical blows. My throat dried. My wolves snarled, bristled, but they couldn’t answer, at least not in words.
The Elder Lycan lifted one clawed hand toward the beach, gesturing as though presenting us with a generous gift.
I looked down, and my stomach dropped.
The British line was gone. Soldiers still stood, still moved, still fired, but many of their eyes burned yellow now, their faces twisted. Their howls rose, mingling with the swarm’s. An entire company of trained men turned in minutes.
His lycans had bitten them. All of them.
“Your idiot commander,” the Elder sneered, “thought I would drown in the sea. Thought his cliffs and his guns could break me.” His yellow gaze cut upward, past me, past my wolves, as if Dane himself were within earshot. “But this is the night the Watch dies.”
“No…” The word broke out of me, ragged. My blade shook in my grip.
The Elder grinned wider, teeth gleaming white in the red light of the flares. He lunged forward then, sudden and brutal, there was a blur of mass and claws. My wolves met him with snarls and roars, slamming into his bulk, growling and snapping. Logan clamped on his arm with his teeth, Declan hit his side, Aidan went for his throat, Edward for his legs, Jamie darting in like lethal lightning strikes.
