Page 106 of Their Mate
Tamsin and I took the center. Bishop anchored us at our backs. Nox, very calmly, slid a blade into an eye socket, and then another and another, never once looking like he was trying. Griff laughed as he fought, lifting a lycan by the throat and holding it up for Jamie to claw it open from throat to ass. Eamon kept moving, keeping an eye on everyone for injury, but also using his claws to rip through a lycan or two as they lunged at us.
“Flares,” Tamsin snapped, batting a claw away from my ribs with the back of her pistol. “Now.”
Beside us, Nox dug two out of his belt, yanked them alive with his teeth, and hurled them down into the knot climbing below us. Red fire spun, briefly beautiful, then took three out by the eyes. They howled and fell, dragging others with them.
“More incoming!” Bishop barked.
“Let them,” Nox said. “We’ll kill them all.”
A lycan got through. I was too slow seeing it, too slow reading the angle. It came over the edge low, clever, not where our eyes were, and it was on me before I could bring my blade up, its breath hot and rancid. There was no time to think. I spun and slammed my knife up into the soft inside of its forearm and yanked, felt tendons part with a wet snap. It screamed, I kicked into its ribs, and then I was stumbling backwards toward the cliff edge. The sky was suddenly everywhere.
A sandy blur hit me from the side. It was Jamie, with a shoulder in my gut, rolling us both away from the drop. My back slammed the rock, breath gone, stars bursting across my eyes. For a moment, he shifted back to human form and grabbed my chin with his hand.
“Eyes up, lass,” he panted, grin brief and bright even with someone else’s blood in his teeth. “You don’t get to die today.”
“Right,” I managed, lungs restarting like stubborn machinery. I shoved myself to my feet, drove my blade down into the screaming thing and made it go quiet. Beside me, Jamie shifted back into his wolf and snarled as he lunged right into another lycan.
Another sound threaded into the chaos then: orders barked through radios by men down below. The British had made the beach, and they were trying to get control amidst the absolute mayhem down there.
“Hold!” a voice yelled from somewhere down the cliff. “Hold the?—”
A deep heavy rumbling answered. The Watch blew part of the lower cliff out from under the swarm. Shattered stone and broken bodies went down together in a tumbling mess, the roiling sea swallowing the whole lot. For a heartbeat all was silent. Then the next wave climbed over the dead and kept coming.
A lycan surged toward us and Edward flew at it like he’d been waiting for an invitation. I wrapped my hand around a broken chunk of rock and hurled it down into another’s open mouth. It choked, and then Aidan leaped down and removed its head. Declan leapt off the lip of the cliff to take two more down with him, making me scream in terror. He jumped down, and came back up through a spray of gore that would have made me gag if I’d had any oxygen to spare.
A crackle cut across the open air, a loudspeaker somewhere below. Dane’s voice poured through static. “Sections Two and Three, hold your fire! Detonate only on my mark—repeat, only on?—”
I didn’t hear the rest. The ground lurched under my boots as a slab of stone sheared off to our right in a grinding scream. Half a dozen lycans went with it, flailing into the frothy water. I pitched sideways as the ground went out from underneath us.
A hand caught my forearm—Logan’s, human again. He’d moved faster than I could track. He hauled me back from the edge with a grunt, and when I blinked the grit out of my eyes, he was all wolf once again.
“Thanks,” I said, knowing he couldn’t answer, then threw myself back into motion again.
Another wave hit. We gave, then took, then gave again.
Tamsin pressed her back to mine, her pistol cracking again and again until the slide locked back empty. She tossed it, drew a knife, and didn’t flinch. “We can’t hold forever!” she shouted over the din.
“I know!” I gasped, blade slipping in my sweaty grip as I jammed it into a lycan’s neck. Hot blood splashed my arm. “But if Dane’s detonations keep collapsing the cliff, we’ll all go with it!”
For a heartbeat, everything slowed enough for me to look back at the circle of wolves around me. Logan’s fur was matted and stained with red. Aidan bled from his flank. Declan grinned at me across a corpse like we were sharing a joke no one else heard. Edward held the line because someone had to, and he only ever chose hard jobs. Jamie shot me a too-quick wink, his wolf form slinking toward me.
“Stay with me,” I whispered.
The sky to the south lit with something that wasn’t the sun. The British fought hard on the beach down below. The Watch’s guns stuttered for a moment and Dane’s voice rose through the speakers. I made myself a promise that I hoped I’d live to keep: if he didn’t die today, I’d kill him sooner or later.
As if summoned, another blast ripped through the stone a hundred yards down the ridge. The cliff belched smoke and dust, and another dozen lycans vanished, screaming, into the surf.
And still more came.
The Watch were firing in disciplined bursts from their nests, but their fire lines were breaking under the sheer numbers. Down on the beach, British soldiers tried to hold the line, bodies of both lycans and humans already littering the sand in dark heaps. The helicopters couldn’t pick off targets fast enough.
The swarm parted again, down on the beach, slower this time.
The Elder Lycan’s silver-shot fur gleamed wet in the sun. He lifted his head and breathed in. My stomach clenched; I knew what he smelled.
Me.
From down on the beach, his gaze slid past the wolves, past Tamsin, and locked on mine.
