Page 108 of Their Mate
The Elder didn’t falter. He threw them aside like toys.
“Mine,” he growled, eyes locked on me.
And then a howl split the chaos.
Not his.
Then a chorus of howls, rising sharp and clear over the din.
From the south ridge, white, silver, and red-brown fur streaked into the fray. Magnus first, big as a wall, eyes bright as fire. Thorne, his white wolf as cold and deadly as winter, cutting down lycans like ice shearing branches. Killian was fire itself, a blur of red rage. Callum’s lighter frame darted through gaps, snapping with youthful ferocity. Huge Tobias brought the rear, his growl a steady drumbeat that drove them forward.
And at their head—Zara.
Relief crashed through me so hard my knees almost gave. Reinforcements.
Hope.
The Elder Lycan snarled, his grin fading. I saw his eyes narrow. Was that doubt I saw there?
“More lambs for the slaughter,” he spat.
CHAPTER 38
Sera
Zara’s pack tore into the swarm in a chorus of snarls that split the air. Magnus was a battering ram, Thorne an ice blade cutting clean through flesh and bone. Killian fought like a wildfire no one could outrun. Callum streaked in and out where no sane creature would, surviving on nerve and luck, and Tobias thundered behind him like a wrecking ball
Tamsin didn’t flinch either. Her men—Griff, Bishop, Nox, Eamon—looked at the wall of lycans and simply adjusted. Griff planted his feet and made himself into a barrier that nothing with bad intentions got through. Bishop raised his head and started calling out orders. Nox seemed to disappear from one place and reappear in another, cutting through our enemies like a ghost. Eamon moved like an assassin, his gaze ever wary, his hand steady.
“Left flank!” Bishop’s voice carried clean through the gunfire. He jabbed two fingers, then slashed them down. “Griff—anchor! Nox—your charges, now. Eamon, with me—triage lane here.”
Griff laughed, and shouldered into three lycans at once, lifting one by the throat and using it to club the other two back over the edge. Nox slid down a blistered seam of rock like a spider, tucked an explosive under a lip where bodies were forming a ramp, and flicked his thumb across a striker. He was gone before the blast kicked, stone belching a wave of bodies into the sea.
“Hold!” Tamsin barked, wrist flicking as she buried her blade in a lycan’s eye. “Sera—your nine!”
I moved without thinking, bending and swinging my knife up. A lycan reached for me and found absence where my throat should have been. My blade found the soft spot under its chin, and I shoved until my knuckles hit fur. It spasmed, fell, and Aidan’s wolf crushed what remained under his paws.
“Secondary surge—north spur!” Edward shouted, already moving us before the words finished leaving his mouth. “Magnus—cover! Tobias—down two and back cut! Thorne—on my right!”
Magnus answered with action. Tobias dove onto a ledge I wouldn’t have trusted with my weight, taking a group of lycans with him. Thorne didn’t so much enter the fight as erase part of it; white fur streaked red, his jaws opening and closing and ending lycans in a flash.
And then the Elder Lycan spoke.
“Tonight,” he said in that terrible voice. “Wolves die like men, and men die like wolves.”
He lunged.
Logan met him first. They went down in a tangle, and then my pack was there—Aidan at the Elder’s throat, Declan at his belly, Edward at his back, Jamie flashing across his front.
The Elder threw them all off like they were children, except Aidan. Edward’s howl of pain wrenched at my soul and my face jerked to see him limping, his leg bloodied.
“Grenade!” someone shouted behind me. A shape arced high, kissed the stone near the Elder’s hip, and bounced. Jamie kicked it back, casual as a footballer, and it detonated three ledges down, punishing the swarm instead of us.
Almost on cue, another explosion punched the ridge. The rock under my boots lurched. A fissure skittered between my feet. I grabbed for the nearest solid thing—Logan—and steadied myself on the moving mountain that was my mate.
“Charges set!” Nox’s voice was clear and fierce. Somewhere to our left a low seam of the cliff caved in with a sigh and became a sheer wall the swarm couldn’t climb.
Eamon knelt in the middle of hell and wrapped Edward’s foreleg with a bandage and smacked his shoulder. “Go.” Edward went without looking back, because that’s who he was.
