Page 103 of His Claim
Mariah’s eyes met mine then. There was no fear there. Only a spark, faint but burning. I felt it like a knife in my chest.
I dropped to one knee, hands slowly rising behind my head. My heart pounded.
“Thaaaat’s it,” Voss crooned, straightening. “Be a good wolf, and maybe I’ll let her live long enough to watch you die.”
He nodded to the soldier holding her. The man lifted the knife, pressing it harder against her throat. All I could see was the line of red dripping down from the blade.
That was the moment everything stopped.
I didn’t hear the wind. I didn’t hear the shouts of my people behind me. All I heard was the rush of blood in my ears as the beat of an old and violent thing woke inside of me.
The suppressant burned in my veins, trying to hold me back. It didn’t matter. I was done waiting.
My vision narrowed down to a single point: Voss’s arrogant fucking smile.
Then I moved.
Faster than I should have been able to.
Faster than I’d ever moved in my life.
The soldiers barely had time to shout before I hit the first one. My fist connected with his throat and bone crunched. I grabbed his rifle as he fell and fired into the group of soldiers. Bullets tore through armor. Wolves howled in pain.
Voss shouted something, but it was lost in the chaos.
Mariah twisted as the soldier’s knife shifted against her skin. Quickly, she reared away from the blade and threw herself to the side, landing on the ground. She swept her leg out from under her in a wide circle and the guard went down with a shriek.
“Now!” I roared into the comm.
Silas’s and Rowan’s flanks hit the square at once, wolves and humans surging from the smoke, tearing into the Council’s line. Gunfire lit the night. Soren’s soldiers flooded in behind them, sweeping up stragglers with deadly accuracy.
The next moment, the guard leapt to his feet, grabbing Mariah and dragging her against him again, his arm a steel bar across her chest, his blade against her throat again. She fought, twisting, but he was stronger.
Mariah.
I slammed my shoulder into her captor’s back with all the force I had left. The impact drove him forward. His grip faltered just enough that the blade slipped sideways across Mariah’s neck—barely a whisper of contact, but enough to widen that thin red line.
Her gasp punched through me like shrapnel.
The soldier whirled, snarling. I caught his wrist mid-swing and shoved my forearm up beneath his arm, wedging it against his armpit. The joint popped as I wrenched his arm outward, the sound of bone giving way followed by a wet, ugly tear. Blood slicked my fingers as I twisted harder, sincerely wanting to rip his fucking arm off. The knife clattered to the ground, its edge flashing as it spun out of reach.
He screamed, dropping to his knees, his hand bent at a wrong, impossible angle. I grabbed him by the collar and drove my elbow into the side of his head. The scream cut off.
There wasn’t time to breathe.
A rocket launcher hissed from the far end of the square. The round exploded, went wide, and hit a building a little bit away from us, showering us in debris. Rowan’s voice crackled in my comm just before the blast.
I saw Mariah’s eyes flash from green to gold. Her body shivered as she shifted. Her limbs morphed, skin erupted into fur, her scream twisting into a howl that echoed through the burning square.
She hit the nearest guard in full form, black fur with silver streaks catching the light as her teeth closed over his throat. Blood sprayed across her muzzle. Another lunged at her from behind, and she spun, hurling the dying guard in her jaws into the second man, bringing him down. She leapt on his chest and dug deeply through the man’s soft belly with her claws. Two down. She moved like a storm: fierce, fast, and utterly unstoppable.
The fight closed around us in a circle of noise and flame. I moved through it in time increments measured by my heartbeats, one target at a time. My knife sank into the side of a soldier’s neck; I ripped it free and turned to fire at the one behind him. A bullet grazed my ribs, the pain hot. I ignored it.
I caught another soldier’s arm as he swung a baton and drove my knife up under his ribs, feeling my blade hit his vital organs. He crumpled, and I stepped over him, onto the next.
When the smoke cleared enough for me to see, most of the Council’s line was down. Bodies smoldered in the debris, the air thick with blood and smoke. Rowan and Silas were at the perimeter, calling the remaining troops to pull back and regroup.
Then I saw Voss.
