Page 97 of Due North

Everything happens so quickly, but I don’t miss Langston suddenly rushing out of the building to stand behind the protective line of his men.War and Warriorsis clutched in his hand. He sizes the situation up as I hear the others shift behind me.

Paxton tries to talk to me over mind link, but I shut him out. Someone has to be holding him back because I know he wouldn’t stay back on his own, but this isn’t his fight.

It’s mine.

“What are you waiting for?” Langston yells. “Shoot!”

Another round of gunfire sprays from the men’s guns. I watch—terrified—as every bullet heads right for me. These men fear what they don’t understand, and I’m the inexplicable, standing right in front of them.

This isn’t the way it ends, my wolf’s voice rings clear.

30

Paxton

The entire world seems to be set ablaze.

“Let me go!” I roar at Dimitri and Tess, struggling against their hold in my desperation to find Tasha. We didn’t get the chance to shift, and now can barely see each other through the thick, heavy curtain of light that settles around us. I release a growl and jerk my arms, forcing my way from their grasps in my desperation to get to my mate.

White noise buzzes through the air around us. It grows increasingly louder until I can’t hear anything else.

Tasha!

“Tasha!”

Answer me, my wolf pleads to hers.Give me something. Anything.

I saw the moment her power kicked in, but it happened so fast I couldn’t tell if she’d been injured already. I’m not sure how well her power can hold up. There’s no consistency. No training. And she’s never let off this kind of power before, the kind that’s consumed everything around us.

I have to get to her. She has to be okay because my chest feels like someone has taken a sledgehammer to it, and I struggle to breathe.

I feel like I’m swimming through quicksand trying to move toward the area where I think Tasha should be. I can’t move fast enough. I fling my arms wildly in every direction, but there’s nothing to meet my frantic motions. She isn’t here, where I expect her to be. Feeling fucking hopeless, I drop to my knees to check the ground.

“Tasha!” I keep yelling her name over and over. I can’t hear anything over the white noise drowning out everything else, but I can feel my voice getting hoarse.

If she were okay, the light would be gone by now. Instead, it feels like we’re standing on the surface of the sun. The light is outright blinding, and I can barely keep my eyes squinted open. But I refuse to close them. I’ll suffer all the way to my grave if that’s what it takes to find Tasha.

She can’t be gone. I can still feel her energy in the air.

It takes too long before the light clears slowly and hazily, almost like fog. I scramble across the ground, but there’s still nothing to find. An angry growl tears from my throat as I throw my whole body into pounding my hands against the ground. I finally hear myself again, screaming over the buzz of Tasha’s power.

What did this do to her?

Where the hell is she?

“Paxton?” Her voice is so soft I think I imagined it until I force my head up to find her standing over me in her human form, illuminated like an angel. I don’t even care that light still radiates around her. I jump to my feet and launch myself at her. The threat of burns be damned.

But nothing happens as I wrap her tightly in my arms, shielding her body with mine. The light encompasses me as well, not quite ready to abandon her but also aware that I’m not a threat.

I rest my chin on her head, heart pounding erratically in my chest, and gaze out at the scene behind her. All of the men who poured out of the building behind her…

There’s nothing left of them but ash.

Piles and piles of ash several inches high that cover enough ground to make me think… I wouldn’t believe it if I wasn’t seeing it with my own two eyes. I hold Tasha impossibly tighter as she shakes in my arms, and I wonder if she’s seen what’s left of Langston and his men. It seems like her first instinct was to look for me, which I appreciate, but I know when she sees this destruction, she’s going to struggle.

I’m fucking spinning out trying to rack my brain for some way to get her out of here without having to see the mess.

She presses her palms to my chest and tries to turn.

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