I smile, my attempt at girl talk a little rusty.
“I could use a woman’s perspective on all this craziness, so I’m going to need you to fight. Your guys are right here fighting alongside you. So do what you’ve gotta do to wake up.”
Ellery starts to pull off his shirt, the unexpected action cutting off my prattling. Concern and confusion trickle through me, but when he reaches for the ties of his sweatpants, I go into a full panic.
“What are you doing?” I demand, my eyes flitting nervously around the room. These guys were ready to tear his throat out for standing too close to their mate—and now he’s stripping?
Three of the other shifters have glowing eyes, one of them visibly clawing at the wall like that’s going to keep him from leaping for Ellery.
Has the sheriff lost it?
“I have to shift to bite her, Noah,” he tells me gently, and I immediately feel like a complete dumbass.
Of course he does. What did I think was going to happen? He was going to go at her thigh like it’s corn on the cob?
Ellery calls his wolf and starts to shift.
There’s an uneasy edge in the air that cuts in and out of my lungs with each jittery breath, and my spine stiffens in expectation. His shift is fast and fluid, which is good because I’m fully expecting one or several members of the Hudson den to lose their shit at any moment.
I’m so prepared for an act of aggression to come from behind me, so convinced that a brawl is about to break out at my back, that I give absolutely zero thought to my own reaction when Ellery’s massive white and gray wolf fits his open mouth around Zara’s thigh.
A feral snarl rips through the room as Ellery lines up his fangs as close as he can to the first bite pattern on her leg.
One second, everything is normal—strained as shit, but normal.
The next second, all I see is red.
Overwhelming rage detonates through my body. Ice burns a path across my skin and—before I can think twice about what I’m doing—I leap for Ellery.
I swipe at the huge wolf with claw-tipped fingers, missing him by centimeters because strong arms band around me from behind and pull me back at the last second.
“Mine!” I half growl, half bellow like some possessed demon from the depths of hell. The circumstances of why we’re here, what we’re doing, who’s with us—all of that vaporizes, vanishes, evaporates in the blazing heat of my fury.
Outrage overwhelms everything else, and all I know is that Ellery’s fangs and his bite don’t belong on anyone but me.
Not unless he’s killing them.
“Ruger, get her out of here before she sets them off!” Ellery orders, but that just blasts my rage into the stratosphere.
I fight Ruger’s efforts to pull me away, my claws digging into the backs of his hands, legs kicking out at him as I snap my blunt teeth at the unconscious waitress, no longer seeing the friend I was hoping for, but an enemy, a usurper who’s trying to claim what’s mine.
“My mate!”
My mate?
Shock ricochets through me at the thought—the word somehow penetrating through the haze of my all-consuming instincts and tapping into sense and reason.
Holy fuck, what’s wrong with me?
I shake my head, trying to untangle some form of logic and separate it from my unhinged and irrational reaction. I go limp in Ruger’s arms as I blink and find reality and control slowly filtering back in.
And that’s when I realize that all hell has broken loose in the room.
Brice and Reid are surging forward, black veins bulging in their foreheads as they swipe out with clawed hands at Perth and Ezra—who’ve both moved to block them.
Brice suddenly shifts, his clothing shredding as his bones snap and twist and a snarling wolf emerges.
Perth immediately follows suit, his massive red wolf blocking the other from leaping at me. The two wolves start to fight, growling and chomping—forcing all the humans in the space to take a step back as they roll across the floor until all I can see is a blur of fur and fangs. Perth gets in a good bite that makes Brice yelp with pain, and some of his other denmates snarl a warning.
“Out!” Ezra commands. “If you don’t have control right now, you need to get the fuck out!”
Only a few of them listen.
Brice stumbles up and bolts from the room, Perth hot on his tail.
Meanwhile, Milo ducks his head and rushes at Ezra.
Ruger scoops me over his shoulder and turns, sprinting out into the hall. It’s bedlam. Nothing but snarls and mania as I lift my head in time to see Ezra clock one of his denmates in the mouth.
Like a siren’s song calling me to the depths of a cold and deadly sea, my frenzied gaze finds Ellery. A pained howl crawls up my throat, but it doesn’t breach my mouth before I see him sink his teeth into another woman’s skin.
33
NOAH
A red-hot brand of rage sears my chest and head, pressing through my flesh, my bone, my brain. The vision of Ellery biting Zara echoes in my mind, each iteration setting me off more. I howl and scream, my throat raw with wrath. Anger climbs the column of my spine and shoots out to every limb, striking through me like bolts of lightning.
My body cracks as a shift starts to wash over me. The cold kiss of my wolf rushes to the forefront, and I barely hang on to the thin thread of rationality as I fight the change. I don’t pay any attention to where Ruger takes me, too lost in my consuming instincts and wild urges.
Ice cold water suddenly rains down on me.
Frigid shock frees me from the turbulent, violent need to tear everything apart. I gasp, filling my lungs and coughing on the water that slips down my throat.
What the fuck!
Like a rubber band against my skin, reality snaps back into focus with a stinging crack. The bubbling torment I was feeling drops to a simmer.
I look around to find that I’m sitting in a large shower surrounded by black gleaming tile. A freezing stream pelts sense into me from a copper showerhead high up on the wall, and Ruger is crouched in front of me.
His presence makes the oversized, glass-paned stall appear much smaller than it is. He swipes his hand down his face, clearing water from his eyes, while his other hand is pressed against my ribs. I should probably feel some satisfaction that I’m not the only one sopping wet, but I’m not sure yet if I want to thank him or throttle him.
Pinpricks of cold crawl over my limbs. My leggings and hoodie are drenched and sticking to me in a heavy, uncomfortable way. I force myself to take five deep breaths before I speak, sinking my metaphorical claws into the patch of calm I find among the quilt of feelings I’m experiencing right now.
“Better?” Ruger asks, his green eyes shining with concern as they scan every inch of my face.
“Debatable,” I rasp as a shiver crawls over me.
My voice sounds dried up and brittle, and I swallow a sip of water from the downpour to restore it.
“You’re no longer howling like you’re going to kill someone, so I can work with debatable,” Ruger counters, and the enormity of what just happened smashes into me with all the ferocity of a frying pan to the face.
“What. Was. That?” I whisper, horrified, staring at the wall behind him. There’s a trickle of satisfaction twisting through me too, which is nuts. I don’t even know where to begin analyzing the insanity of that gloating. It’s as though a part of me is really fucking proud of that tantrum I just threw and eager to kick off again as needed.