Chapter 9.-2
I’d noted the same, but there were marks on her that night in the hotel room as well. “Some
women like it a little rough,” I said tersely.
“Did she tell you that?” Tessa’s voice was a little sharper than usual, and I frowned and turned my
head toward her.
“Is there a point that you’re trying to make?”
Before she could answer, panic struck me hard, and even Juniper gasped.
Duke.
My second didn’t panic easily. Juniper and I immediately turned. “Duke. Something wrong,” I growled. We started back when the wind shifted, and a scent hit me.
Wolves. Several of them. Immediately, I started to shift, and nobody hesitated to follow. We formed a protective barrier around Tessa, our weakest, and growled into the thicket of woods.
The attack came without warning. Six wolves leaped at once through the brush, two aiming at me. I considered letting my power out, but it was so damn soon. I didn’t need the whole wood to know my status, so I pulled it in and focused on my strength instead.
These wolves didn’t seem to have any training, but they worked well together, and they fought raw.
They were used to fighting for their lives.
Claws ripped into my shoulder, but I ignored the pain as I easily flipped one wolf onto his back and sank my teeth into its throat. There was a roar of despair from the other, but it didn’t live long enough to mourn for long. Turning, I pulled one of the wolves off Dante, leaving him to circle back to Tessa, who was facing her own wolf.
My wolves hadn’t all been with me for long, but they were seasoned. They knew how to fight and protect. By the time two more wolves broke through the woods, our six attackers were dead. I
whirled around and stopped short when I saw the two joining us.
Duke and Nyx.
Alive.
After a moment of tense silence, we all started to shift back. Tessa began to immediately see to
our wounds, and I stared at Duke. “What happened?”
Nyx was still shifting, and I watched her carefully for wounds. “There were wolves surrounding the vehicles. It was a trap, but they’d set another group on you. We backed around.”
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Chapter 9 2
“You shouldn’t have,” I growled as Nyx’s human form panted on the ground. “And you sure as hell shouldn’t have brought her back.”
Duke laughed dryly. “She saved my life. I had a feeling she might come in handy if we had to come back and save your sorry asses. In any case, the vehicles were dismantled. Whoever patrols this border wasn’t just going to let us walk back to town on two legs, and we couldn’t exactly waltz into a human population as werewolves. Like it or not, we’re trapped here until we can find another way out.”
Nyx pushed herself up to a sitting position and studiously ignored my gaze. The bruises I’d seen on her earlier were faded, healed with her wolf. If she’d stayed in wolf form longer, or even shifted again, they’d be gone completely. A new wound ran down her back, but the bleeding had already stopped.
So her wolf could fight. I shouldn’t have been all that surprised. When her wolf was out, I could sense the strength and dominance in her. The troubling part was that when her wolf wasn’t out, I couldn’t sense it at all.
“Did any of your wolves survive?” Juniper asked.
Duke nodded. “Two.”
“We can’t go back,” she insisted. “If they report back to someone, then more will be looking for us. We need to push forward. Maybe when we get to the other side, we’ll find a way out.”
I knew what she was saying. We were already here. Since we couldn’t go back the way we came,
we might as well finish what we came here to do.
I stared at Nyx, and at this point, she was thrusting her chin out defiantly. “You will listen to every order I give you,” I told her. “You will only speak when spoken to, and if you dare to betray me, you won’t like the consequences.”
“What are you going to do? Kill me? We both know you won’t while I’m pregnant.”
She wasn’t wrong, nor could I abandon her. “I am your king. I can protect you in these woods and make your life a little more comfortable when we leave, or I can chain you up and drag you behind me and kill you as soon as your child is born. It’s up to you.”
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