Eden stood next to Lorelei and lowered her voice, though Mae would be able to hear a whisper. “Is she going to be okay?”
Lorelei watched the door. “When it’s over. She’ll be fine when it’s over.”
“Soon,” Eden promised, though it felt like a lie. So many howls. Could Jay keep them all from breaking through their lines? Even if fighting that many wasn’t impossible, keeping track of them might be.
It would only take one. Shivering, Eden bent to remove her shoes and socks. Better to be ready, which meant stripping na**d so she could change at a moment’s notice.
She had her shirt off and was reaching for the hooks on her bra when something thumped lightly in the hallway. “Lorelei, get back in the corner with the others.”
“I don’t think so.” She stood beside Eden, her hands at her sides. “You need a beta, right?”
Someone who could stand at her side, the way Colin stood next to Jay. Eden grabbed Lorelei’s hand and squeezed it once. “I need you to keep the others out of my way. If someone comes through that door, I’m giving in to the wolf. And I don’t know if she’ll know how to stop fighting once she starts.”
“No one else is running into this fight,” Lorelei murmured. “No one else could. Just you.”
Footsteps whispered on the other side of the door. Eden released Lorelei, inhaled deeply and caught the scent of wolf and something sharp, almost metallic. No, not a scent, a taste—like chewing tin foil. It raised the hair on her arms and curled her lips back into a snarl as the doorknob twisted slowly.
In the corner, Tammy whimpered, high and terrified, and Eden knew who was coming for them, even if she didn’t recognize the tall, coolly handsome man who pushed open the door.
Lorelei snatched a pistol out of the back of her waistband. “Get out, Christian. Now.”
Talking, not shooting. If Eden were any good with firearms, she’d have snatched the thing out of Lorelei’s grasp and shot the bastard herself, but distraction now could prove fatal. “Shoot him,” she whispered, dragging power up from the depths of her being.
Christian laughed. “Shoot me? Lorelei doesn’t shoot people. Lorelei rolls over like a good bitch and does whatever it takes to keep a man distracted. Don’t you, pretty pet?”
Her jaw clenched, and she gripped the butt of the gun so hard her knuckles turned white. “I’ll find a way to do it this time,” she whispered. “For them.” Her thumb eased the safety button off with an audible click.
Christian laughed again, a sound full of grating disdain riding dominant power. It shredded through Lorelei and smashed into Eden, and for the first time she recognized the true difference between them. Lorelei swayed as if the power had snuffed out her will.
Eden felt nothing but rage. Clean, sweet fury.
The gun slipped from Lorelei’s limp fingers, and Eden caught it in midair. Time constricted as the wolf flooded her, turning an awkward grasp into a smooth spin. Grab the gun. Push Lorelei back toward the others. Eden swooped up to face Christian as she squeezed the trigger.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one who was fast. Her two bullets sank into the doorframe as Christian disappeared into the hallway. She lunged after him, still firing, aware of only one thing. She had to drive him away from her people, away from trembling Lorelei and terrified Mae and Tammy’s little boy, who had seen so many monsters already.
Silence in the hallway, not even footsteps. And then Christian’s voice rang out from nowhere. “You might as well put it down, sweetheart.”
Eden edged into the doorway and peeked in both directions. The short hallway leading to the front bedrooms stood empty, all of the doors still shut. To the right, the craft and sitting room was a cluttered mess, stuffed with Mae’s sewing and stacks of unpacked boxes, but no wolf. Not unless he was hunched in the blind corner opposite the sliding door.
Lifting the gun, she took one careful step forward. “I won’t have any problem shooting you.”
“Won’t you?”
The disembodied whisper shivered past her. Eden spun toward the front of the house again, but no one was there.
The metallic taste had returned, sharp and bitter in her mouth. Magic. “You’re such a f**king coward you need to hide from a bunch of women and a crying kid?” she demanded, straining to listen for the reply. It had to have a direction.
A low, husky laugh. “Do those mind games work on the shitheads around here?”
She swung in the direction of the sound and fired, but the bullet dug uselessly into the far wall. “I’m not the one playing hide and seek.”
“No.” A door slammed across the hall—Zack’s door. “How many bullets will that little gun hold? How many have you fired?”
Eden groped behind her for the doorknob and hauled the door shut behind her. With her back against the solid wood, Christian couldn’t get into the room without going through her.
She almost hoped he’d try. Right now she thought she could gladly rip out his throat without shifting forms first. “Almost enough bullets to bring backup. Want me to fire a few more out the window to bring the men running?”
“You could try.” A force slammed into her hand, knocking the gun free. It landed with a thump and skittered down the hall.
Human instinct screamed for her to lunge after it. Her muscles tensed in anticipation of a move, but her wolf flowed up and snatched control, flooding her with steely resolve.
The weakest members of her pack were behind the door at her back. She wasn’t budging until the threat against them was dying or already dead.
Human sight was only a distraction. She closed her eyes and reached out with that part of her that could slide down the bond connecting her to Jay. He’d closed his emotions off from her, undoubtedly to keep her from worrying, but she wasn’t grasping for him. She was reaching out, out, out, feeling beyond herself with a new awareness.
Instinct.
She felt Lorelei. Mae. The shattered pieces of a woman that must be Tammy, and the terror of her son. Two males, tired and hopeless, reeking of defeat and resigned to death.
And metal. Stinging cold and deadly. Not a wolf—a spell meant to hide one. It flowed toward her in a rush, and she jerked aside just before a force crashed into the door directly where her head had been.
Eden flung her hand toward the sick pulse of magic and closed her fingers around empty air. Except it wasn’t empty—it was a tangible force that singed her palm, a warning jolt that raised every hair on her body as if lightning was about to obliterate her. Screaming her defiance, she tightened her grip and jerked hard, tearing the spell from its anchor.
The wooden disc burned in her hand, and Christian Peters appeared in front of her, his mouth already curling into a sneer.
Then he punched her in the face. It knocked her wits sideways, and that was his fatal mistake.
Eden’s mind skittered in a thousand panicked directions, and instinct took over. Her wolf knew nothing about fighting in human skin, but she knew plenty about vulnerable spots and pressing an advantage.
An opponent who laughed smugly instead of swinging again was an advantage. While Christian was still congratulating himself for planting his fist in Eden’s face, she whipped around, caught him by the shirt and slammed him face first into the wall with all the werewolf strength she still couldn’t control.
He didn’t make that mistake again. He shook off the blow with a growl and kicked at her knee. Fast, but not faster than her. She wrenched to the side and lunged past him, raking her fingers down his face. She left bloody furrows in her wake, marks that would sting but not slow him down.
That was all right. Hurt his body, sting his pride. Awkward and ineffective fighting was a trap that could lure him away from the people she needed to protect. She backed down the hall and scrambled for the gun. He’d have to follow her, if only to keep her from shooting him in the back.
His hand slammed into her shoulder, and she pitched forward into the wall. Christian loomed over her, snarling, and grabbed her by the hair. The movement lifted his arm, and she drove her elbow back into his ribs hard enough to crack bone. His fingers tightened reflexively, ripping at her hair, but she ignored the pain. Instead, she used those scant seconds to tear free of his grip with so much pain she wondered faintly how much of her scalp she’d left behind.
Footsteps sounded too loudly behind her, Christian already recovered and advancing again. She crashed into the table where Mae did her sewing and, whispering a silent apology, snatched up the fancy new sewing machine and whirled, swinging it at his injured side.
Too slow. He slid to the side and the machine crashed through the sliding glass door and slammed against the porch railing.
“That wasn’t smart.” He locked his arm around her throat and squeezed—hard.
She fought to twist away, but he had almost as much werewolf strength and far more human bulk. This time he was braced against her elbows. Trying to kick him only resulted in him hefting his arm up until her toes barely dragged against the ground.
No air. She couldn’t draw in breath, and werewolves needed it. They must need it. If she rolled her eyes to the right, she could see the door to Quinn’s room. The memory of his body flashed through her mind unbidden, dangling from a rope, discolored and lifeless—
No. Eden groped for the table again, fingers scrambling over fabric and fringed tassels—the curtains Mae had been sewing. Then her fingertips brushed something hard.
With the edges of the room already graying in her vision, she fumbled the curtains aside and closed her hand around the long metal fabric scissors. She remembered purchasing them with Fletcher’s money, remembered him urging her to get the large expensive set that would last instead of something cheap and plastic.
God bless him.
Gripping the handle, she whipped the pointy end of those massive, shiny shears around to sink into Christian’s gut.
He screamed, a sound full of as much rage as pain, and footsteps thundered down the hall. Lorelei and Mae, though it was hard to make out their faces with the room swimming. Mae turned toward the head of the stairs but stopped and threw open the second-floor window with a cry for help.