“You’re bleeding,” Rowan murmured as she came to stand beside Winter.
“It’s not my blood. It’s Logan’s.”
Rowan shot her a shocked look, but Winter had expected it and was already drawing up her shirt sleeve to show her the claw marks. “He’s mine and I’m his. I can’t join the Blackwings without him. I can’t let Kane put him down.”
Rowan shook her head. She looked pale, almost sick in the dawn light. “Well, now I can’t either.”
Hope bloomed inside of her chest. Rowan was her last hope at actually surviving Kane and saving Logan, too.
When Rowan frowned at the woods, Winter followed her gaze to Kane who was making his way out of the tree line. He looked odd, lurching this way and that, his soft brown eyes locked on his mate.
Behind him, the A-Team melted from the woods one at a time, appearing from behind trees like ghosts.
“Kane?” Rowan asked, panic tainting the word.
“R-Roe. Run,” he slurred.
“What?” Rowan asked, stepping down the first stair.
“Run!” he yelled as he tripped and spun. When he hit the ground hard, Winter gasped. There were a dozen feather-tipped darts in his side, maybe more.
“Oh, my God,” Rowan gasped, bolting for him. “Kane!”
Shit! Winter sprinted after her and yanked her back just as she reached Kane, but it was too late. Rowan’s body jerked again and again. She turned in Winter’s arms, her eyes wide and terrified. Now that her body was covered in darts, her eyes morphed from gold with elongated pupils to blue human eyes. Her dragon was going to sleep inside of her.
“No!” Winter yanked furiously at the darts to try and help her, but they were empty. “Rowan, Rowan, listen to me,” she rushed out as the bright-eyed shifters breached the clearing. “Call them. Call them now before you lose her completely.”
“Who?”
“The Bloodrunners and the D-Team.” Winter yanked Rowan’s hair, arching her head back. “Do it, Rowan. I’ll keep you and Kane alive until they get here.”
Rowan rolled her eyes back in her head in a slow blink. “Don’t leave us,” she begged in a whisper.
The A-Team ran toward them, flooding from the woods like a violent tidal wave, yelling their war cries.
“I won’t,” Winter promised. “I need back-up though. Call for help.”
Rowan clicked her firestarter and parted her lips. Winter angled her face away from the heat when Rowan blasted a fireball into the sky.
As Rowan went limp in her arms, Winter set her furious gaze on the closest attacker who had morphed into a tiger shifter.
Her animal roared to get out of her, and when Winter let the beast have her body, she released a hellish fury in a way she had never allowed her cat to have before. Because now she needed to kill. She needed to give into her predator instincts and bleed the assholes to survive. To protect the dragons.
She ran a few steps and leapt, clashing with the Bengal tiger.
And then, over the rush of rage and adrenaline and the deafening sound of roaring animals, there was pain.
Chapter Seventeen
Kill them.
Logan startled awake. Breath ragged, he stared up at the ceiling of Winter’s motel room. His bear was restless, and the edges of his vision were tinged in red. He only got like this when he was about to kill.
He sat up fast and scanned the room for Winter. God, let her be safe. Safe from me. Safe from…
Kill them.
Logan frowned and rubbed his hands over his eyes. A truck engine started up outside. He recognized it as Winter’s. Old, wheezing engine that needed work. That truck was so her. She clung to things with a vice-like loyalty.
Logan padded to the window and pushed the curtain aside just in time to see her driving away.
Hurry. Kill them.
Fuck, he really was losing his mind. Broken bear, broken Logan, but soon it would be all over. A vision of Winter mourning his death flashed across his mind. He hoped she would be okay.
Where was Winter going at the crack of dawn, and without waking him? Maybe she was leaving so she didn’t have to say goodbye. He wasn’t good at goodbyes either.
Her suitcase was open, her clothes scattered, but he’d memorized her things in the way he’d been trained to do. He had memorized every detail about this place, about his room, the office, the cars and license plates of the D-Team and the A-Team.
Fucking kill them.
Logan shook his head hard. Something felt wrong. Off. His skin rippled with gooseflesh, and he had the urge to move. To do something. Anything.
Desperate for a chore, he readied for the day in a rush and glared at his reflection in the mirror as he brushed his teeth. His eyes were the brightest he’d ever seen them, but why? Because today was his last day on earth? Maybe.
“No. Kill them,” he growled around the toothbrush.
What the fuck, his bear could use him to talk?
“Logan, save her. She needs us.”
All his hair lifted on his body. With only a moment of hesitation, Logan spat in the sink and rinsed as fast as he could. He grabbed his keys off the table and bolted out of the room.
Winter was going to see the dragons. She was going to plead for his life, or try to kill Dark Kane…something. He had to protect her from them. Fire, teeth, claws, ashes, ashes.
“Come on!” he yelled as his truck skidded around a turn.
The mountains were beautiful in the morning light, and he would’ve taken a moment to enjoy the last dawn of his life if there wasn’t some bone-deep instinct telling him he was going to be too late.