There’s no clear air.
It pulses, stronger, on our approach to the rectangular building with the steep pitched roof. Our communal hall.
My eyes water and a cough wracks through me.
Grayson grabs the back of my shirt and draws me to a stop before I reach the sidewalk in front of the hall.
“Mandi, you shouldn’t be here,” he says in a low voice. “This isn’t safe for you.”
“My family is inside.”
“You can’t shift and you have no weapon.” He doesn’t give me the space my body language pleads for. “We should have nicked the gun from the hunter but we weren’t thinking.”
“I’ll be fine.”
I pull out of his hold and rush up the sidewalk, tongue knotting and decisions already made.
But the second I get close, my knee bent to kick open the door, I stall. It’s already open.
The silent night explodes into sound and the door swings inward, ripped off its hinges by the massive moon-mad creature inside.
Saliva pools from its canines. Eyes glow red before it throws itself at me in an impossibly fast maneuver.
The inside of the hall is madness.
I have a half second to glance behind the creature, to note the rest of the room in tatters and wolves fighting for their lives, before the beast knocks me on my ass.
I go down hard before instinct kicks in. Using the wolf’s weight and inertia against him,it, I bring up my feet and kick it in the midsection, sending it sailing overhead.
It hits behind me and I scramble to my side and up, storming into the hall.
The moon-mad wolves, the ones no one assumes are capable of rational thought, have cornered the Ironwood pack inside.
This wasn’t random. It was systematic.
What the hell happened after their last attack on our home? What outcome that night brought them to this point?
“Mandi!” Grayson shouts out my name before the wolf I’d kicked aside lurches to its feet and swipes for me.
He catches its arm before it makes contact and I swivel, grabbing one of the broken splinters of wood from the door.
Attention split, the beast isn’t sure where to look, and with Grayson holding it, I swing the lumber like a bat. It cracks the creature on the side of the head and takes it down.
With no time to waste, I sprint deeper into the hall.
Shouts and screeches bounce off the impossibly high cathedral ceiling and fall like arrows, piercing my eardrums.
The Ironwood pack has shifted. I recognize fur colors, tails arched like war banners, and the snap of teeth. Distinctive howls and familiar roars and growls.
I slap my hands against my ears for a second, overwhelmed and overstimulated.
This would be agreattime to change. This is the moment I’ve waited for, when my wolf finally makes an appearance instead of lurking out of reach.
But she’s not rising, my body isn’t shifting, and I’d dropped my weapon.
I bend to pick it up as two hands slam against my lower back, sending me sprawling. Grayson yells and steps into the spot I vacated as another moon-mad wolf snaps its jaws shut where my head had been.
He takes the brunt of the bite in his shoulder. Blood seeps from the wound, a spray of crimson.