Page 86 of Meeting Her Mate

This time, knowing that this was the last of the formations, I tore the guns from their hands with my teeth, clawed violently at their Kevlar armor, and thrust my legs and paws into their bodies to send them flying, leaving no soldier standing.

Now, I turned my undivided attention to Will and the horde he was holding back. I bit at their necks, latched onto them from every surface I could find, whether it was their holsters or the straps on the back of their armor, and tore them away from the deluge attacking Will, thinning this horde within a minute, leaving just a few stragglers now barely able to hold their own in a battle with two monolithic werewolves.

Before either of us could get to them, the stragglers ran off unsoldierly, arms flailing, voices pitched high, and legs trembling.

Will shifted back to his human form, rescinded on his knees, and panted heavily as he took a well-deserved break from all the fighting he had been doing. He took off the net the soldiers had thrown on him and sat down on the floor, staring at the pile of bodies on either side of the hallway.

I shifted back with him.

“Maybe it’s time we start using guns,” he said, his thumb gesturing at all the rifles lying strewn on the floor.

“As cover fire or to kill?” I asked.

“Does it matter now? Look at what we’ve done. Fighting them one on one is not effective, as we’ve surmised. There’s no point in going the way of force if our opponents aren’t playing fair, either. Let’s just use them.”

“You’re a stronger wolf than I am,” I said. “So, how about this? I will advance through the remaining floors, rifles in hand, laying suppressing fire for you as you move forward in your wolf form, and confront Blair on the roof before it’s too late. If he escapes on the rooftop choppers, this will all have been for nothing. I’m going to divert the soldiers. You do what you need to do.”

“Or,” Will said, going through the equipment of one of the unconscious soldiers on the floor, “We can use these.” He was holding smoke grenades in his hand. “No bullets. No guns. This is going to be stealthier and will allow us both to make use of our true natures, the wolf form.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I had never wanted to use guns. People often said that fire must be fought with fire, but what they didn’t understand was that after the battle was done, the aftermath was just ashes. If we had used guns like the soldiers, that would have made us no better than them.

Once Will and I had plucked out the remaining smoke grenades from all the bodies of the unconscious soldiers—a feat that took a surprisingly little amount of time—we headed back to the staircase, this time our destination being the rooftop.

As I headed into the staircase, I saw more soldiers coming up from below. Will pulled the pin on a couple of smoke grenades and threw them down the stairwell, filling the whole place with thick white smoke.

Amidst the cacophony of smoke and screams, we climbed our way to the top of the stairs till the only floor above us was the roof. Here, the stairwell ended, and a giant door hung open and askew. From the other side, the full moon peaked from behind the clouds, lending me strength as its beams fell on me.

I pulled the pins on a couple more of the smoke grenades and threw them behind me, covering the staircase entirely in smoke. When Will and I had made it past the door, we pushed it together and slammed it shut. A crowbar lay beside the door. Will picked it up and jammed the door with it.

“It’s not gonna hold for long,” I said, taking stock of my new surroundings.

“We don’t need a long time. We just need to stop Blair from getting on the chopper,” Will said.

But once he saw what I was seeing, Will became just as quiet. This rooftop was not a plain surface. It had many different levels, all of them forming a haphazard maze of air conditioner units, vents, electrical transformers, and fences. There were more stories on top of the roof, creating levels that started from where we stood and ended on the far east of the building, at the top of which was the helipad.

I could not see the helipad clearly from here, nor could I make out the shape of the chopper. To make matters worse, there wasn’t any sign of Blair, Ralph, and Maurice either.

“Will, it’s too damn quiet here,” I said.

“Calm after the storm or before it?” Will asked.

“Neither. We’re in the eye of the storm,” I said. “Shift now!”

As both of us shifted swiftly, soldiers emerged from around us, holding riot shields, wielding tazers, and holding guns.

“Hold!” the captain of the soldiers yelled from behind. “Hold!”

We were surrounded, but what the soldiers could not see was that we were standing on a pile of smoke grenades. Will pierced them with his claws, and almost at once, the air filled with dense, impenetrable smoke, making it impossible for anyone to see anything.

Before the smoke engulfed Will and me, I caught a brief glimpse of Blair standing at the edge of the helipad, looking over the development taking place below,

Will, there’s Blair! You have to stop him;I said as the gunfire started roaring around us, as we parted ways and fled for shelter amidst the confusion of bullets, bangs, screams, and smoke.

Chapter 32: Will

The gunfire, by its sheer volume, made me worried for Alexis’s safety, but so far, in the course of the battles that we had fought in this building tonight, she had more than held her own. Besides, these were regular bullets. They could never pierce past the thick coat of a werewolf’s body. Granted, they could injure gravely, but they were nowhere near as lethal as what Blair held in his hands.

The whole rooftop had turned into a labyrinth of smoke, lasers, bullets, and soldiers. My keen sense of direction allowed me to traverse it and make my way past squadrons, avoiding their fire, ducking past the barriers they had put up, and leaping over the traps they had set on the floor. I only had one goal. Find Blair and destroy the Wolf’s Bane.

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