Page 12 of A Gathering Storm
Then Finn does something I've only heard about in whispered stories.
He calls the storm into himself.
Lightning doesn't just strike near him—it flows through him, controlled and directed. The rain becomes ice-sharp projectiles. The wind howls with dragon-voice, sending mercenaries tumbling like leaves. For a handful of heartbeats, Finn Rowan becomes the myth we all feared and needed, power incarnate in scales and starlight.
The remaining mercenaries break and run. Those who don't lie still in the rain, their blood mixing with water and flowing toward the cliff's edge in pink rivulets.
My wolf retreats slowly, bones cracking back into human shape. Rain sluices the blood from my naked skin—theirs and mine, the silver wounds already closing but still burning like brands. Someone tosses me the remains of my shredded jeans, and I pull them on, ignoring the way my hands shake.
Not from fear. From the rush of fighting alongside them. From the realization that despite everything—despite my rage, my distrust, my certainty that this would fail—we moved like a unit. Like pack.
Like brothers.
Lightning illuminates us all: Grayson pressing his massive hand to his shoulder, blood seeping between his fingers. Kian wiping mercenary blood from a stolen blade with practiced efficiency. Rafe emerging from shadows, golden eyes taking inventory of wounds and threats. Finn's scales still rippling with trapped lightning, beautiful and terrible. And Declan, my alpha, looking at me with something I haven't seen in years—trust.
"We don't leave ours behind, Jax." Declan's voice cuts through the storm with alpha authority, but there's something else there. Understanding. Acknowledgment of what just happened. "Not anymore. That's what this is—what we are now."
The words should ring hollow. Should taste like lies and future betrayal. But standing here with rain washing blood from our skin, with the bodies of our enemies scattered like brokendolls, with the echo of coordinated violence still singing in our veins—they don't.
Thunder crashes overhead, a percussion that matches my hammering heart. Without discussion, we form a circle on the clifftop. Six men who shouldn't trust each other. Six predators who should be at each other's throats. But the blood on the stones isn't ours—not the blood that matters. We bled for each other tonight, fought for each other, killed for each other.
I meet Grayson's steady gaze first. The bear who stood solid as stone while bullets flew. He nods once, slow and deliberate.
Kian next, the exile whose blade saved my neck. His amber eyes hold a challenge and a promise—I've got your back if you've got mine.
Rafe's golden stare carries amusement and something darker. The panther who could have vanished into his shadows but stayed to fight. His slight smile says he knows what I'm thinking, what we're all thinking. This changes things.
Finn's aquamarine eyes are ancient and knowing. The dragon I cursed for abandoning us just turned the storm itself into a weapon to protect us. The weight of his gaze makes my wolf bow its head—not in submission, but in recognition. He came back. When it mattered, he came back.
Finally, Declan. My alpha. My brother in all but blood. The man I've followed through hell and would follow through worse. His storm-grey eyes mirror mine—scarred, suspicious, but holding onto something that might be hope.
"Fine." The word scrapes from my throat like claws on stone. "But when this goes to hell, don't say I didn't warn you."
Kian's laugh is sharp as his blades. "Wouldn't dream of it, wolf."
"It's already hell," Rafe observes, nudging a corpse with his boot. "The question is whether we burn together or alone."
Grayson's rumble might be laughter or pain. "Together means we might survive what's coming."
"Survival's overrated," Finn says quietly, his scales finally settling back into skin. "But purpose... purpose is worth bleeding for."
The storm rages around us, but we stand firm. Six killers, six broken men, six predators who just discovered they might be something more. The mercenaries came prepared for shifters. They didn't come prepared for us. For this.
CHAPTER 7
DECLAN
Dawn bleeds grey across Stormhaven's sky, the kind of morning that clings to skin and seeps into bones like a fever. The air tastes of copper and ozone, thick with the aftermath of lightning that split the world open just hours ago. I stand at the clifftop's edge, watching my newly-sworn brothers disperse like ghosts into the mist that rolls off the Atlantic in endless, hungry waves.
Jax heads north along the coastal path, his shoulders hunched against more than just the wind that cuts across the moor. His rage still simmers just beneath the surface—I can smell it on him, acrid and dangerous as burnt gunpowder. The violence did nothing to ease whatever darkness rides him. If anything, it's made him hungrier for blood. Grayson trudges toward his boat moored in the sheltered cove below, each step deliberate as a funeral march. The big bear-shifter moves like a man carrying the weight of sacred oaths, and maybe he is. The deep places call to him in ways the rest of us can't understand.
Kian simply vanishes over the cliff's edge—probably rappelling down to whatever hidey-hole he's claimed among the jagged rocks where smugglers once ran French brandy and Spanish gold. The tiger-shifter trusts vertical stone morethan horizontal ground, more comfortable dangling over certain death than standing on solid earth. Finn melts back into the waves with barely a ripple, his dragon form cutting through water black as spilled oil. The sea welcomes him home with the whisper of ancient currents and deeper mysteries. And Rafe... Rafe dissolves into shadow between one blink and the next, heading toward his dockside kingdom where information flows like currency and loyalty can be bought with the right combination of fear and gold.
Six men bound now by necessity and violence, by shared enemies and the grim knowledge that alone, we're all dead men walking. The blood pact we swore in the stone circle still burns along my forearms, the cuts sealed but not forgotten. Old magic doesn't heal clean—it leaves marks that go deeper than skin, binding us in ways that make pack loyalty look like a casual friendship.
The storm passed hours ago but its echo lingers in my bones, a resonance that makes my teeth ache and my wolf pace beneath my skin like a caged thing. Lightning still tastes copper on my tongue, sharp and electric as fresh blood. The air hangs thick with salt and something else—the electric aftermath of power unleashed, of oaths sworn in blood and fury while thunder rolled overhead like the drums of war.
Together, we might be something else. Something worse than the sum of our individual darkness. Something better than the scattered, suspicious alphas we were before the mercenaries came hunting with silver bullets and military precision.
