Page 11 of A Gathering Storm
"These aren't brothers." I gesture at the unlikely alliance, rain streaming down my arm. "They're liabilities waiting to put knives in our backs."
Rafe shifts slightly, a predator's economy of movement. His golden eyes glitter with amusement. "Charming. Does he bark on command too?"
My wolf surges forward, and I let it show in the way my muscles coil. "Watch your tongue, cat, or I'll tear it out."
"Try." Rafe's smile is all teeth and promise.
"Enough." Declan's alpha command ripples through the air, but I'm past caring about hierarchy.
"No, not enough." I round on him, years of following orders that led to blood and betrayal boiling over. "You want to trust them? Fine. But don't expect me to pretend this ends any way but badly."
Finn's aquamarine eyes flash with something older than irritation. When he speaks, his voice carries the weight of centuries. "Your paranoia serves no one, wolf. Some wounds are self-inflicted."
The words hit like claws across old scars. My vision goes red at the edges.
"Don't lecture me about wounds, sea-snake." I lunge forward, ready to test whether dragon scales can withstand wolf fury. "Where were you when the Blackwater pack turned traitor? When Graeme tore Elena's throat out in front of her cubs? When we burned our own dead because you were too busy mourning yours?"
Declan's iron grip catches my shoulder, holding me back with pure alpha strength. But I see the flash of pain in Finn's eyes before they go cold as winter seas.
"I was learning what happens when dragons lose control," Finn says quietly. "Would you have preferred I stayed and turned Stormhaven to glass?"
"I would have preferred you fought." The words tear from my throat. "We needed you. The packs needed...”
"The packs needed to learn they couldn't rely on dragon-fire to solve their problems." Finn's form shifts slightly, scales rippling beneath his skin like moonlight on water. "Just as you need to learn that paranoia is a cage you lock from the inside."
Grayson rumbles low, a bear's warning. "Both of you, stand down. This achieves nothing."
"Nothing?" I whirl on him. "This alliance achieves nothing. Declan's desperation has him grasping at shadows and myths."
Kian laughs, sharp and bitter. "Pot, meet kettle. At least we're honest about being damaged goods."
"Honest?" My laugh is darker than his. "You're a tiger who fled his own clan. Rafe profits from the chaos that tears us apart. Grayson hides in his boat pretending the sea will protect him. And Finn...”
The crack of rifle fire cuts through my tirade.
A line of fire traces across my shoulder—silver bullet, grazing but not embedding. My wolf roars to the surface as armed figures emerge from the treeline. Military precision. Professional movements. The kind of mercenaries who know exactly what they're hunting.
"Down!" Declan's command comes a heartbeat before the world explodes into violence.
I don't think. I move.
My wolf tears free in a rush of fury and rain-slicked fur. The first mercenary doesn't see me coming—I'm on him before he can swing his rifle around, jaws crushing his throat in a spray of copper and cordite. His body armor means nothing when I find the gaps, the soft places where life bleeds out.
Gunfire erupts around me. Through the chaos, I catch glimpses of the others: Grayson in bear form, massive and unstoppable, batting soldiers aside like toys. Kian, still humanbut moving with tiger grace, using stolen knives with surgical precision. Rafe melting through shadows, appearing behind targets with panther silence.
And Finn—Christ, Finn becomes something torn straight from nightmares and legend, a full dragon blazing with fury. He moves with liquid speed, and every step sears the ground until nothing is left but scorched earth.
A mercenary swings toward Declan's exposed flank. Without hesitation, I launch myself between them, taking the silver rounds meant for my alpha. The bullets burn like brands, but I've been burned before. My jaws find the shooter's arm, tearing through Kevlar and flesh until he's screaming.
Declan's wolf joins mine, and for a moment we move as one unit—the synchronization we'd perfected before trust became a luxury we couldn't afford. He goes low, I go high. He herds, I strike. The old patterns that kept us alive through dozens of battles.
"Behind you!" Kian's shout has me spinning to catch another mercenary's rifle in my jaws, wrenching it away before his claws open the man from sternum to pelvis.
The tiger who fled his clan just saved my life. The irony tastes like blood and rain.
More soldiers pour from the trees—too many, too well-prepared. They know our weaknesses: silver for wolves, cold iron for Rafe's kind, specialized rounds designed to pierce shifter hide. This isn't random. Someone sent them. Someone who knows exactly what we are.
Grayson roars as silver finds his shoulder. Rafe hisses as iron grazes his ribs. We're being herded toward the cliff's edge, the storm-churned sea at our backs.
