Gray

Pain.

It was the first thing he felt. It surged through his system like a tsunami, building and building, until it burst through the mental wall his brain must have erected around him and slapped him back awake in an explosion of agony.

“Ffhhmmnggg,” he groaned, holding one hand to his head.

Wood splinters shivered and slid away from him as he struggled to sit up. Something in his neck screamed in protest as he did, adding its own torture to the process of coming back to consciousness.

“Ow,” he said, looking around through the stars still in his vision.

What the hell had happened?

He put a hand down to steady himself, and felt something puncture it. “What the fuck?” he snarled, glancing down at his hand long enough to remove the two-inch-long sliver from where it had embedded almost half of its length in his skin.

Tossing it away, he noticed more like it in varying sizes. What the hell was he doing lying in a pile of wood chips?

No, they weren’t wood chips. They were the remains of the door that had come crashing in on him. Gray remembered. He’d heard thudding, the sounds of someone taking the stairs six at a time. A split second later he’d been spun to the floor by the door as it imploded, and then something really hard had hit him on the head.

A new emotion replaced the pain as he took stock of his body and assembled his memories of what had happened. Anger flowed through him, strengthening him, infusing him with its blood-boiling power.

Gray had been sucker punched.

A deep, thundering growl filled the room, vibrating the bits of wood on the floor as he splayed his fingertips and got to one knee. The noise grew lower, shaking some of the larger chunks as well. Gray stood up, a hulking, brutish figure in the darkened shadows of her apartment. His shoulders rose and fell violently as he inhaled several times, blue eyes gone hard and steely, hardening into icy chips.

“Kelly?” he rumbled, his voice the sound of an avalanche as it picked up speed down the mountainside.

There was no answer.

His footsteps made the foundation of the building tremble as he lumbered forward toward her bedroom, noticing the second destroyed door there. There were no other signs of a fight, and he concluded they must be gone.

Gray turned and shouldered his way through the door, taking out a chunk of the frame as he went, not even noticing as drywall remnants fell behind him in a long trail, like a cape made of white dust. He reached the front door and went outside.

His bear was near the surface now and he tested the air, locating her scent easily along with that of another shifter, who could only be Jacen. He filed it away in case he was unable to catch up with him and needed to track him down later.

And kill him.

Gray walked to the edge of the stairs and simply flung himself forward. Concrete cracked and broke as he landed right on the ground, disdaining the slow way. Rising from the slightly crouched landing position, his booted feet strode forward. Each time his feet struck the ground the concrete cracked as he summoned the power of his bear to him, wrapping it through his body and infusing him with the strength of its size.

Up ahead, around the corner of a building, he heard a scream.

He sprang forward, each long stride carrying him ten feet forward as he picked up speed, coming around the edge of the building, intent on nothing more than rescuing Kelly and breaking the other man’s neck.

How dare he do anything to Kelly! How dare he threaten her unborn child! Gray was going to make him pay for what he’d done, and he would ensure that it never happened again. Ever. To anyone.

The pair of them were visible far ahead. Jacen was walking forward with Kelly at his side, one hand wrapped around her arm in a vise-like grip he knew she would never be able to break. Not unless Gray intervened somehow. He prepared to run after them, but Kelly pulled several feet away with an unsuspecting move, and it brought Gray to an immediate halt.

He’d seen the sunlight flash against something long and metallic that was pressed up to Kelly’s stomach. A knife. Shit. If he came charging at them, the apparently crazed shifter would simply shove it into her stomach, killing both Kelly and her child. Gray was filled with bloodlust, but the threat to his mate reached through even that and slapped some cold sense into him.

Another plan was needed. A smarter one.

“Think,” he rumbled to himself, stepping back out of view. “You need to do this smart. Engage your brain.”

The red fog faded briefly from his mind, and was replaced with a map of the complex that housed all the residence buildings of the women under Cadian care. It was a rough square overall, but the inside of it was winding and zig-zagging, a result of the various curves of the land and the easiest way to build as many buildings as possible.

Jacen was currently taking Kelly through the middle of it. If he kept going though, eventually they would break out of the complex and into the forest beyond, where he could shift and haul off Kelly that way.

Gray needed to stop them before that happened. Approaching from behind wasn’t an option though. Jacen would know. The wind was blowing from the north today as well, and it would carry his scent well before he could get close. No, Gray needed to get around them, to lie in ambush, where he could deal with the knife first to keep Kelly safe.

Unfortunately, there was no easy route to do that. By the time he got around, Jacen would be far too close to the perimeter for comfort. He needed a shorter path. A path that didn’t exist.

So make one, a part of his brain suggested, replaying simulated images of Jacen bursting through the door into Kelly’s house.

Too dangerous, he decided. He could just as easily kill someone if they happened to be in the way of his wild charging. Going through the buildings wasn’t an option. He paused and rested an angry hand on a railing leading up to a random second-story unit. The metal warped and shrank under the pressure his hand applied.

He couldn’t go around. He couldn’t go through either. Angrily he kicked the bottom stair, shattering it. Pieces flew in every direction, even farther up the stairs.

Gray jerked. The stairs. Up the stairs.

Without thinking, he launched himself up the stairs. Hitting the landing, he flexed his legs and flung himself onto the roof. Two strides and once he was sure the area below was clear he landed. One step and a powerful jump and he flung himself a full two stories up into the air onto the next roof, landing as quietly as possible, his limbs spread apart to absorb the impact.

Then he scrambled over the top, jumped down, and zipped across. He alternated taking the stairs, and then jumping straight to the roof as he landed in backyards and front yards of the units. It was more tiring than just barging through walls, but he easily got ahead of Jacen and Kelly, and without making too much noise either.

He hoped.

Peering through a bush, he saw their shapes as they came forward, Kelly still struggling and trying to call out for help before Jacen could shut her up with the blade, alternating resting it on her stomach and then her neck.

A crimson filter dropped over his vision once more, and Gray’s arms tingled with power as he prepared to make his move.