Elle

She backed into the bathroom reluctantly, straining for one final glimpse of Braden as he disappeared into the hallway. But he was gone, and the door swung closed behind him with a finality she disliked intensely. She was alone now. In the boys’ bathroom.

Elle sniffed tentatively at the air. It didn’t smell bad. She looked around.

She cursed softly. He was right. It was cleaner than the girls’. She’d heard stories that it was usually that way with public bathrooms, but seeing was believing.

It’s also the middle of the night; it’s been cleaned since the end of the school day.

Her ego somewhat assuaged, Elle refocused on current matters. Her…boyfriend? Lover?

“No, he’s your mate. Just accept it already and stop being so terrified of that fact.”

She’d felt the way the world suddenly changed when he held her. That wasn’t just a sense of relief at being rescued. There was far more to it, far more emotional involvement. The two of them were connected somehow, and she’d be a fool to keep denying that any longer.

Either way, he was out there, taking on an unknown enemy of unknown strength. With her trapped in the bathroom. It wasn’t a very dignified hiding spot, but if she needed to hide, then she would hide. Elle wasn’t above that, and she was well aware on just how outmatched a single shifter was for her.

No matter how hard she tried to justify hiding, however, she couldn’t accept it. Her instincts were all screaming at her that she needed to be out there. That Braden would need her at some point. How, though? What could she realistically expect to accomplish against a shifter? They were bigger, stronger, and faster than her. That was one hell of a starting disadvantage to overcome.

Elle thought back to her imprisonment. They weren’t smarter though. Mistakes had been made. Critical ones that had allowed her to free herself. Nor had they noticed the air duct like Braden had. She’d been in her little hiding spot in the ducts, blocked from going any farther by a spinning fan, but at least out of sight of anyone who stuck their head into the shaft. But they hadn’t even done that. They’d come into the room, started freaking out that she was gone, searched the room and then left, assuming she was somewhere inside the school. They could be outsmarted. Whoever the kidnappers were, they weren’t perfect, or infallible.

Which meant that they could be beat by a human. And Elle was most definitely one of those.

She strode across the floor, her hand closing around the handle. Even as she prepared to pull it open, the sound of fighting echoed through the building, the walls shaking. Someone had just taken a severe hit. More followed, one of them sounding close by.

“You need to do this,” she told herself, speaking the truth. Something almost physical in nature was pulling on her, dragging her out the door. A sense of foreboding filled her as she contemplated staying hidden. It was a dark, sickly feel, greasy and slippery as it ghosted through her, sending shivers up and down her spine. Elle’s resolve hardened and she yanked open the door.

She emerged into a warzone.

Bellowed cries and challenges thundered back and forth through a cloud of dust that filled the air. She started coughing almost immediately, bringing her sleeve to her mouth so that she could hopefully filter out some of the particles. A dark shape went charging by, vaguely illuminated through the dust by the flashing lights overhead. Those that still worked at least.

How the hell had this happened already? Elle had been in the bathroom for several minutes at most, and the fighting had only been going on for perhaps one of those. Yet the school hallway looked like it had been the epicenter of an explosion.

Maybe that’s what that big rumble was?

Up ahead she heard more sounds, and started making her way toward them. What she was going to do when she got there was a bit more vague, but until she could assess the situation Elle couldn’t know what she needed to do to help. Keeping one hand to her face, she felt her way forward with the other, touching the wall on her right. More than once she had to climb over some sort of debris.

Something started to yelp in pain before being cut off abruptly. The sound of something breaking—bone, it had to be bone—reached her ears, and it was such a loud, life-taking sound that she retched into her shirt softly as it became clear she’d just heard someone die.

“I’ll kill you for that!” a voice screamed into the air, the same one she’d heard over the PA system in fact.

“You’ve tried your best already,” Braden’s voice came back from somewhere up ahead, muffled by the dust and sounds of at least two others fighting. “What makes you think you’re going to succeed now? Only two more of your lackeys, and then I’m coming for you.”

Elle shivered at the promise of death in her mate’s voice. He would stop at nothing to fulfill that vow she knew. Not even the concept of death would slow him down. She needed to get to him, to help.

Gray roared, a mixed sound of triumph and pain, then suddenly was silent. For a moment, nothing happened. She peered through the haze in the air, but couldn’t see more than a foot or so in front of her at best. The closer she went, however, the more evident it became that something was up. Debris littered the floor from almost the instant she stepped out of the bathroom. Now though it was to the point she had to start actively climbing over chunks of wall or ceiling that had come crashing down.

Her foot hit something squishy and Elle let out a little squeak, immediately clamping both hands over her face to keep quiet. She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to keep herself calm while she crouched down, slowly extending her hand, afraid of what she was going to find. After several tentative probes, her fingers closed around something that could only be a human foot. She kept going, and found the ankle it was attached to.

The skin under it was cooling rapidly. Elle yanked her hand back, working hard not to lose her stomach. She’d just touched a dead body. She scrambled backward, losing several steps of hard-won progress, leaning heavily on the wall. She was going to have to move past this to continue. But how could she?

A roar shook the building to its core, sending Elle into a huddled crouch against the wall as the sheer physical pain from the noise drove her down. That couldn’t have come from a human throat.

“He’s shifted!” Braden shouted. “Going in!”

She could hear her mate, but couldn’t see him. He was still somewhere up ahead, in amongst the worst of it all. Elle knew that’s where she needed to go, but judging by the increase in sounds, the two shifters had taken on their animal forms, and were now fighting in the close confines of the school.

How was she supposed to be of any help in a situation like this? She was beginning to think that her gut was leading her incorrectly. There was no place in the midst of this carnage for someone like her. She should have done as she was told and stayed in the bathroom!

The entire hallway shook, and the ground came up to slap her in the face as something titanic landed heavily right next to her. All Elle could see from where she lay on her side as the ground stopped shaking was a huge black shadow in the dust. She couldn’t tell if it was Braden or whomever he was fighting.

Yet another obstacle she’d have to overcome somehow. The list of those was just piling up. Elle spat blood, realizing she’d bit her lip when she’d lost her balance and hit the ground thanks to the mini-earthquake. The shadow rose to its feet and plunged out into the dust again, disappearing, leaving a fresh cloud in the air.

She needed to get rid of the dust. To clear the air so that she could see. But how? Elle coughed. The dust was starting to get into her mouth, drying it and her throat out. She needed water.

Water. That was it!

She flung herself to her feet, feeling along the wall, heading back the way she’d come. She was losing progress, but it didn’t matter. Eventually the dust started to thin, and she spied what she was looking for.

“Ah-ha!” she shouted, pulling the red latch down. The little plastic bar snapped, purple dye shot out, splashing onto her hand even as she yanked it back out of the way, and a moment later bells began to ring and water started sluicing down from the ceiling.

The dust clouds started to dissipate as she stalked back down the hallway toward her mate. The water that was stored in the pipes was old and gross, and smelled horrific. But as it continued to spray, it started to mix in fresh water drawn from the pipes, pumping it into the air and starting to clean her.

Elle marched forward, past the dead body, which thankfully wasn’t Gray either, but someone she didn’t recognize. Up ahead she saw one bear hit another as it charged. They disappeared through a wall. She called up a mental map of the school, and realized they were now in the gymnasium of the elementary school.

She rushed ahead, now that she could see where she was going, and that the coast was clear. As she hit the lobby, she noticed Gray on the other side of a ruined wall, holding someone tight to his chest. He must have heard her approach and turned, and she saw Kelly sobbing softly in his arms.

The big shifter lifted eyes filled with anger and concern to her, but he nodded in response to her unspoken question. Kelly was okay. Somewhat mollified by that, she turned her attention to the huge hole in the wall where the doors to the gym had been. Inside she could hear the two of them going crazy.

It was time she got involved, and ended this for good. Elle made her way forward, hopping over debris, and in one case even climbing over a section of mangled wall and door that blocked her way. Compared to the hallway the gym was mostly free of debris. It did, however, contain two giant bears engaged in a violent deathmatch. The wooden flooring was ripped and gouged from their paws, the claws on them scoring deep grooves as they battled.

Many of those grooves were filled with blood. The red lifeblood of both shifters was smeared all over the place, red blotches that were only just starting to dry. She could see the fur on both of them matted and sticky. Fresh droplets sprayed as one of them landed a blow on the other.

Elle wasn’t sure whether to be happy or scared at that. With a start she realized she had no idea what Braden’s bear looked like. They’d spent so much time together, and she’d never seen his other side.

One of the bears saw her, the one who had just taken the hit, and it went crazy. She thought for a moment that the deep, dark black-colored giant was Braden, but when the animal broke free and started barreling right at her she decided to change her mind.

The other bear, a lighter colored ash-gray beast, leapt forward and shouldered the rampaging shifter aside in a protective move that could only be something Braden would have done. Elle dashed in the opposite direction, running for the far end of the gym. Some of the doors there were open, and she spied the equipment room. There had to be something in it she could use to help out.

She glanced behind her to see that the black bear had evaded Braden and was coming at her once more. This time it was going to reach her before Braden could catch up. It was up to her to come up with something. Unfortunately, the room didn’t have anything useful that her frantic glance revealed.

So Elle did the only thing she could think of: she turned and ran deeper into the equipment room. Past the hockey nets and bins of various balls, over the thick cushy blue mats, back and back into the deepest recesses of the room. Behind her the bear started tearing at it all, ripping out of the way what she’d wormed her way through.

A bellowed roar of anger whipped her head around, and she stared in surprise. The bear was completely caught up in the various netting that she’d knocked loose. One paw had been shoved through a hockey net, while the volleyball nets had come unwrapped, and, with the flailing of its paws, had gotten all wrapped around its limbs.

Abruptly the shape shrank, revealing itself to be a smaller than average—for a shifter—human. Using his hands, he began to extricate himself from the nets, grinning at her the entire time.

“I’m going to get you,” he promised, his voice slightly nasally.

“See, normally I would be scared of you,” she said conversationally from where she sat high up into the elevated ceiling of the room, enjoying the comfortable feeling of the pile of thick blue crash-mats she was on top of. “What with the superhuman strength, blood flowing down your face, and the crazy look in your eyes that says you’re going to kill me.”

“I am going to kill you.”

Elle shook her head. “No, I said normally I’d be scared of you. But I’m not.”

“Yes you are.”

She laughed. An actual, genuine laugh. “No, I’m very much not scared of you today.”

The man paused. And why is that? You know I could break every bone in your body with ease.”

“You could. If you had the chance,” she added, looking behind him.

The man froze as something very large blocked out the light from outside the equipment room. A low rumbling filled the room.

“You forgot about him,” she said, pointing at Braden.

The man turned, but it was too late. Braden’s mouth opened wide, closing around the other shifter’s head. He screamed. She closed her eyes,  not needing to see what happened next. The scream became a shriek, which was eventually cut off by a final crunch.

Then silence rang out through the room, broken up only by the sound of Braden retreating, the broken nets dragging softly along the floor behind him. She stayed that way for several long seconds, until someone cleared their throat.

“Elle.”

Her eyes flew open to reveal Braden standing in the doorway, once more in his human form.

“Braden!” she shouted, flinging herself into his arms.

“Oomph,” he grunted. “Careful, a few of these are painful.”

She hugged him again, as gingerly-hard as she could. “You’re okay,” she breathed.

“I’m okay.”

Standing up, she grabbed his face and pulled him down to her level, uncaring of the blood smeared on her arms and clothing. It was over. It was finally over.

“This has undoubtedly been the worst night of my life,” she stated. “Yet, I somehow also feel stronger because of it. As if I’ve realized some things about myself that I never knew I possessed.”

“Like a streak of crazy a mile long?” he queried, shaking his head at her. “Seriously, what the hell were you thinking coming in here?”

“I was thinking that I needed to be here. To do something to help you. My entire body, mind, soul, whatever you want to call it, was telling me that. And look, I came here, and I helped end the fight. You wouldn’t have gotten him so easily if I hadn’t focused his attention on me.”

“That’s one hell of a gamble.” His voice was stern.

“I know. I didn’t want it to be quite that…hair-raising. And if it’s all the same to you my love, I’ll be perfectly fine if I don’t get kidnapped ever again.”

“You and me both,” he growled.

Then his eyes shot toward the opening. In it stood Gray and Kelly, the latter now walking on her own feet instead of being carried.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said, taking his hand and pulling him toward them.

“Gray,” Braden said as they got closer. “We need to go. The embassy. They need us.”

Gray shook his head.

“What? What are you talking about?” she asked.

Elle listened with growing horror as they told her about the battle at the embassy, and how the other shifters had acted as a distraction so that they could come to the school and end it all.

“Oh no,” she breathed, remembering the way Gray had shook his head when Braden suggested they go back to help out.

“They’re okay,” Gray reassured her. “Andrew’s help arrived in time, it would seem. But we’re going to need that.” He lifted his chin behind them, toward where the corpse lay, hidden mostly out of sight behind the bleachers.

“Why?” she asked, confused.

“As proof.” Braden looked to Gray for confirmation. The elder shifted nodded. “That’s the head of an organization from back in Cadia,” he said while Gray went to grab the body, leaving Kelly in her care.

“I see.” She didn’t.

“If we can’t prove that he’s dead, then our allies back home can’t replace him with one of our own. It’s complicated, but with him dead, most of the troubles anyone here in Cloud Lake has been having should evaporate. Because the king, who is an ally of ours, can appoint the replacement, instead of the Council, who is much more divided.”

“And I thought human politics were complicated,” she muttered as the shifter returned, the dead person casually slung over his shoulder. “Well, back to the embassy then!”