Chapter Twenty-One

Rosie

She was waiting for the signal.

“C’mon, Kassian. Hurry up,” she urged. He was out there, exposed and vulnerable. She could see him through the slit in the window. So brave as he faced down not only the director, but the gryphon and four bear shifters. Rosie wanted to rush out there, to stand by his side as he defied them, and by extension the Institute and everything it stood for. Right then, he was her hero.

Without warning his hand rose over his head, and then back down, like he was pulling on a rope.

“There it is!” she shouted. “That’s the signal! Let’s go!”

The four women streamed from their place of concealment. Early that morning, under the cover of darkness, they’d snuck out of their room and made their way to the front office of the motel. There they’d waited, for hours upon hours, until they’d heard the helicopter arrive. That was when they’d realized that the time was near, and so they’d roused themselves, preparing for whatever may happen.

Now, as they emerged from the building, they were poised to hit the flank of the approaching bear shifters. The gryphon was on the far side of the helicopter from them, though its huge hooked beak was no less intimidating from this distance.

“That’s far enough!” she called to the shifters. Together with the women at her side, she hoisted the gun that she’d been carrying down at her waist. The four of them aimed the tranquilizer units at the guards, bringing them to an abrupt halt.

It was the single weapon that humans had that could help even the fight against shifters. The tranquilizer. It knocked them out for eight hours. If they could hit one. A trained marksman would have no problem with it. Unfortunately for them, Mila was the only trained one they had. The women had spent hours going over the operation of the units after Rosie had returned with them as the second part of her mission, but it still wasn’t enough to feel comfortable.

So they’d focused on the basics. Holding the gun properly, and holding it steady. The goal was to pretend like they were more intimidating than they actually were. That way, they could deal with the Institute forces without any more bloodshed than was absolutely necessary—all of them agreed that it was nearly impossible for things to go down without any fighting.

The guards came to a halt, and one of them looked behind him, where Director Burnatawiz was standing near the helicopter. The blades had slowed by this point, so she could hear his response. Not that it was hard to figure out, given the way he threw his head back and his shoulders began to shake with obvious laughter. On top of that, the sound of it was completely redundant.

“Oh. Oh my. How cute. You’ve organized some resistance,” he laughed, his voice carrying easily across the distance. “Good thing I anticipated that.” He turned to Gregory. “If you would, please?”

The gryphon opened its mouth, and several sharp shrieks assaulted her ears. Rosie winced, but she didn’t look away. Which is why she saw the strange look that Director Burnatawiz gave the winged shifter. But whatever passed between them, it was soon forgotten. Moments later, from the far side of the motel, a veritable stream of shifters appeared. Rosie momentarily lost count, but once they came to a halt, she was able to do a final tally.

Fifteen wolves and six bears had come to join the party, already in their animal forms. The wolfpack was focused with near laser intensity on Kassian, while the bigger bears were staring warily at the rest of the Koche brothers. She looked back and forth at the women on either side of her. The odds had just become heavily stacked against them.

“At least they all seem to have left us alone,” Lena muttered.

Rosie glanced over at her. Lena was the least combat-ready of all of them, she had to say. Her preferred place was in front of a computer, doing all sorts of nasty things to their enemies with electronics. From what little Rosie knew of that world, Lena was pretty good at it. But a gun and a shootout with oversized beasts capable of ripping them in half? Not really her thing. As she’d made clear multiple times. Rosie had to give her credit though; she was here, and the barrel of her odd-looking gun was barely wavering. It was amazing, she thought, what these women would all do for their mates.

Then again, she was doing the same thing, wasn’t she?

Kassian’s in trouble.

And that was the gist of it right there. She was doing what she was doing, for him. Not for anyone else, but because he needed her help, and she didn’t want to let him down. Or lose him. She glanced across the distance at Kassian, wishing she could be at his side, her hand firmly in his grip, her head resting on his shoulder. But she couldn’t. Not until this was over and done with.

“I think you may have spoken too soon,” Mila said.

Two more men were emerging from the helicopter. They were still in shape, but they were definitely smaller than the shifters. Which meant they were likely humans. It wasn’t that which caught her attention however. It was what the pair were carrying.

“Those don’t look like tranquilizer guns,” she said with uncertainty.

“I don’t think they are,” Madison agreed, as the two men lifted the long-barreled rifles and pointed them directly at the women.

“Drop the guns!” one of them called.

Rosie looked around. The situation was becoming extremely complicated, and she needed to keep track of it all. The motel was a U-shaped building, with the open end facing the road. She and the other women were clustered at one end of the building, while the shifters the gryphon had summoned were at the other. In the middle of the U were the Koche brothers, minus Kassian. Her…mate—it felt oddly right to call him that, but she didn’t dare dwell on that thought just then—was across the street, in the middle of an open field. Two shifters stood in front of him, directly between him and the helicopter.

Approaching from the helicopter on her side of it were the two newcomers with guns. On the far side the gryphon shifter paced restlessly, looking bored. The tension among everyone was so thick, she thought she might be able to cut it with a knife. One false move, she knew, and everything would dissolve into chaos.

“I said drop them!” the humans called as they got closer.

Kassian growled and took a step toward them, as if to protect her, but the two bear shifters opposite him moved to block his path.

“You don’t have to die alongside them!” the one human shouted. “You can still live.”

“Wow, what a choice you offer us!” Rosie called back. “Put down our guns and watch you murder the men we love, or die alongside them. Bunch of charmers you are! I bet the women at the bar really dig it when you tell them what you do for a living. “Why, ah yes, hunny, ma job, it’s to, uh, you know, keel dem nasty shifters, y’know? I gots ta put ‘im down. Damn varmints,” she drawled, making a mockery of them.

The man glanced at his partner. The two of them raised their guns. She saw their thumbs flick something, and the next thing she knew, a short staccato of bursts assaulted her ears, and the wall about ten feet to her left erupted with holes, spraying the four of them with bursts of chipped concrete.

All around her the shifters moved several steps, tensing at the sound of gunfire, but when it became clear they weren’t targeting the women, but only firing warning shots, everyone stopped. Clearly nobody was quite ready to get into a brawl.

“Ow!” she yelped, throwing up an arm to block the flying shrapnel, and receiving numerous small cuts for her effort. “Okay, okay!”

They had no choice. This was for keeps, and the introduction of real weapons into the mix was extremely unexpected. Rosie motioned to the four of them, and they all followed her lead, setting the guns down.

“Now, you pick them all up, and you toss them over here.”

Rosie did as she was told, hurling the guns with as much effort as she could. To her satisfaction, the first one bounced off the ground and hit the guard right in the thigh, causing him to wince. It was a very minor pain, but she still smiled at the sight.

“You’re going to pay for that,” he threatened.

“What are you going to do, kill me?” she asked, rolling her eyes.

The guard just raised his rifle and pointed it at her, but his partner intervened, pushing the barrel of it down. The pair of them, their mission accomplished, kicked the guns off the road and into the brush, then retreated to stand near the helicopter, where Director Burnatawiz was casually leaning against the exterior of it, talking to someone inside. Rosie could see him nodding, and his body language changed. He straightened, nodded quickly, and then stepped forward.

“Well, kill them already!” he shouted.

The Institute shifters advanced.

Kassian turned to look right at her, and Rosie wondered if it was time. His eyes met hers, and she stared deep into those burning orbs. She couldn’t see the brown of his eyes at this distance, but she knew it had to be blazing bright against the darkness that was surrounding them. She cocked her head in question. He nodded once, and then blew her a kiss.

Rosie reached behind her, under her shirt.

Gavin, Pierce, and Kean spread apart, forming a line between the massed group of wolves and the women. She knew they were already preparing to shift.

Kassian squared up to the pair of shifters in front of him. They split apart, forcing him to choose one or the other.

Rosie eyed the patch of grass where their tranquilizer guns had been kicked. It was a long run in the open. She wasn’t sure they would make it.

The gryphon shrieked its boredom, huge claws tearing at the ground as it came around from the far side of the helicopter, like a harbinger of doom.

Bears roared. Wolves howled. The brothers began to shift. The gryphon adjusted its wings. The director snapped his fingers.

And Rosie pulled the flare gun out from under her shirt and fired it high into the sky.

The battle had begun.