Blood dripped from my mouth as I started to panic.

My chest was heaving. Corpses of Jeremiah’s pack lay all around me. But we still hadn’t found Jeremiah, and Tate was lying at my feet – and he wasn’t moving.

There wasn’t a part of his body not bleeding from either a claw or a tooth, or a combination of both. His blood was spilling out onto the dusty ground beneath our paws at a rate that was unsustainable. If we didn’t get him help immediately, he was going to die.

I shifted back to human form and shouted at the rest of the pack.

“Help me! He’s bleeding out!”

One of Jeremiah’s alphas, who thankfully had seen Clarence and joined sides with us, shifted back. He was Latino, pretty looking, with short straight black hair and wild eyes.

“In here!” He shouted, leading me to one of the cottages. He kicked the door in, and two omegas almost jumped out of their skin as they saw us enter. “Take these!”

He snatched a set of sheets from a dresser and threw them at me.

“Cover his wounds! Tie them tight!”

I raced back outside, ripping the sheets into long shreds. Everyone had taken human form again, and had a hand clamped over one of our leader’s wounds.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit!” Martin cursed. “This is bad! This is bad, man!”

“Martin!” I shouted, trying to break him out of his panic. “Find a fucking truck and get it over here! Now!”

Martin rocketed to his feet and raced off.

“Hey, what’s your name!?” I shouted to Jeremiah’s other alpha, a spindly guy with jet black hair.

“Seth!”

“Seth, put your hands over this!” I said, eyeing a real bad bleeder on Tate’s shoulder. He instantly clasped his palm over the wound as I tore another strip from the sheet.

“Fuck, he’s really bleeding,” I muttered as I tied a strand around his upper thigh, doing my best to restrict the blood flow to a deep claw mark on his leg. Carlos emerged from the cottage with gauze, which he started placing over Tate’s wounds.

“Where is Martin!?” I shouted, looking around the motel.

Tate’s bleeding was slowing, but he had lost too much already. If we didn’t get him out of here soon and back to Osana, we were going to lose him.

And that’s when I heard it.

A gunshot rang out through the night.

The deadly sound echoed across the cottages, but my wolf’s hearing instantly placed it behind us, and my heart sank.

Clarence!

I looked back and gazed up the slope, and what I saw froze me in place.

Jeremiah was standing on the hill above town, with a hunting rifle aimed at Clarence’s head.

“Bryce…” Martin said in shock as he saw what I saw.

My body moved, almost without me thinking about it. My wolf took over, and I shifted, my legs kicking into a sprint before I’d barely finished transforming.

My paws kicked gravel and stone behind me as I shot like a bullet away from the motel and toward my fated mate.

I knew that if something went wrong here, my entire world would end. Clarence was my world, and I’d gotten him back once – if I were to lose him now…

As I reached them, I shifted back and my pace slowed. I wanted nothing more than to leap at the son of a bitch and tear his neck out and eat his heart, but I knew he’d shoot Clarence if I got any closer. And that couldn’t happen.

“Bryce, Bryce, Bryce,” Jeremiah muttered. He was smiling, but I knew inside he was filled with rage and fighting hard not to let me see. “Quite a mess you’ve created here. Looks like you’ve killed my entire pack from here.”

“They’re all dead,” I snarled, my fangs still fully extended. “And you’re next.”

“Tsk, tsk,” he said, shaking his head. “I think not, Bryce. I think not. See, this is what’s going to happen next. I’m going to take this sweet little piece of ass out of here, and you’re going to call off your pack. If you don’t, I’m gonna blow his brains all over the grass. Understand?”

My wolf was fighting to get out, and it was taking everything I had to keep it at bay.

“I see his heat is finally here,” Jeremiah smiled, sniffing Clarence’s scent in the air. My fists clenched at my side. Clarence’s cheek. “Thanks for breaking him in for me. For all the time I had him, he was a bit…well, let’s just say he was a stubborn boy.”

“You son of a bitch,” I growled.

“Tate’s going to die if you take much longer to decide,” he said. There was no getting around it. He had all the leverage here – all the power.

I tried calculating the distance between us to decide if I could get to him before his finger squeezed the trigger of that rifle. As always, Jeremiah was a coward. Shifting back to human form and using human technology to fight his battles for him – disgraceful!

Bryce was terrified. Tears filled his eyes as he stared at me. He was pleading with me. Do something, was what he was saying to me without saying it.

I’m trying! I wanted to shout until my throat was sore.

Jeremiah raised the rifle threateningly, readying himself for the killing shot.

Then, I heard the roar of an engine behind me. I didn’t even turn to look. I knew who it was.

Headlights blared behind me, catching Jeremiah in the eye.

“Duck!” I shouted to Bryce as Jeremiah was temporarily blinded by the beams.

He did.

The sound of the gun blast threatened to shatter my eardrums as I sprang forward, shifting in midair. My fangs found Jeremiah’s neck, and with everything in me, I tore at his flesh.

I felt his jugular snap beneath my jaws, and his blood fountained into my mouth as I ripped his life away from him. My wolf overtook me. I was in a bloodlust – a frenzy as the years of hatred poured out of me.

He was dead before he hit the ground.

I heard the tires tear ground behind me and turned to see Martin skid to a halt in the driver’s seat of a massive SUV.

“Get in!” He shouted.

I shifted and snatched Clarence by the hand, pulling him to his feet. He was covering his ears, probably deaf from the rifle blast going off above his head.

Carlos opened the back door and I threw Clarence inside and leapt in myself. Seth was crouched in the back, holding his hands over Tate’s wounds.

“Go, go, go!” I shouted. Martin didn’t need to be told twice.

The tires squealed, sputtered and kicked dust as he gave the engine all it could take. The SUV trucked forward, lurching down the slope toward the road. We bounced as we hit the pavement and skidded right across the middle line into the opposite lane.

A horn blared as a station wagon swerved off the road to avoid colliding with us. Martin whipped us back into the right line and floored it.

“Ha ha!” He screamed, slamming his fists against the wheel. “Fuck you! We’re out of here!”

I smiled, but when I turned to Clarence, I saw a look of terror on his face. I placed my hands on either side of his head and started to caress him, doing my best to sooth him. He must be terrified.

“It’s okay, my omega,” I told him, panting heavily. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”

“Bryce,” he said slowly. “You – you’re bleeding.”

I grinned. Even now he was worried about me. I sucked heavily at the air, feeling like I’d just run a marathon. I was feeling woozy, and my vision was a bit blurred.

Probably just blood in my eyes.

“Bryce,” Clarence muttered.

“It’s okay…” I said, but my mouth wasn’t listening to me. I slurred my words, trying to speak. “It’s…o..kaay…”

My vision started to blur, and I felt something odd in my stomach, and when I looked down I saw what Clarence was worried about.

Blood was pouring out of a wound in my stomach. The world started to go dark, and before I lost consciousness, I realized what had happened.

I’d been shot.