VIOLET

I scrambled to get the glove compartment open and snatched out my cell phone. My fingers shook as I quickly bypassed the screensaver. I panted. I didn’t know what else to do, but my first instinct was to call for help.

Before I could dial 9-1-1, two male hikers ran out into the clearing. One of the men grabbed my arm and tugged me from the vehicle.

“What the hell are you doing out here, woman? Start the truck and get out of here!”

“I don’t have the keys. My friend has the keys. I won’t go. I have to help.”

“Don’t you see those werewolves fighting? Get away from them!” the man screamed.

“No, sir, you don’t understand. I have to help him,” I cried out.

They looked at me crazy but managed to tug me out of the truck. “Please, ma’am. Why are you out here? These men are beasts. For your own safety, you should come with us. Our SUV is right over there.”

“No!” I tugged back. “Let me go.”

“Man, you are crazy,” the man proclaimed. “We’re going to call for help, but we’re getting out of here. Roll up your windows, at least.”

The man frowned at me and his companion pulled out a cell phone. “Yes, there’s an emergency out here at the lake. There’s a woman stuck in a car and she won’t move and some wolves are fighting pretty viciously around her. There’s blood everywhere…” I heard the man say as they ran off.

I glared back and forth from the cell phone in my hand to the bodies thrashing around over the ground, hoping they would stop. True to what the hikers had told the 9-1-1 operator, I was the only human on the ground.

On a hunch, I lifted the center console and grabbed Jayce’s phone. After thumbing nervously through his contacts, I found Draven’s name displayed in the missed calls list and dialed him.

“Jayce!” Draven answered immediately. “We had them and we lost them. I was calling you to warn you that they’re running loose through the valley. Where are you, man?”

“It’s not Jayce. It’s me. Violet. Jayce is in trouble. The rogues found us and…they’re fighting. It’s bad.”

“Where are you!”

“The lake. Crystal Lake.”

“Stay there,” he commanded. “We’re on the way. Are you in a safe place?”

“I…I think so. I’m in the truck.”

“Stay in it! Whatever you do, don’t go near the fighting wolves, do you hear me?” His voice faded out as he gave instructions to whoever was with him. “Crystal Lake…now.”

“Yes, but please come quick. There are four of them. I was going to call the police but—”

“Don’t call them. Listen to me. We’re near. I have to go now. I have to shift.”

There was a beep on the line and then a notification on the screen that the call had ended.

One of the wolves rammed up against the side of the truck and I screamed. Thank God the truck didn’t have power windows. I grabbed the knob and tried to wind the windows up. Something must have been jammed because the window never budged.

“Dammit,” I wailed.

A wolf jumped up and used it’s front paws to cling to the passenger’s side door where I was sitting. It snapped its canines and growled.

I looked for a weapon around me, but the only thing I managed to find was a wrench sitting on the floor. With every ounce of strength I had in me, I swung the wrench and beat the wolf across the face with it. It yelped and threw itself back on the ground, where Jayce pounced on him flashing blood-drenched canines. Both wolves kept going for each other’s throat.

Just as I feared, Marshall’s cronies were assisting him. One of them sunk his teeth into Jayce’s hind leg. Jayce howled out in pain. While Jayce was immobilized for a split second, the wolf who had charged me earlier came at me again.

“Leave me the fuck alone,” I hollered and slammed the wrench down again, but I missed this time.

The cronies had Jayce cornered while I tried to hold off the wolf trying to squeeze his way through the passenger’s side window. A flashback from the night the men chased me down in the woods came to me, and when I looked into the eyes of the wolf growling at me, I knew instantly who’s animal it was—Marshall’s. And he was intent on biting me.

Another force hit the truck. Jayce rammed into Marshall and then tore him from the car. This time when Jayce attacked, he dove right onto the throat.

It took me a few seconds before I realized that the blaring noise came from police sirens coming in the distance. White cop cars came flying off the dirt road and barreling across the field toward the lake where the wolves were fighting. In that same instant, I saw three more wolves enter the clearing.

Despite the cops racing from their cars with rifles drawn, the three wolves that had just shown up shifted back to human form and held their hands in the air. The three cronies on Marshall’s side did the same, shifting and then holding up their hands.

“Stop the fighting, reveal yourselves, or we’ll shoot,” one of the cops yelled over some speakers.

Jayce and Marshall ignored the warning, even when a cop shot off a round in the air.

Marshall was hardly moving as Jayce shook his head back and forth with his canines still latched to Marshall’s throat.

“Jayce!” Draven called out.

Marshall somehow yanked himself loose of Jayce’s gripped and rolled out of the way. He pounced again and the wolves went at each other hard again to the point where all I could make out were teeth, blood, and fur.

Another shot went off close to where the wolves were fighting. I clutched my chest, hoping that the cops didn’t gun down Jayce. I also feared that if he stopped and surrendered to the cops that the relentless Marshall would kill him.

Seeing my only chance to escape the truck as the fighting wolves scurried off several feet away, I shoved the door open and high-tailed it across the field towards the cops. Someone was yelling for me to get down. I looked up to see the end of a rifle pointing straight towards me.

But why?

“Get down!” Someone hollered.

My instincts set in when I heard something closing in on me from behind. It was Marshall, that relentless bastard.

I stumbled to the ground, but something caught my ankle. I kicked back, catching Marshall right across his snout. Jayce threw himself on Marshall again and they landed some three feet away. Still in shifter form, they circled each other. Both were battered, bruised, and literally drained of strength. They were panting hard.

“Draven, is that you?” A cop demanded over the amplifier. “Tell your man to shift and stand down, or he will be shot.”

“Jayce!” Draven hissed, running across the field.

This time Jayce complied. Kneeling to the ground and letting his human side take over. But Marshall didn’t follow suit. He had other ideas, and not a second later, he had torn into Jayce’s forearm.

As he stated, the cop fired and something missed Marshall by only a hair, catching him in the left ear before landing in the ground. Marshall must have realized the severity of the threat because he knelt in the dirt and changed into his human form.

“Are you going to finish this or what, mutt?” Marshall demanded.

“You know I will. Your claim is baseless. If you so much as attempt to put your paws on her again, I will tear your face off,” Jayce stated.

Everyone heard the bickering from across the field.

“Men, this is over. You’re both going to jail.”

Two cops rushed over to where the men stood with cuffs. Before they could get there, Jayce and Marshall started fighting again. The chaos didn’t end until Jayce held Marshall’s head in a vice grip.

“Now, renounce your intentions of harming her,” Jayce demanded.

“Never!” Marshall spat. “When I get out of this jail…and I will…I’m going to make sure she’s ruined for you. I’m going to fuck her and breed her until I feel like my brother has been avenged. I won’t renounce my intentions of taking her, because that is precisely what I plan to do. You hear that, you fake ass cops? No one will be able to stop me. I will—”

The light went out in Marshall’s eyes as he went still.

I didn’t miss the noticeable rage on Jayce’s face as he twisted Marshall’s thick neck again, making sure he was dead. The body fell to the ground.

As Marshall’s cronies started to shift and run across the field to avenge their alpha, they were shot with what looked like red darts.

“Jayce Pembroke. You are under arrest…”

My mouth dropped open and I watched as the cops put Jayce in handcuffs and cart him off.

Everything else was a blur. I think I might have collapsed on the ground, but all I remembered was Draven calling out my name urging me to wake up and then someone was carrying me.