Sasha pulled back her weapon and wiped her forehead on
the back of her wrist as Amy’s jaw cracked and rearranged itself. She stared at
the pain-riddled creature on the ground that had human skin and a leopard’s
body until her vision blurred with tears.
“This is inhumane to leave her like this,” Sasha
whispered, and then dabbed at her eyes. “She’s in so much pain.”
Suddenly Amy’s convulsive transformation stopped. She
lay eerily still and not breathing, with her eyes open—gorgeous, glassy cat
eyes that were a deep golden hue refracting the moonlight. Sasha covered her
mouth as Shogun wrested himself away from Hunter with a sob and knelt beside
Amy, not touching her but allowing his trembling fingers to hover just inches
above her skin. Then just as quickly as she’d stopped breathing she suddenly
gasped in a huge inhale and her mottled skin gave way to a pristine white coat
dappled with beautiful snow-leopard rosettes.
In a soundless cat growl that caught the moonlight
against her massive fangs, Amy sprang up, took one look at Shogun as though to
taunt him to a chase, and took off.
“Stay in your human!” Hunter shouted as his brother
leaped up from the ground and began running after Amy.
Sasha and Hunter were right behind Shogun, clearing
bramble and fallen logs, rocks, and swamp debris. Trees became a blur. Thick
night air whipped Sasha’s face. The graceful feline they chased was a majestic
sight to behold. Soon it became clear that Amy wasn’t fleeing; she was hunting.
The scent of a small herd stung Sasha’s nose. Adrenaline coursed through her
system. Her wolf was near. She could feel Hunter’s and Shogun’s wolves
straining to break free to hunt under the moon. Five o’clock shadow covered
their jawlines. Sweat slicked their arms and created deep Vs in their T-shirts
as sinew worked beneath fabric and skin. Their wolves wanted out in the worst
way. So did Sasha’s. But now was not the time.
Pack instinct kicked in the moment they saw the herd.
Deer scattered; one doe looked up a second or two later than the others. She
was marked by fate.
Shogun broke off from his pursuit of Amy to flush the
prey toward her. Sasha and Hunter cornered the flank and sent the frenzied
creature back to Amy when the doe bolted left. Although Amy missed the initial
tackle it soon became clear that she was enjoying the chase as much as she
wanted to bring down her first kill. She’d let the doe evade her, only to catch
the deer a hundred yards later in one of the most elegant takedowns Sasha had
ever witnessed.
Wolves had power, but the big cats had style. Sasha
slowed, panting, watching as Amy’s body elongated from a masterful bound to
tackle a creature three times her size and weight to the ground, then delivered
a bone-crushing bite to the doe’s windpipe.
Sasha, Hunter, and Shogun skidded to a halt as the
snow leopard they’d chased looked up from her kill victorious and possessive.
Amy gave them a bloody feline growl while hunkered down over the
still-twitching doe.
“She’s absolutely breathtaking,” Shogun murmured.
Amy stood and dragged the doe deeper into the
underbrush and then with one powerful jump took her high up into a tree with
her. Glowering down at them, she positioned her kill and began eating.
“You might want to give her some space until she’s
done,” Sasha said softly. “Cultural differences. We’re wolves. We hunt in packs
and eat in packs. Lions are the only big cats I know of that work as a team and
share their kill. Leopards are solitary. Get any closer and she might take
extreme offense and think you’re trying to steal her dinner from her.”
Shogun turned and looked at Sasha. “Yes.
wise. I had forgotten.” His voice held an awed, far-off quality as his line of
vision drifted back to Amy. “But I now see why my uncle left the pack and
walked away from his governance to live his life in exile in Tibet. Who could
blame him for being seduced by the grandeur of the snow leopard?”
“Stay in your human,” Hunter repeated in a low rumble.
“Amy is too far away from hers now to know who you are and will not react well
to your wolf.”
There was nothing to do but wait and listen. A full
hour passed while Amy gorged herself. The sound of flesh ripping, sinew
tearing, and cartilage and bones cracking reminded Sasha just how powerful her
future sister-in-law actually was. It also kept Sasha aware of just how strong
Lady Jung Suk had been—strong enough to leave some of her DNA in Amy Chen’s
body after a temporary possession. The question was, however, was it
demon-infected DNA or something they all could live with? And how much control
would Amy be able to exercise over her big cat? Would Amy be able to think
through her transformations in the future and would they always be so brutal?
Sasha said a little prayer as she watched Amy eat. She
was indeed a majestic creature, just as she was a wonderful gem of a human
being. Yet the dichotomy between Amy the pretty young woman and Amy the snow
leopard devouring a doe in the moonlight was startling. It was obvious that
Hunter was just as conflicted and was struggling with the possibility of having
to make a very hard decision.
But there was something about Amy and the devotion
that Shogun had for her that made Sasha violate every bit of soldier logic
within her. Had it been anyone but Amy, Sasha would have pulled the trigger the
second she saw Amy begin a hard transformation.
That was just it, though. Sasha couldn’t. She didn’t.
She wouldn’t. And that worried her.
Amy’s movement in the tree branches above made
everyone on the ground leave their private thoughts to see what their reluctant
charge would do. Stretching, Amy came in close to the trunk, studied her
options, and leaped down to the ground, slowly stalking Shogun. Before anyone
could react she had slipped into her human form so smoothly that Sasha drew in
a quiet gasp.
Bloody, sated, naked, Amy spoke to Shogun in a soft
voice that had a sultry undercurrent within it.
“I just needed to eat. I was hungry.” Amy’s eyes still
shimmered in the moonlight as she slowly approached him.
“I will never let that happen again,” he murmured. “I
will always feed you, just as I will always hunt for you.”
Standing an arm’s length away, Amy reached out, but to
hold up her hand. “I know now that you would even die for me, but I could never
allow such a terrible thing.”
“Friend, not foe!”
Sasha pivoted quickly with the others to look up at
Fae archers who had dropped down into the trees surrounding them. Before anyone
could speak, a horrific chain of events unfolded in slow motion before their
eyes. A diligent Fae soldier caught sight of Amy covered in blood and standing
within arm’s-length distance of their wolf ally, Shogun. When she turned to
look at the archers, moonlight caught in her eyes and glinted off her
retracting fangs. A bloodied half-eaten doe was draped over a huge tree limb
oozing gore.
At the same time Sasha, Hunter, and Shogun drew in a
breath to shout, “No!” the archer released his silver-tipped arrow. Shogun
yanked Amy behind him and the arrow thrust him backward, pinning Shogun to a
tree through his shoulder. Amy was momentarily trapped between Shogun’s body
and the huge tree. Pandemonium broke out as Sasha and Hunter shouted for the
archers to hold their fire.
Archers dropped down from tree limbs and surrounded
them. Shogun’s yells of agony echoed throughout the night. In one powerful move
he snapped the protruding arrow off at its base, releasing another cry of agony
as he lurched his body forward to free himself and Amy from the tree.
Blood ran from Shogun’s shoulder like a river. The
wound sizzled and popped in angry hisses from the invasion of silver within his
Werewolf body. Amy caught him as he slumped forward, pressing her palm against
the gushing wound in a futile attempt to staunch the heavy bleeding.
Hunter caught Shogun under his good arm and shouted
for Amy to back up, while Sasha stood in front of Amy to shield her body from
the archers.
“We thought she was attacking,” the shooter said,
glancing around at his fellow archers. “I d’not know she was friend—she seemed
to be foe. My deepest regrets, on my mother’s soul. This was the last outcome
anyone wanted.”
The lead archer tossed Sasha a hunter’s cloak, and she
quickly caught it and then surrounded Amy with it.
“She isn’t feral. not yet anyway. She was
just reaching out to him in tenderness.” Sasha walked a path back and forth.
“There’s no time to explain it all. We’ve gotta get this man in to your magick
advisors stat to see if they have an antidote to silver burn before he goes
into shock.”
“Done,” the lead archer said, motioning for several
archers to run ahead and send word to prepare the sidhe for incoming wounded.
Another bloodcurdling wail from Shogun made everyone
around him cringe.
“Let’s move, people!” Hunter shouted as Shogun began
to convulse.
Sasha body-blocked Amy and went to Shogun’s wounded
side. Half-dragging, half-lifting Shogun on the side of his body that she held,
Sasha spoke to Amy in bursts: “You can’t touch him again. Look at your hands.”
“I didn’t mean to infect him. I just caught him,
wanted to stop the bleeding!”
“We know,” Sasha panted, and then almost fell when the
full weight of Shogun’s body suddenly dropped on one side.
Hunter caught him and lifted him over his shoulder,
but the sight of Shogun passing out was clearly too much for Amy to bear. She
ran at the somber Fae archers, screaming at them in frustration.
“I will never forgive you for this if he dies!”
Sasha grabbed Amy by both arms and spun her around to
face her. “It was a horrible, horrible accident. But killing someone won’t
bring Shogun back. Right now, we need all of your focus and prayers on making
sure Shogun doesn’t die. That means all of your cooperation to not create
another problem for the sidhe to have to address while they’re trying to heal
him. Shogun getting help right now is more important than your righteous
indignation.”
“I swear it was an accident, milady,” the leader of
the Fae archers said gently. “Shogun is a friend. A warrior whom we’ve fought
with and respect. No one ever meant for something like this to ’appen.”
Amy swallowed hard and turned her face away, seeking
Sasha’s shoulder. Sasha petted Amy’s hair but looked at the guilt-laden
expressions on the archers’ faces. “We know.”
They hadn’t been in battle, weren’t directly engaged
in a war, and yet here they were again trudging to Sir Rodney’s castle with the
bloody and the wounded. Sasha was so disgusted she could spit. Shogun was
passed out and being carried by Hunter and a Fae archer; the arrow wouldn’t
kill him, but Amy’s panicked attempts to stop the bleeding might. Yet, who
could have blamed the poor woman?
All of it had happened within the blink of an eye,
when taut nerves and full-moon rapid reflexes had kicked in. Shogun got shot,
broke the arrow off. Aghast, Amy covered the gushing wound with hands already
bloodied from her previous kill. Now Sasha’s future brother and sister-in-law
had to spend the night in a sidhe dungeon waiting on blood tests and surgeons.
Plus Sasha and Hunter needed to get hosed down, too. Both of them were
splattered with Shogun’s blood, and the short carry to the gates of the sidhe
had left them drenched in it.
Sir Rodney met them at the gates with Garth and Queen
Cerridwen. “Are you injured beyond Shogun?” Sir Rodney called out, rushing in
closer.
“No,” Hunter shouted back, “but my grandfather must
hurry! This man is in pain and going into shock. He knows the medicine of the
wolf packs to deal with silver burn.”
“We’ve got a silver-shock antidote here,” Garth said,
running alongside Shogun’s body as his men accepted it from Hunter. “Once we
became allies, we retooled our infirmary.”
“Good looking out,” Hunter said, falling back. “But
his fiancée also needs a bath. and quarantine in comfortable
environs, even if it must be behind silver bars for a few hours.”
“Just until Silver Hawk gets here with Doc’s results,”
Sasha said in a reassuring tone. “It’s a precaution for him now more than
ever.”
Sasha waited until Amy nodded and then rushed away to
catch up with Shogun while Garth’s men transferred him to a livery. Before
Sasha crossed into the magick density there was something basic that had to be
done. She had to communicate with her team.
Placing the cell call to her squad and the NAS, Sasha
punched in the connection with bloodied fingers. The moment the call connected,
she relayed everything to Doc in one long run-on sentence.
“We’re on it,” Doc replied quickly. “We’re sending
Silver Hawk back your way with not only his medicine bag but some serum.”
“How bad is it, Doc?” Hunter said, speaking into the
phone over Sasha’s shoulder.
“I won’t know for a coupla hours.” Doc let out a
harried breath. “Step outside that magick citadel and call me back—I’ll have
word then, all right?”
“You and the team lay low,” she said. “Be careful. I
love you.”
Sasha looked up at Sir Rodney. “Sometimes this is just
faster than a Fae missive, no offense.”