He spotted one of the feline guards and hustled over to where he crouched.I need your restraints and a choke collar.Jon slipped the thought into the guard’s mind as he took the items off his utility belt. The guard gasped, but made no move to prevent Jon’s theft.
The rest happened in a dizzying blur. Kyle and Isaac dropped their shields and shouted at the women to get down. Zion and a group of soldiers burst in through the front door.
The wolves growled at the women, snapping their jaws threateningly.
Lions bounded in behind Zion’s soldiers, attacking the wolves. Lupine hybrids ran in through a side door and joined the battle. They shot at the feline soldiers as the wolves attempted to herd the terrified females toward the side door. Lions roared, savaging the wolves as they fought their way toward the females.
Tuning out the chaos, Jon focused on his task. He flew across the room and tackled Elias, slamming him down onto his belly. After snapping the choke collar around his throat, Jon dragged the wolf’s arms behind his back and secured them with the restraints. Sedative mist would have been nice, but the choke collar would keep him from shifting. That’s the best Jon could do until the fight was over.
Zion and the soldiers focused on the wolves, meticulously separating them from the women without injuring the females. About half the wolves had shifted back to their human forms. They overturned beds and stacked up tables, creating a makeshift barricade.
The younger wolf, likely Elias’ new beta, shouted orders and the wolves rushed to obey. Two thirds, animals and hybrids, intensified their aggression toward the cats. With alarming speed, the other third, led by the beta, assembled the women and hurried them across the room.
The wolves leapt over and charged around the barricade, attacking Zion and his soldiers. The attack was savage, bloody, ensuring that the cats remained focused on them and them alone. Lions rushed in to help, but it was all a distraction.
The beta and his followers reached the side door with the women.
“Stop them!” Jon yelled, but everyone was engaged in their own battles. He automatically reached for his pulse pistol, but it too was in the forest with his shredded clothes. “Shit,” he muttered and lowered his arm. Were the feline soldiers in position? Surely, they’d surrounded the building by now.
Flinging open the door, the beta hurried the wolves and the women out into the night. The familiar sound of energy weapons echoed through the forest followed by women screaming. As Jon thought, feline soldiers were scattered through the trees, but had they been able to stop the wolves from escaping? The wolves were shielding themselves with females, so it was nearly impossible to shoot them.
Jon stood and dragged Elias to his knees. “Who was the other wolf?”
“Which one?” The bastard smirked, clearly not comprehending his peril. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
Not wanting Elias to hear what he was about to say, Jon reached out to Zion telepathically.Did the perimeter guards prevent the escape?
Unclear. Give me a minute to find out.
Elias laughed. “Juan got away, didn’t he? I can see it in your eyes. If my count is right, we just captured twenty-two more mates.”
Jon looked around and cursed under his breath. The fucker was right. There were only four females left inside the structure, but had the beta managed to elude the guards?
Zion hurried over to where Jon stood and motioned toward Elias. “I’ll take care of this piece of shit. You and your team go join the hunters.”
Jon nodded, then paused. “Elias must be interrogated before we kill him. Isaac’s memory scan was only partially successful.”
“I know. Diego told me.” Zion motioned toward the open door on the far side of the building. “Go!”
Jon bolted into the forest, releasing his lion as he ran. Isaac and Kyle were half a step behind him.
Claire hurried along in the line of sobbing women, stumbling over rocks and fighting for footing against the uneven ground. Wolf hybrids surrounded them, urging them on with weapons and threats. They’d been running through a forest and suddenly the leader triggered… Claire wasn’t sure what he had triggered. She’d never seen anything like it before. One moment they weresurrounded by trees and the next they were in a tunnel. They hadn’t been transported. They’d passed through some sort of disguised opening.
The passage was dank and dark with roughhewn walls and a sloping floor. Timbers supported the ceiling in places and the tunnel was at least twenty degrees cooler than the forest had been. Lights were inset in the timbers, but the long distance between each support created areas of darkness or dense shadows. The wolves carried flashlights as well as their weapons, so the escape had been well planned. Was this a mine or underground shelter, and who had constructed it? Rydaria was supposed to have been uninhabited before the hybrids arrived.
“Where are they taking us?” Dawn whispered, moving closer to Claire.
“I don’t know, hon,” Claire responded. “Probably their village.”
Dawn was one of six women who had been assigned to the same tent as Claire when they first arrived on Rydaria. Dawn was painfully shy and introverted, making her seem younger than her twenty years. Claire felt protective of her and tried to help her adjust to life on this unforgiving planet. She’d nearly succeeded in drawing Dawn out of her protective shell and then the wolves attacked. The violent slaughter had shocked and terrified everyone, but the savagery had been particularly hard on Dawn. She’d barely spoken since, and she refused to let any of the hybrids near her.
Claire’s brother had been one of the many victims that night, so she understood Dawn’s reaction. Still, Dawn’s refusal to cooperate landed her in the shelter, and Claire was concerned that the cold and subpar food would result in a serious illness. That’s why Claire risked punishment and sneaked fresh food andsupplies to Dawn on a regular basis. Tonight had been one of those visits. That’s why Claire had been in the shelter when the wolves attacked.
Looking around, Claire shuddered. Interacting with feline hybrids was hard enough, but lupine hybrids were vicious and unreasonable. Being at their mercy was terrifying.
“Are they going to kill us?” Dawn whispered, emotion quivering through her voice.
“If they’d wanted us dead, we’d be dead. This is something different.”Something worse. She didn’t speak the last phrase, but couldn’t prevent the thought from forming. It had taken weeks to convince herself that submitting to a coalition of lion hybrids was a better fate than death. No power in the universe could make her willingly submit to her brother’s murderers.
