In seconds she felt herself leave her flesh, the bright feel of warmth and earth and life so freeing, and then she fell back into bone and skin again, but this time it was covered with fur as she wriggled out of her clothes.
“Cut it out,” she tried to yell and instead barked at the cats.
They stared at her in surprise.
One of them prodded at her mind, but she refused to let him in, not used to accepting the unfamiliar mental touch of an unknown feline.
She shook her head and winced when she put pressure on her front left paw. Her back still stung, but not as badly now. Then Axel shoved his snout over the rim of the pit.
“Hey, you three. You want to stay in here and provide fun times for these fuckers, or would you rather kill a few and get the hell out?”
The cats glanced at each other, then leapt out of the pit with ease. Sophie tried, but her paw hampered her.
Axel scowled and his ears flattened. “Just hold on.” The noise, bullets and chaos above her grew louder. Then the end of a rope smacked her in the nose.
“Ow.”
Axel grinned. “Man, you are in so much trouble when Rafe sees what happened. Quit whining and grab on with your teeth. I’ll pull you out, little wolf.”
She wasn’t as concerned with Rafe as she was Monty. She bit hard and used the rope to get out of the pit. Finally. A glance around her showed Ac-taw fighting Hunters all over the place.
“He’s gone with Norris. Come on.” Axel stayed by her, his large bulk easily batting Hunters and Shifters out of their way as they worked toward the other end of the corridor, to the back exit. “Norris went this way.”
They exited and met a dozen angry wolves growling with warning. When they spotted Axel they immediately subsided and wagged their tails.
“Where’s Rafe?” Axel asked.
Sophie ignored him and limped forward as fast as she could. She caught the tail end of a vehicle and Monty’s scent as it left the compound. Though close to tears from her wounds and her worry, she refused to quit. Her wolf was a lot stronger than she’d thought.
I’m sorry I kept you down for so long, she told her animal spirit, feeling both the same yet apart from her animal half. It confused her and felt right all at the same time.
Just don’t do it anymore. We’re better together, the wolf responded. Then the creature urged her to hurry up, because the Jeep grew smaller as it moved into the forest. Sophie watched with horror as it turned too fast and simply disappeared. The sound of it bumping and rolling caused her to panic.
Monty hadn’t looked well before, and who knew what condition he lay in with her uncle behind the wheel. She hurried and felt them before she saw them, wolves at her sides, her back and pulling in front of her.
“Come on,” Rafe said as he joined them. “Your mate just went over the mountain.”
Sophie ran harder, ignoring the pain of her wrist with her wolf’s support, and rushed to the edge. She wasn’t careful and slid nearly the whole way to the bottom. Lifting her nose, she sought Monty’s scent and found him wobbling on his feet as he approached her uncle.
Ted Norris had broken his leg. She could see the bone protruding through his flesh. But that didn’t slow the man much. To her amazement, he held a gun aimed at Monty. Brett lay on his side some distance from the vehicle, unmoving.
“Stop, you fucking beast. I’ve won.” Ted’s gaze scanned the approaching wolves and lit up when he caught sight of Sophie. “Come here, niece.”
Sophie limped forward, appearing weaker than she was on her wolf’s advice. Shifting had partially healed her wrist. A good thing to know.
“How’s that wrist, hmm?”
Monty didn’t speak to her. He waited by her side when she reached him, but he didn’t say a word, mentally or otherwise, and her heart broke.
She needed to talk to her uncle, to distract him. So she told her wolf to wait and shifted back into her human form. Her uncle blinked, his eyes wide, and stared.
“I never get tired of seeing that.” He tightened his grip on the gun, his aim now on her and not Monty. “You move, wolf, I blow her in two.”
Monty didn’t flinch. A glance at him showed his ice-blue eyes locked in fury on Ted Norris. His enemy. Her uncle.
She wanted to cry.
“Cover yourself, girl.” Her uncle tossed his jacket at her, and she hurried to put it on.
“Why? Why do you hide who you are?” she asked him softly. “Why did you make me hide who I was?” She’d never known. Her parents had never told her, and then they’d died and left her with her mother’s brother.
“You’re human. That beast is weakness, girl. You had so much potential.” Ted shook his head, but the gun remained steady. “If you work hard, if you have discipline, you can chain it, use it. I’m stronger and faster. I heal and don’t feel pain. I don’t have outside needs. Just food and water and exercise to tame the beast inside.”
“Restrain the beast, you mean.” Sophie wanted to understand. “You killed innocent people, Uncle Ted.” She recalled the Ac-taw who’d been so kind to her, the Shifter who’d given her her first kiss, shot through the head by her uncle.
“Not people. Animals. Monsters.” His gray eyes, so like hers, darkened. “Your mother knew better. She should have listened when I told her. But like you, she chose an animal over her own kind. I tried to ignore them, but she wouldn’t go away. She came back to see Mother, and she brought him. A wolf. And you.” He looked at her, and she wished she could call it love. But fanaticism stared back at her. “You were so pretty, so quiet. And I thought you might have a chance at a normal life. So I took care of them and brought you to my home.”
She blinked. “What?” She took a step closer, ignoring Monty when he nudged her side to stop. “Took care how?”
“With a silver bullet. How else do you kill a wolf?” Ted smiled. Nothing sane left to the man.
The wolves around them waited, on edge. But Ted looked at nothing but Sophie. “I thought you’d beaten it. You didn’t ask questions. You never talked out of turn. A good girl, until you started collecting those damn rabbits.”
“You told me th-the wolves ate them.”
“Yeah. And you had your vengeance, didn’t you? You tasted the rapture of a clean kill.”
“I shot him.” She nodded, remembering the fear and hatred, seeing the wolf covered in blood over the cage where her beloved pets, her only friends, had been. And she knew. “It was you. You killed the rabbits. You made me—” Kill a wolf who wasn’t a wolf.
She wanted to be sick, but her anger grew. And she let it. No longer afraid of the rages of her animal, she fostered it.
Monty chose to speak. “Let it go, Sophie. Step back. He wants you to attack. He’s waiting to pull the trigger.”
She ignored him. “You’re a cheat and a liar.”
Ted’s eyes widened.
“Sophie, shut the fuck up. You made this mess, now let me get us out of it. Or are you trying to kill me after all?” Monty’s scorn hurt, but she couldn’t stop. Not after learning her entire life had been a product of her uncle’s fear and bigotry.
“A coward afraid of his own shadow. Yeah, I’d know,” she sneered. “Because that’s what you made me into. You captured creatures better and stronger than you, jealous because they could be what you weren’t.”