Before the strangers could reply, Vera rushed out of the house and ran their way. “You said you’d take out the freak. You said you’d leave Ward to me. This is not what we agreed on.”
The masked man ignored her, and Vera grabbed his arm. Mathias knew it was a mistake even before she did. The stranger flicked his wrist, and one of his companions retrieved a gun. In the blink of an eye, she was falling, a neat bullet hole through her forehead.
Ward made a noise of distress, his eyes filling with tears. The gag around his mouth prevented him from speaking, but Mathias could still somehow hear his words.“Vera... Oh, God.”
Mathias tried to flood the bond with waves of comfort, but it was only half-successful since his own heart was overwhelmed by a mix of panic and anger. “You’ll do what we want,” the stranger told him, “or your mate follows in the woman’s path.”
“And what is it exactly that you require of me?” Mathias asked, struggling to keep his voice steady.
“Your other form.”
Mathias’s world blurred around the edges. No. That wasn’t possible. He hadn’t... He hadn’t thought about that in decades. He’d buried it deep inside of him, so that it would never get out. The compulsion had even withstood the battle with Dean Simmons, although there had been one moment there, one moment when his anger had almost triggered it. He’d withstood it, endured it, held it back. At this point, he didn’t know if he could summon it at will.
“Well? Come on. I’m waiting.”
Ward was looking at him, tears still trailing down his cheeks, his eyes full of confusion and grief. Mathias had to do this, for him. He swallowed around the knot in his throat and reached into himself, beyond the core of his magic, to the wild darkness hidden beneath.
The next thing he knew, he was on his knees, panting, his fingers turning into claws over and over, his skin rippling and his bones snapping as they reformed again and again. The pain was excruciating, and Ward screamed behind his gag.
Still, the beast resisted. Mathias had lost the skill. He’d been too afraid of it to use it, and like an untrained muscle, it had atrophied until it was almost gone.
Ward’s captor was not impressed. “What is this? This spectacle is not what I had in mind. Stop playing around. Do it.”
Mathias tried harder, but he felt like he was swimming against the current, losing his grip on the suddenly frayed edges of his magic. Ward was trying to struggle against his captors, and Mathias willed his mate to remain calm—but like most things in the past hour or so, it didn’t work.
The man let out an irritated sigh. “Well, it looks like we’re going to have to do this the hard way.”
He nodded at his companions, and terror surged through Mathias. Time seemed to slow, and the gunshot—despite it being quieted by the silencer—echoed impossibly loud in Mathias’s ears. Blood bloomed over Ward’s chest and their bond flared with pain and fear.
It wasn’t even fear for himself. Mathias heard it very clearly.“No, no, no, my baby, no, I can’t, my baby has to live.”
A baby. A child. Mathias’s mate. His life. His future—extinguished. No.
The world turned blood-red. Suddenly, he was on his feet, taller than he ever remembered being. The men released shocked gasps, although the leader seemed more pleased than anything else.
Despite that satisfaction, they were obviously informed about what he could do, because they quickly backed away—or at least tried to. The man holding Ward didn’t move quickly enough, and in mere seconds, Mathias was by his side, eviscerating the masked human. He could have done the same to the others, but his focus was on Ward.
This form was chaotic, a torn, unstable expression of Mathias’s hybrid nature. It was the main reason why all werewolf hybrids were so feared and despised, the stuff of nightmares, something so horrifying that it had permeated human culture, cementing their fears of the paranormal.
Mathias hated it. His parents had died because of it, killed by humans who’d been hunting him down. He’d been so young at the time, but he could still remember it—and he’d never let go of the guilt. A part of him had blamed this monster for his complete inability to find his other half.
Mathias’s grandmother had called the unwanted beast the wolf-man, the middle form only a handful of hybrids could take. A biped wolf, stronger and faster than anything else, able to find weak points and track down prey like no other, it answered to nothing—except a werewolf’s mate.
The light of the bond kept Mathias from losing himself into the beast. He pressed his now monstrous hands to his lover’s chest and focused on healing Ward. It wasn’t easy, since he had to force the bullet out too, and this form wasn’t conducive to harmonious use of the healing arts. He did it anyway, and shockingly the humans allowed it.
The moment Ward’s wound stopped bleeding, Mathias looked up at his lover’s face. Ward was staring at him, eyes wide with disbelief and horror. Mathias recoiled. Knowing that he was a monster didn’t make it any easier to accept when Ward realized it too.
He opened his mouth in a vain attempt to find his voice, but he couldn’t even try to utter the phrase. A shock of electricity hit him in the back, and he convulsed, falling to the ground, the intensity too much to contain even for a werewolf.
A piercing unbearable sound exploded all around, and Mathias howled, covering his ears, trying to mute it. Something fell over him, a net of sorts, and Mathias couldn’t fight it. There was too much of it—the sound, the electricity, and then silver, digging into him with unerring precision.
Maybe he’d have tried to free himself, but the image of Ward’s horrified eyes lingered in his mind, freezing his muscles. It was a pain that kept him from succumbing to his instincts, to the wolf-man.
He didn’t have the luxury to lose himself in that agony. “Excellent,” the leader of the group said. “Take the mate. We’ll be able to use him in case our new pet forgets who his owner is.”
One of the other men reached for Ward, and everything shattered. No sound, no shock, no metal was strong enough. He was back on his feet, shrugging off the nets, tearing out throats, ravaging flesh. He was too fast, too much, too strong—even for himself, let alone for the humans.
It was over before he could even think about what he was doing. Ward’s attackers didn’t get the chance to use their weapons again. Hands that had reached for guns lay on the grass, separated from the bodies of their owners. There was blood everywhere, on the ground, on his fur, and on Ward. And in the end, everything was silent.