The encampment was surrounded by trip wires and wireless devices, meant to send small explosives or bullets at the unwary. Humans, no matter how careful, would have been hurt by them but the traps were useless against Shifters. Shifter sight and scent could find the mechanisms quickly. Tiger, with his strange abilities no one really understood, knew where all the booby traps were just by giving the approach a quick scan.
Far more dangerous were the humans inside the lines of the camp. When they saw the Shifters coming, they raised shotguns and rifles and opened fire.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
No Shifter was foolish enough to be caught in the volley. The Shifter trackers who’d rushed to draw the humans’ fire dropped and fell back, letting the Shifters who were encircling the encampment attack.
Zander led Rae at a crouching run a long way around to the back of the camp. The camp itself was a loose gathering of tents and metal shacks, some of which looked as though they’d been there a while.
The problem feral Shifters had, Zander reflected as five of them came out of nowhere, was that they could no longer mask their scents. Bathing went out the window as soon as a Shifter started to go feral and any other Shifter could smell them a long way off. The rank odor hit Zander well before the ferals came at them, giving him time to put his plan into action.
The ferals had taken their half-beast forms, the strongest for fighting and best for dexterity. Broderick and Mason were already in their half-wolf states and had skirted the ferals to rush them from behind. Carson, exposing himself in the open, aimed and shot at a human who was covering the ferals. Carson’s first shot knocked the rifle out of the man’s hand, the second wounded him, the man falling with a yell of pain.
Carson’s job, Zander had told him, was to wing the humans attacking and to protect Rae. Rae didn’t know about that last part.
Zander dumped his samurai sword next to Carson and shifted to bear. He roared as he came down on his polar bear feet and launched himself at the nearest Shifter—a large, mottled, half-beast wildcat of uncertain type.
Zander fought against the wildcat’s teeth and claws, snarling at the beast’s fetid breath. The man’s face was half human, his eyes crazed and red. Feral. No doubt about it.
Rae hadn’t shifted. She knew she had to guard the Sword of the Guardian, no matter her boast that she-wolves were the best fighters. Zander saw her out of the corner of his eye as she picked up the samurai sword, unsheathed it, and held it ready.
After that, life was a blur. Zander roared as the feral sank ragged claws into him but they couldn’t penetrate much past Zander’s fur. What concept of polar bear didn’t this asshole understand?
Zander heard the crunch of bone as the feral went limp under his hands. Zander’s rage hit coldness as the healer in him suddenly wanted to repair the damage.
The feral was still alive. Zander laid him down but forced himself to turn away. Icy realization bit him. He’d have to heal these guys when they were done, and it would kill him. Zander had always feared the day when those so far gone would take every spark of energy he had so that he couldn’t recover. Today might be the day.
He glanced at Rae, who stood with sword raised, balancing perfectly as he’d taught her. She was protecting Carson, like a shield-maiden with the sun dancing on her hair. He never wanted to leave her.
Another feral struck and Zander had to bury his worries and concentrate on staying alive. Going down while he brooded wouldn’t help anyone. Screw it—if Zander had to waste himself today, he would, as long as it meant that Rae was safe.
Broderick and Mason were fighting like the uncontrolled wolves they truly were, but they had Collars, which slowed them down. Zander fought his way over to them, throwing the next feral he was battling into the path of Carson and his tranq gun. Carson shot, and the feral howled and went still.
Two down, three to go. Zander and the McNaughton brothers fought hard and Carson’s tranq gun went off again. Four down. Rae shouted as she swung the samurai sword at the feral who broke free. Bright blood appeared on the feral’s side and then he collapsed under Broderick’s claws. Five.
Zander straightened up, breathing hard. They’d need to go help Eoin’s team—
And then the woods abruptly filled with more Shifters. The stink of the ferals assaulted Zander’s bear nose and made even Carson swear. Zander lifted on his back legs, rising up and up to scan the battlefield.
They were everywhere. Only twenty, Tiger had said, and Tiger was never wrong. Eoin’s and Dylan’s trackers, and Zander, had confirmed that number.
“What the fuck?” Broderick snarled.
Zander got a whiff of what the ferals’ collective stink at first masked. A faint bite of sulfur and smoke came to him, along with a cold breeze that was incongruous with the soft month of June, even in the north. The wind was icy, as though someone had opened a window to a place in which winter raged.
Fuck.
Zander shifted rapidly down to human. “Mason, get back to Dylan and find out what the holy shit is going on. Carson, take Rae to the beach. No, back to the plane, and tell Marlo to get the engines running.”
Whether Rae would have argued with him or gone obediently, Zander was never to know. Human men surged out of the trees at that moment, flanking the Shifters. Zander’s band was surrounded, with no choice but to fight.
Zander had cured a feral a few months ago, as he’d told Rae, and had nearly gone insane in the aftermath. He remembered the loss of control, the red rage in his brain, the strange hunger for something he’d never been able to identify. He’d only wanted to savage everyone around him, would have done so if Olaf, the polar bear cub, hadn’t stopped him.
As Zander fought against odds that suddenly multiplied, he felt the feral urge come forward, blotting out anything civilized he’d forced upon himself. For all his claim that he could live un-Collared and outside Shifter hierarchy without it affecting him, Zander knew that the untamed beast lingered inside him. He habitually pushed others away and holed up alone because that gave him time to get the beast under control before he went near anyone he could hurt.
The other Shifters were right about Zander. He really was batshit crazy.
He had to keep these ferals away from Rae. Zander moved back to her even as he fought, noting that Mason and Broderick joined him in forming a circle around Rae and Carson. There was no way for Mason to get away now to bring back intel—he’d never leave his brother to fight alone, in any case. As much as they blustered with each other, the McNaughton family was close.