Lone Wolf Dawn (Alpha Underground Book 2) (16 page)

I’m not sure where the intervening minutes went. One second I was bracing myself for Hunter to slide a massive shifter onto my back. The next moment I was putting one last foot in front of the other as I preceded my mate into the entranceway just inside the front door.

The foyer
, I thought and was barely alert enough to realize that I sounded just as hysterical as Ginger had when I’d last seen her.
Mom won’t be fond of the new decorating scheme.

No, the real-estate agent would be pissed as hell at the ruined carcass of a building that loomed around us now. It would be the real test of our relationship—whether Celia was still proud of me once she was back on her feet and could see the sagging bones of the home she’d left behind. Once she could fully comprehend the loss of her nest egg, of her irreplaceable photos and memorabilia, and of the refuge she’d built for herself far from werewolf-kind.

Not thinking about the future now
, I reproached myself. Instead, it was all I could do to remain upright when my entire torso screamed beneath Cinnamon’s weight and when my lungs were scraped raw from exertion and smoke. My previous separation from the current moment had been a blessing, I now realized. Reality was a bitch.

Ten more steps,
Hunter broadcast, easing into my mind as if he’d never been gone. And perhaps he hadn’t. My mate could have dropped Glen off in the yard and been halfway back to rescue Cinnamon by this point in time. But, instead, he’d paced along in my wake, buoying me up mentally even as my body threatened to collapse right there onto the smoldering floor.

The first story of the house was an inferno. On the other side of the living room, a massive crash marked the descent of a fire-loosened
something
and sparks flickered across my vision, lighting the foyer like fireflies. If I’d thought Hunter and I were operating on borrowed time earlier, now we were wading waist deep in temporal debt.

My adrenaline spiked and my feet tried to pick up the pace as another booming thud filled the air. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough agility left to handle the accelerated speed, so I instead stumbled and nearly fell against the closed front door.

The closed,
locked
front door.

I’d somehow forgotten in the midst of my self-imposed suffering that the witch hunter had padlocked both entrances closed from the outside after lighting the house on fire. That the only way to escape was through the kitchen window Hunter had busted loose...which lay beside raging flames on the far opposite corner of the residence from where we now stood. I was 99% certain I couldn’t carry Cinnamon that far.

But no, that didn’t make sense. Officer Lambert hadn’t turned right down the hallway after descending the stairs. I was certain he’d gone straight out the front door.

I was almost certain. I was
halfway
certain.

Doubting myself, my sluggish movements slowed yet further. And then I was abruptly tapping into the larger pack bond, my vision morphing into Ginger’s surroundings rather than my own.

From outside, the house looked even worse than I’d imagined. Billowing gouts of flame erupted from the right side of the dwelling and the upper level tilted subtly yet ominously toward the ground. A few of the house’s ceramic tiles were already sliding off the roof to shatter against the neighbor’s fence. As I watched—as Ginger watched—a stud crept away from the wall and joined the pileup.

So those crashes I heard
were
falling beams after all.
Really, I would have much preferred my hypothesis to have been proven incorrect.

Dreamily, I felt Ginger’s lips move as she screamed at the one-bodies around her.
“My brother’s still in there!”
she emoted, jerking against the heavy hand that kept her rooted to the earth.
“If you won’t go get him, then I will.”

I tried to reach out and soothe my pack mate’s angst, to reassure her that not only Cinnamon but also Hunter, Glen, and I had nearly achieved safety. At the same time, I tried to urge the fingers of my right hand to loosen their cramped grip around her brother’s leg so I could open the door and make good on our escape.

But the combination of mental and physical effort was beyond me. Wires crossed within my brain and I failed at both attempts.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry but we got here too late. Paul went in against the chief’s orders and I’m glad to say he was able to save one victim. But I’ve seen this kind of fire before. I can promise you that if anyone goes inside now, the building will fall down around their ears.”

The speaker was a firefighter I didn’t recognize, one who had clearly given up on anyone maintaining their vitality within Celia’s home. And I could see his point. Rushing into the current inferno would be akin to committing suicide, so of
course
it was smarter to keep the present escapees alive rather than allowing them to hunt for more survivors.

Survivors that included Ginger’s brother...as long as I could figure out how to open this door and carry him to safety.
Move
, I told my fingers. Unfortunately, only my thumb managed to unfurl. The other digits remained firmly frozen in place.

A cloud of smoke engulfed me...then Hunter was elbowing me aside, shifting Glen higher onto his shoulder with the same ease that a one-body might use to twitch a messenger bag into place while rooting around in his pocket for the keys. “We’re almost there,” the uber-alpha promised, although how he could speak without falling into a coughing fit like the one that currently squeezed my chest was beyond me.

Flash—Hunter’s shirt smoldered as a spark landed on the fabric and caught hold. Flash—Ginger’s arm ached as the firefighter’s grip tightened around her bicep. Flash—I tried to squelch the incipient flame with the force of my elbow since no other part of my body was currently available for the task. Flash—Ginger swayed from side to side in an attempt to elude the firefighter’s restraining hold.

It was a good thing my mate had taken the lead in the real world since, when the flickers of shared reality finally settled down, I ended up firmly stuck within the trouble twin’s head. I—she—struggled unsuccessfully for several seconds before
I felt rather than heard her frantic decision.

Who cares about shifter secrecy if Cinnamon isn’t around to take advantage of our stealth?

Ginger, don’t!
I called out in reply. So far, I’d merely been consuming her experiences passively, using them as an escape from the smoke that clogged my lungs and from the waves of heat that rolled against my back. Now, though, I pushed with all my might in an attempt to broadcast directly into my pack mate’s mind.

But whether or not the redhead heard me, it was too late. She’d chosen to ignore the camera crew, the crowd, the dozens of one-bodies working to aid the injured and keep the whole neighborhood from going up in flames.

Between one blink of an eye and the next, Ginger had slipped out of the firefighter’s grasp in the easiest way possible. She’d gone full-on wolf.

***

The succeeding events flowed one after another so quickly that I had no time to dwell on Ginger’s highly illegal act. First a fireball of flames licked against my skin. Then I was being pulled through the open doorway by Hunter’s iron grip, outside air brushing my cheeks as I half-fell, half-ran down the steps and off the porch.

The world exploded. Brilliant light seared my eyeballs while blisters popped up on my exposed skin. I ached—quite literally—to lapse back into unconsciousness and escape the agony. But Hunter pushed from inside my brain, yanking at my reins and moving my feet away from the house that had become an inferno.

Then one-body hands were all around us. Cinnamon was lifted off my back and Glen must have been similarly snatched because I was abruptly lying atop a shoulder I knew as well as my own. The scent of sassafras was so intense it overwhelmed the aroma of charred flesh and hair, and I relaxed into the unconventional embrace.

My chin thudded against hard back muscles as Hunter sprinted for the mass of humans and shifters currently backlit by the strobing lights of fire trucks and ambulances. Looking through both my mate’s eyes and my own at the same time, I could see Hunter’s gaze tunneling down onto the approaching safety even as my own gaze locked onto the structure we’d so recently left behind.

My mother’s hard-won house fell in slow motion. The south wall—the one that Celia had lined with glass-fronted shelves to showcase fancy china, silver tureens, and polished wooden bowls—collapsed in on itself as gently as a flower might close its petals for the night. The sirens and flames covered the tinkle of breaking glass as my mother’s perfect world imploded.

Then the master bedroom, the place where Celia had slept not long since, completed its descent earthward. The guest bedroom soon followed, and I could almost see the cheerful wallpaper full of repressed dreams going up in smoke, rainbows turning brown as unicorns lost their horns.

There goes Tolkien, Hinton, McKinley.

I didn’t get to see the rest of the house disintegrate, though. Instead, Hunter slid me forward so he could hug my torso to his chest, barely skipping a step as he cradled me in his arms.

“Don’t look back. Look forward,” he ordered quietly.

I wasn’t usually so passive, but this time I obeyed without complaint. Ignoring the splintering timbers behind our backs, I turned my attention to the ambulance-turned-field-hospital that we were fast approaching. As Hunter had probably planned, I was immediately heartened by the obvious signs of haste and activity. After all, why would the paramedics be scurrying about if my pack mates were already dead?

But as one ambulance left the driveway with sirens blaring, harsh reality kicked back in. Ambulances meant a hospital, and shifter-kind couldn’t afford anyone other than Celia and Mrs. Sawyer to be checked over by human medical staff.

Pulling up the web of pack connection with an effort, I saw with relief that Nina had indeed been the only injured inhabitant of the first ambulance. My groggy clan members were all attempting to refuse medical assistance, but they were still being loaded into the second vehicle with far more efficiency than I could have hoped for.

Time’s awastin’.

Another dose of adrenaline hit my system with the force of a gallon jug of coffee and I wriggled out of Hunter’s arms as my aching muscles and scorched skin faded from my attention. “We can’t let the pack end up in the hospital,” I said grimly, pushing my mate toward the easier problem while I limped in the opposite direction alone.

Because now that I’d kicked myself in the butt and had gotten my head back into the game, I realized that pesky paramedics were the least of our problems. Hunter would likely be able to sweet talk the medical professionals into releasing my friends into his custody, but the memories of both bystanders and television crew would be a tougher nut to crack.

Had the general public caught Ginger shifting either with eyes or on camera? And, if so, would I be able to make them believe they’d merely fallen prey to a trick of the light? Perhaps to some weird mass hysteria like the one that had fueled the Dancing Plague of 1518?

“You should be on a stretcher.”

For the first time, my stalker’s voice was entirely welcome. “Robert,” I acknowledged, not even glancing in his direction as I raced toward the line of humans being held back by uniformed police officers.

There
. My eyes locked onto the person I was looking for and I changed my trajectory slightly so I could intersect his path before he reached his buddies. He was dressed in fireman yellow, but apparently now that the house was a solid loss he’d returned his loyalties to his paid profession. “Lambert!” I yelled, hoping to catch his attention.

The one-body turned, his jaw clenching as he caught sight of the person who he must believe had brought devastation to his beloved’s home and life. Annoyance was followed up by a flicker of fear, the latter emotion suggesting that he’d also caught a good dose of werewolf up close and personal when Ginger broke the Tribunal’s first commandment.

But then Paul’s gaze drifted away from my face and over to the remaining ambulance. There, Celia was being fitted with an oxygen mask, proving that although she was injured she was also alive and awake.

And very much aware of her surroundings. My mother was too far off to hear what Lambert and I said—in fact, we’d yet to exchange more than one word with each other. Still, she took in my quandary at a glance.

Pushing aside her mask against the orders of the attending paramedic, Celia drew herself up onto her elbows. I knew how much effort she was expending since it couldn’t have been more than half an hour since she’d passed out as I tried to drag her up onto my own back. But the supposedly weak woman barely grimaced as she forced her limbs to do her bidding.

She captured Officer Lambert’s attention in its entirety, then mouthed a plea, a request, an order.
Help my daughter
, she demanded.

For an instant, we balanced on a knife’s edge. I could see Lambert’s deeply ingrained sense of law and order struggling against his possibly requited love for the woman who was even then falling back down onto the stretcher. Her eyes drifted shut and her admirer’s eyelids mirrored the gesture much less gently and with much more agonizing facial contortions.