Chapter 4 4

His face went white a half-second before four hundred pounds of silver wolf hit him square in the chest.

We went down together, and this time, I wasn't the one who was going to get back up hurting.

Weight won the fight before teeth did. I came down on him full-force, chest to chest, and had him pinned before he could even finish his scream.

Fire again  straight into my ribs this time. It should have stopped me. Instead it burned every thought out of my skull except one, simple and animal: don't die.

So I didn't ask permission. I closed my jaw around him and didn't let go until his hands, still pushing weakly at my ribs, finally quit fighting back. The taste of him mixed with the smell of my own fur cooking, and for a second I couldn't tell which one belonged to me.

I tossed his body aside like it was nothing and hit the floor myself, rolling hard, trying to smother the flames still working through my coat.

Something metal skidded across the stone. A canister, lid already popping, spilling purple smoke into the air before I could even lift my head to look at it.

One lungful and my body made the decision for me. Bones snapped back into place. Fur peeled away. My Wolf got yanked out of me before I understood what was happening to my own skin.

And that's when the real pain started  not from the burns, though those hadn't gone anywhere. From having nothing left to heal them with. No magic. No Wolf. Just skin, human and raw, trying to survive damage it was never built to survive.

"Up! Hands where we can see them!"

The smoke cleared enough to show me exactly how bad this was  a room full of agents, masked against the fumes, guns already up. Someone in front held a pair of cuffs that pulsed faint blue through the haze, waiting.

"Now, or you get shot where you're kneeling!"

I found whatever scrap of strength was still mine and used it to stand. Arms up. Every joint screaming at once.

No clothes. No power. Skin split open in a dozen places. This was not how tonight was supposed to end.

"Forward. Slow."

I took one step and my bare foot landed in something wet before my brain caught up to what it was. Warm. Thick. Wrong.

I looked down at a pool of blood spreading across the stone  and followed the trail of it back to where it started, even though every instinct told me not to.

Lucas. On his back. Eyes open, staring at nothing.

I hadn't meant for this. It was supposed to end in self-defense, not  I never got to finish the thought.

Metal clicked shut around my wrists first. The woman who'd locked them looked at me like something she'd scraped off a boot with no fear in it, just disgust, plain as day even through her mask.

"Get her to Phoenix. Let the courts finish what we started."

LIAM POV

"Dickhead's in holding," came Bennett's voice through the radio, grinning even through the static of his nickname for me, one of about six he used like we were friends.

We weren't. I didn't have any friends in this building. I didn't want them either.

New guys always made the same mistake with me. Six and a half feet, built like a wall, a face that never once softened  and somehow they still thought I'd want a beer after shift. I only smiled when I was feeding. I only laughed around bodies. That combination should've scared people off. Somehow it never did.

Nobody here said the quiet part out loud, so I'll say it: every inmate in this place would gut me the second my back was turned, and half the guards would help if it meant a promotion afterward. That's Shifter nature, plain and simple. I was just the only one who admitted I wanted the exact same thing: they did  more power, more magic, whatever wasn't nailed down. That's the entire reason I signed up for this job in the first place.

Phoenix held Denver's strongest Shifters, caged wall to wall, waiting out their sentences. And since I'm a vampire, I fed whenever the door opened for it, regulations or not. Every inmate tasted like something different. I was still working my way through the menu, no favorite yet.

Technically I could only bite during an active threat. In practice, it was always my word against a convict's, and the Warden never once picked their side over mine.

I knew this building better than the maintenance crew. Every camera's blind spot. Every rotation nodding off between midnight and three, same as clockwork every single night. I planned my rounds around him. Bennett, on the other hand, planned his whole shift around trailing me  like a burr that wouldn't shake loose.