Page 2 of Shifters Reckoning

Oily shadows bolted over the ground, faster than any I had seen before, and they lifted out of the ground without stopping. A wave of shadows rushed toward us.

“We’ll stand and fight,” I yelled.

“But we don’t know how to fight them. You’re the only one who’s beaten them,” Olivia answered.

“Run!” Jasper bellowed.

Oliver, John, Phil, Olivia, and Jasper all morphed and charged back toward Six-Mile, crashing through the undergrowth. They disappeared in a heartbeat.

A moment later, the underbrush rustled, and I spun toward the sound.

Olivia had returned… alone. She shifted to her human form. “I’m here!”

My beta to the end…

“You shouldn’t have come back,” I yelled.

“Look out!” She pointed back the way we’d come.

Long tendrils reached through the air toward me, floating on the wind, the stench of death preceding them.

Despite how much I wanted to stand and fight, I had to save Olivia, and I wouldn’t risk her in the fight. She wouldn’t leave unless I did, so I spun around and launched into my wolf form, galloping toward home.

Olivia shifted and started running ahead of me.

But the living-dead mages kept up with us and completely ignored my speeding ahead to catch our retreating allies. A wide swath of inky black formed on either side of me as I fled. A hundred yards later, I’d entirely lost track of Olivia, so I changed the speed and direction I ran. No way was I leading the horde of evil back to Six-Mile.

When I cut through a clearing, the two columns of shadows shot ahead and joined as one in front of me, effectively blocking my path forward. The shadows were too wide for me to leap across, so I whirled to go back the other way, but I was already boxed in on that side too.

They’d succeeded in cornering me.

The clouds thickened, blotting out the sun and rolling in the sky. Thunder reverberated through my chest. I shifted to my human form and waited for the mages to rise out of the ground, to attack me, anything. Instead, the mages circled me without moving in.

In the distance, a red glow filled the woods, and the smell of smoke increased. Soon, a wall of bright orange wildfire appeared, burning through the forest, consuming everything between the dilapidated mansion and where I now stood. Closer and closer, tree trunks snapped, crackled, and caught fire. Animals fled without stopping.

A robed figure rode on top of the tallest part of the wildfire, standing on the smoke that billowed out from him. Acheron stepped down off the fire, off the smoke, and onto the ground below him.

“You,” I snarled.

“Oh, you shouldn’t be so quick to mistreat me, Alpha Logan Blackwood,” he crooned. “We could make an incredible team.”

I crossed my arms. “Is that so?”

Acheron nodded. “I have a gift for you. Shall I show you? It’s the overnight dreaming.”

He flicked his fingers, and he materialized directly in front of me. An inky shadow slammed into my forehead and brought me to my knees.

A scene exploded in my mind, but it wasn’t a memory. It was his premonition.

You can’t die. You haven’t told me your secret, my love. I pushed the words toward her and willed her to ignore the sting of the injuries all over my crushed body. Shifting wouldn’t save me now. I couldn’t summon the strength to do anything. Run!

No more running.

Run, Emma!

One hundred yards away, blood dripped from Emma’s nose, but I couldn’t reach her, and she didn’t respond to my repeated pleas for her to run. The dome she’d constructed around herself and Acheron allowed no one through.

To the end, she protected us all, and I could no longer help.