Page 58 of Legacy Found

Not again. Not like this.

Then two things hit me at once. Hands. From both sides. At the same instant.

Torres slams in from the left and gets a fistful of my arm. Luke crashes in from the right and grabs the other, both of them dragging me back, out of reach—and the world detonates.

Heat explodes in the center of my chest and blows out to my fingertips, followed by pressure and a hard pull, like two hooks sinking into my sternum and dragging in opposite directions. For one second I can't tell if I'm being saved or torn apart.

The inside of my wrist lights up.

I feel it more than see it—a searing warmth—and when I glance down there are two lines of light burning up through my skin, bright and impossible, curving.

What the—

Then someone yanks me clear, my feet leave the stone, and the moment shatters.

The wolf is still coming.

It twists after me even as I'm dragged back, and I feel Luke let go of my arm — and then Luke isn't beside me anymore.

Luke is changing.

I've seen a shift. Jon's, careful and slow, a lesson. This is the opposite. Instant and violent, a man becoming a wolf between one heartbeat and the next with no grace and no restraint — and then there's a massive wolf planted between me and everything else, and it is furious. Hackles ridged down its spine. Teeth bared. Body angled square between me and the thing that tried to take me apart.

When the feral wolf presses forward, Luke's wolf snarls — a sound I feel in the stone, in my teeth — and the feral one checks, hesitates. Instructors' wolves are closing from the sides now, three of them, and Luke holds the center and drives the thing back with nothing but the promise in his body.

I'm on the ground where they set me down, and I should be terrified.

I'm not. Not of this one. There's a snarling, half-mad wolf two feet from me with its teeth out, and I know — deeper than thought — that it will not touch me.

Then Luke's wolf glances back. His eyes — green, his eyes, unmistakable even in that face — find mine. And something in it changes. Still furious. But not at me. Never at me.

I have no idea why I'm that certain. I just am.

"Jess. Jess."

Torres is crouched over me, hands on my shoulders, and he's not looking at my face. He's staring at my wrist.

I follow his gaze. The light is sinking back under my skin, but it's leaving something behind — two dark curved lines where there was nothing this morning.

"What?" My voice comes out shaky. "Torres, what is that—"

He doesn't answer. He just stares, and it's the face of a man who's been knocked flat off his feet.

"Torres."

He finally looks at me. "I don't know."

"You look like you absolutely know."

His eyes drop back to my wrist, then flick to the snarling wolf standing guard over both of us.

It's Jon who comes toward him.

He crosses the field at a walk — slow, hands loose and visible, because everyone with any sense has stopped moving toward me. They've worked out what I already know: getting near me right now is a bad idea. Nobody commands Luke's wolf.

But I can.

"Luke."