Page 92 of Hunted

Each shot at close range was a hard punch straight through the center of my chest, knocking the air from my lungs. I screamed as River tried to twist away at the last second, expecting to feel the burn of the gunshot through our mated bond.

I touched the scar at my throat from his teeth, willing my heartbeat to find his. There was nothing. My throat closed. I gasped, trying to suck in air when it felt like a boulder was suddenly pressing down on my chest.

I staggered across the platform holding my side, reaching Brody, who stood motionless, his Glock lowered. When I looked up, he was staring straight ahead, unresponsive. Behind Matteo Rossi, River was slumped on his side, his face a blank mask.

No, I silently screamed. Get up.

Beyond River, Sofia had fallen, blood streaming from the side of her head.

My vision blurred. I staggered into Brody, pushed him down onto the walkway. His gun clattered against the cold metal, disappearing down into the cold rushing water below us. Crawling over him felt like dragging my concrete-encased bones through a swamp of peanut butter. My fingers fumbled with the bright orange cap of the auto-injector. Rossi wasn’t looking at me, hadn’t even turned. He stood over River’s still form, gun raised, ready to fire the killing shot.

I knew the auto-injector was designed to work just like emergency epinephrine for peanut allergies. It would punch straight through clothing, delivering the drug within seconds. As the last bit of feeling faded from my fingertips, I stabbed the auto-injector into Rossi’s thigh, depressing the yellow button to deliver the dose of Blackout just as the world around me faded to black.

* * *

I INHALED SHARPLY, VISION SUDDENLY CLEAR. Brody Caldwell lay slumped below me, still unconscious. The Colorado River thundered below the narrow walkway, a violent wall of water spilling one hundred feet through the open floodgates from Lake Austin below the spillway to Lady Bird Lake.

“You bitch,” Rossi shouted, seizing me by the hair. “You’ll pay for this. We’ll see how well you swim.”

Looking back, the next ten seconds were both the longest of my life and the most chaotic experience I’ve never been able to describe the same way twice, no matter how hard I tried to recall the precise details. For sure, Brody, River and I have never come up with the same version of events.

But these three things I knew to be true: I remembered clearly Rossi dragging me to the edge of the platform. Behind him, I watched River break free from the trance he’d been placed in and explode off the walkway, no longer caught in Rossi’s mental grip. Quick as a cat, Brody managed to twist the gun from Rossi’s grip while he was distracted with me, firing off two shots in the process.

According to Cal, something about those two shots at close range while I was inches from being thrown to my death, combined with twenty-three years of living with anxiety likely triggered what happened next. All I knew was the helpless, shaky terror of being forced over that railing. My feet left the ground. My stomach shriveled up into my throat. Bone snapped. I was falling, I was sure of it, crashing into the steel girders supporting the floodgates, my bones shattering into a thousand pieces.

But even as that fear took hold, choking the air from my throat, I felt my bones reforming. There was no other word for it. I was becoming something stronger, my muscles lengthening, my fingernails sharpening into deadly claws. Thick dark fur sprouted over my skin, instantly warming me, protecting me from the cold mist coming off the water.

I was not helpless. I was not prey. And no one would ever hurt me again.

Matteo Rossi screamed when my fangs tore into his throat.

Take that, bitch.

I’d worked in vet clinics as a tech all through college. There was nothing sharper than those scary brand-new puppy fangs.

“Let her go, you bastard,” River roared. “Ellie—”

Hands tore at my fur. Rossi fought to pry open my jaws as Brody and River tried to wrestle him away from me, the fact that we were all soaked to the skin not helping anyone get a good hold.

“Ellie, let go! I’ve got you.” River reached for me, trying to hook an arm under my front left paw. But before he could get a firm grip, Rossi broke away from the melee, hurling himself off the walkway. His arm tightened around my throat in a chokehold, taking me with him.

The wind roared in my ears as we hurtled towards the floodwaters, drowning out all other sound. I clipped the edge of one of the steel girders with my back paw. I yelped, the pain causing the limb to seize up, but Matteo lost his hold on me.

As I tumbled head over paws down towards the dark churning waters one hundred feet below, the fall seeming to take forever, all I could think was, Keep your head up. You have to swim. Head up. You have to swim.

Every scenario my anxiety had played out in my head on repeat over the years for escaping a sinking car was for naught as I slammed into the lake like it was a slab of concrete. The violent force of the water coming off the spillway immediately forced me under. Water rushed into my lungs, choking me. Panicked, I tried to swim for the surface, kicking my oversized baby wolf paws, but the water was pitch black and the ruthless force of the current kept flipping me end over end. My lungs were on fire. My heart felt like it would explode. My eyes burned. My arms and legs were growing weak. I was going to die. Here, cold and alone in the dark water, where no one would ever find me. I was going to die—

Teeth sank into the scruff of my neck. The next thing I knew, I was violently coughing up what felt like a gallon of muddy river water, still in my wolf form. Rowan knelt over me. She’d shifted back to human. Her bangs were plastered to her forehead. Her huge blue eyes were wide with concern, and she kept pounding on my back.

“Keep coughing, Ellie. Throw up, if you can. That might help.” Rowan paused to hack up a mouthful of water. “Can you shift back?”

I threw up some more water and what looked like lakeweed. Gross.

She petted me, kindly. “It’s okay. It’s hard the first time when you’re stressed.”

I coughed up more water in answer.

We were in a rainy parking lot. London Blake was on the radio, commanding the scene. “We need multiple paramedic units. We’re looking at multiple gunshot victims, several who had to be pulled from the floodwaters. There are two concussion victims who need transport, but those are medium priority, so I’m sending them in private vehicles. The hostile is no longer on scene. I repeat, we have secured the scene.”