Page 61 of Broken Moon

“There’s no time, honey,” shesaid, and then she shoved me. Hard. “Run!” Then she burst into her shift asAdam’s two goons rushed toward us, still in their human forms. But when sheshifted, they did as well, and they went for my mom.

“Ohhellno,” I yelled,and I yanked my second blade from its sheath. I threw it, hard, and it slicedthrough the air and embedded itself right between one of the wolf’s eyes.Edgar, I was nearly certain.

He gave a yelp of pain andloped away shaking his head, as though he could shake the knife loose. Hecouldn’t shift to his human form and grab the knife, because he’d likely die.His body would reject it and push it out, but that would take a while. Meanwhile,the odds were a little better for my mother.

I gripped my demon blade andwaited for a chance to use it. Distance was good when it came to fightingwolves. If he got near me with his huge claws, he’d shred me into bloodypieces.

I needed my gun. It wasbelieved the magic inside a shifter protected them from guns, but all thatprotection would go away if I shot a shifter withmygun—I used silverin my shotshells. Silver affected a wolf for the same reason a person could soeasily shove a wooden stake through a vampire’s heart. Magic. To a vampire,wooden stakes were essentially little spears of concentrated sunshine, andthey’d slide through a vamp’s chest wall like a fork through cake.

The sounds of the fight acrossthe woods carried, though the wolves were habitually managing their noise. We’dlearned over time to be quiet. My mother and Greg fought almost silently,eerily savage there in the night.

I followed them, instead ofrunning for the car like she wanted me to. Of course I wouldn’t leave her. Butshe and the alpha’s wolf tumbled through the night, and I lost sight of them.

I scanned the ground as I ran,tracking them, but moments later, I heard a high-pitched keen of pain. I knewit was my mom. The brutish warrior had hurt her.

And if I was too late, he wasgoing to do more than that.

“Mom,” I screamed, no longerthinking about maintaining the silence. “Mom!” I ran as fast as I could, whichwas fast, and forced myself to calm down and follow the trail they’d left andthe smell of blood in the air. I had to be close.

I was. My mother lay crumpledagainst the base of a tree, and Greg crouched over her, his body twice as bigas hers and almost as bloody. He opened his mouth, growling, and prepared torip out her throat. He was going to kill her, which meant his alpha had notforbidden him to. More than likely, he’d told his warriors to kill us if wegave them trouble.

Now I could use my demon blade,and I didn’t hesitate. I flung it at the wolf’s head. I’d been honing my knifethrowing skills since I was six years old, and my aim was true. The wolf didn’tjust roar and stagger off into the shadows as his brother had done. His brotherhadn’t been stuck with a demon blade, though. He would heal. Greg wouldn’t.

The blade forced a grunt fromhim, and then he simply listed to the side, fell to the ground, and was dead.

“Fuck you,” I whisperedhoarsely. I pulled my blade and wiped it clean on his fur before sliding itinto its sheath. Then I knelt beside my mother. In her unconscious state, she’dshifted back to her human form.

Greg, killed as a wolf, wouldstay a wolf in death. If humans were to find his body before Stone Moon wolvescould retrieve it, they would not see a murdered human—only an extremely largewolf.

“Mom,” I said. She was wounded,but not fatally. Greg had clawed her up and had bitten chunks from her, but shewould heal. She’d heal even faster if I could get her conscious so she couldshift.

She’d been right to worry aboutAdam Thorne.

I took off my jacket andwrapped it around her pale, bloody body, then stood before leaning down to lifther into my arms. She was small, and I was strong. I could carry her homewithout struggling to do it.

The fight between the two packshad been vicious but quick. As I walked through the woods with my mother,Jared, dressed in whatever tattered clothing he could find, loped toward me. Hewas surrounded by three of his warriors and his beta Eli, and I knew the otherswould be patrolling through the shadows, watching for threats. None of them hadleft the fight without injury.

Jared surprised me by taking mymother from me—I would have expected him to deliver that task to one of hiswarriors. He swept his gaze over me. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. How many did we lose?”

He hesitated, a surprised andpleased gleam in his eyes. I already thought of his pack as my own. “No deaths,”he said. “And our injured will recover.”

“I know of at least one deathon the Stone Moon side,” I said, still angry and frightened over my mother’sattack. “Two wolves attacked her.” I gestured at my mother’s unconscious form.“I injured one of them and killed the other.”

Again that gleam of surpriselit his eyes. “Imagine what you can do when your wolf is free. You’re already aforce. You will be unstoppable.” He looked down at me. “Your mother will befine. I feel her energy, strong and wild like her daughter’s.”

For a few seconds he held mystare, then my mother stirred in his arms as she awakened, and he let her slideto the ground.

“Mom,” I said, gripping herarms. “Are you okay?”

She put her hand to the back ofher head and it came away bloody. “That dude harshed my mellow,” she said.

I sighed, then grinned. “She’sokay,” I told Jared, but he could see the worry in my face. Her words werethick and her eyes were dazed, and I knew she’d sustained some damage to herhead. It was likely she had a pretty severe concussion, at the very least.Sometimes when a wolf took damage to her head, it could take her a while topull up the energy to find her shift.

Jared took her shoulders andturned her gently to face him. “Mrs. Silver, I’m going to help you shift, andthen my beta will take you back to Shadowfield. You’ll be safe there.”

She focused on his face. “We’reyour wolves now?”