Page 36 of Silver Claw

It was all I needed.

Ignoring the strange buzzing of my body and the near numbness of my hand, I clutched the demon blade and raced toward the seizing wolf.

My focus was intense, and though I was somewhat aware of the fighting going on around me and the realization that somewhere in the mass of colliding bodies was my mother, I understood that the most important thing at that moment was killing the biggest danger.

Before I could reach him, Gavin shifted into his actual wolf, losing the atrocity of the wolfman…werewolf thing. That shift seemed to clear him of the damage caused by being hit by his own magic.

I believed that he could only use his magic while in that awful wolfman form. As his wolf, he was only that.

A wolf. An alpha wolf.

I was going to fight him one on one, and the only decision I needed to make was whether to fight him as my wolf with her claws and teeth, or as my woman with her deadly demon blade.

Chapter Fifteen

When you’re in the heat of battle, time has no meaning. But I knew Sam, Zach, and Remy would have arrived. I knew my mother was fighting. And finally, I felt my alpha.

Jared was there, and his rage was so huge it would have stomped my own into the bloody ground and left only the desire to watch him sort out his business.

But I was Alpha, and I did not hide.

I held my own rage tight, and it rose up to meet Jared’s. I wanted to bathe in the blood of the Iron Fang alpha. I wanted him to suffer. I would decimate him.

It was Jared’s right to take the fight from me, but he would not. Not then. He understood my need. He knew I had to take on another alpha and prove to myself that I could.

And his pack needed to see that I would fight to the death for them. It was what an alpha did, even though I wasn’t technically their alpha. I was their alpha’s mate, and just because I didn’t live with them didn’t mean I wouldn’t defend them with everything I had.

I needed the fight.

Voss gathered his feet beneath him and leapt, intending to knock me to the ground with his huge wolf’s body and control me. Force me to yield to him. He didn’t see me as a worthy foe. All he saw was a bloody woman standing before him with a knife. I hadn’t even shifted, though he would have believed my wolf stronger.

He didn’t plan to kill me. He didn’t even plan to badly hurt me, at least not at first. He must have figured he’d leap at me, rough me up a little, then maybe, when he’d controlled the GrayShadow pack, he’d take me back to wherever he’d been staying in the city. Maybe he’d take me all the way to Colorado.

He was almost playful with a glint in his eyes and his lolling tongue, not for one second believing I could beat him in a fight.

His first clue that maybe I would be a challenge came when I sliced through his thick fur and found the flesh below, sending dark demon magic through the wound. Blood gushed, thick and hot, trying to expel something that should never have been inside a wolf. Or anyone else, for that matter.

I darted to the side, dancing around him as he automatically hesitated, and dragged my blade across his back. I was fast. Wolf fast. But so was he.

I had the blade ready to go in through his back to find his heart when he roared, whirled, and rammed his huge body against me. He knocked me off balance, but I didn’t fall. I didn’t lose the blade, either.

And Gavin Voss was angry.

He’d misjudged me, and now that he’d seen—and felt—what my blade could do, he would attempt to take it. I knew it as surely as if he’d shifted to his human form and told me. Gavin Voss was greedy, and given the chance, he wouldn’t hesitate to steal someone’s weapon when it was the most powerful one he’d probably ever felt.

I wouldn’t give him that chance.

I couldn’t afford to be distracted, but somewhere behind me, I heard Remy yell, and his voice was hoarse and tinged with pain. I knew he’d be clenching his teeth and giving the fight every last bit of strength that the first battle hadn’t bled out of him.

Zach would be fighting as well, and maybe even Rick. I’d known they would be there the second Joe said he’d called them. And even though each one of them had something a little extra,something that made them a little more than human, they’d always be in danger fighting the nonhumans.

And like it or not, that did distract me.

Apparently, Sam was close enough to see my hesitation, to see something in my face that shouldn’t have been there when I was in a fight to the death with an alpha, because his voice lifted into the eerie, unnatural near silence.

“I’vegotthem, shapeshifter.”

Of course he did. Sam was stronger even than the wolves. He would have their backs. I understood something else, as well. He’d been ready to interfere with my fight until he figured out the only thing I needed him to do was protect our pack.