This Dark Wolf (Soul Bitten Shifter #1) - Everly Frost Page 0,98
the SUV first pulled in. I’ve had my back to it all this time.
A glistening wall shimmers around us, curving up and around our position. It’s far enough away, and high enough up, that it didn’t shimmer at the edge of my vision and catch my attention. Inside the glimmering cage, I hear only the expected sounds: a breeze that carries the hint of rain, the quiet hum of a sleeping city, the distant lap of water at the edge of the river.
I hear Dawson’s breathing.
But outside the cage, the parking lot is in turmoil.
Two enormous men, both dressed in full body black clothing and masks, stride through the wolf shifters who lie either unconscious on the ground or are too wounded to get up.
The first man is built like my former alpha, Peter Nash. He isn’t carrying a weapon, but his body bulges with muscle—thick chest, enormous biceps, muscled thighs. He walks straight at Bridget, who must have joined the fight at some stage.
Warning bullets pluck at the pavement at the enormous man’s feet—the same pattern Danika used to force Dawson off-course. She’s trying to ward him off, but her next bullets won’t be warnings.
Iyana steps into the enormous man’s path, pulling out her gun, but he bats her away. His big fist knocks into her chest so hard that she flies backward, lands heavily on her side, and doesn’t get up.
With breathtaking speed, the man grabs Bridget’s arm—the one she’s using to throw a punch at him—and then her neck, lifting her off her feet. Her mouth is open. She’s trying to scream—might have screamed already, but I can’t hear her. Her legs kick, her free arm hits at her captor, but he doesn’t let go.
The man behind him appears slim in comparison but is as bulky as Tristan. He carries a wooden shotgun with an impossibly crooked barrel, so warped, he couldn’t possibly fire bullets from it. It would explode in his face. Surely.
With his firearm outstretched in his left hand, perfectly balanced despite its length, he aims high as he pulls the trigger.
Light flashes around the shotgun’s chamber. A glowing bullet shoots from the barrel. I spin, my hair flying, trying to follow the bullet’s trajectory to the roof of the building, where Danika is hiding.
The glowing bullet hits the edge of the building. At the same time, lightning shimmers in the sky above, striking directly downward to the spot where the bullet hit, as if the bullet is a lightning rod.
The rooftop lights up.
Danika’s rising silhouette is sharply visible in the explosion. She leaps from the roof, shifting midair into her hawk, beating her wings furiously as she tries to escape.
The man pulls the trigger again.
The second bullet narrowly misses her outstretched wings as she banks left. Lightning spears from the sky and hits the air right where she was flying a split second ago.
That shotgun is not an ordinary gun.
These men are not ordinary men.
On the ground, the first man is gripping Bridget so hard, he’s going to break her neck.
“No!” My scream sounds empty inside the shimmering cage.
All of it has happened within the space of a few seconds, so fast that I’m screaming at myself to move, to get out there, to fight them.
“You won’t get out of this cage, Tessa!” Dawson shouts as he races past me, spinning to face me before he slips backward through the shimmering wall.
He gives me a final smirk. “Have fun watching your friends die.”
I step toward the magical shield. Something or someone made this cage and it wasn’t Dawson. Magic thrums through it, a magic that reminds me of electricity, sharp and biting like the lightning the second man is conjuring.
Helen told me that I repel magic.
It’s time to test the extent of my abilities.
With a scream, I run straight at the glistening wall.
I punch right through it, sending shards of glittering wall spraying through the air before they disappear.
The remaining magic is like cobwebs sticking to my skin, but I shake off the feeling with a scream of rage.
In the distance, the man with the warped gun jolts and spins in my direction. Only a few paces away from me, Dawson loses his footing, stumbles, and shouts. “Fuck! That’s not supposed to happen.” He takes off, sprinting away from me, heading across the parking lot.
Suddenly, all of the sensory input I was missing floods in.
Magic crackles around the man with the gun. Even his weapon has an aura of power around it. It’s definitely