in our ears as though we were swimming through it, making that whimper and the scream that followed all the harder to hear.
As shifters, we were always hungry. That was pretty much par for the course. We burned through eight thousand calories a day, and that had to be made up somehow. Though we often thanked the Mother for providing us with the miracle that was protein and whey shakes, nothing beat meat. Especially not for a wolf.
Ignoring our grumbling bellies, we both stalked off, letting our place in line be eaten up by the people behind us. I mourned it only for a second, because my hunger wasn’t more important than the girl who’d just cried out.
Grass crunched underfoot as we crossed the carnival. There was trash everywhere, messing with our senses even further. Tracking anything in this mess would be impossible, even if we were looking for the worst kinds of scent—blood.
As we rounded a large area that was set aside for bumper cars, I heard it again, a whimper, and this time, the scent of blood hit me. It wasn’t just a tiny cut, wasn’t even something that could be healed with stitches.
This was a gushing, gaping wound that bled from the heart.
I didn’t wait to see if Austin was there at my side, didn’t wait to see if he had my back. I ran off, letting my nose lead as that thickly metallic scent overtook everything, making me see red as the blood poured from the poor woman’s body.
When I approached a stall selling candy, I found her at the back. She was small in stature, but there was a hint of maturity about her face that told me she wasn’t a child. Her bones were definitely fragile, and the outfit she wore—a kind of gauzy dress that made me think of fortune tellers—was saturated with blood. I saw her scarf covering her throat, and I realized that was where the wound lay.
Austin skidded to a halt at my side, and when he did, he dropped to his knees and deftly tugged the fabric out of the way. With the barrier gone, we both saw for ourselves exactly what we were up against.
This was no ordinary attack.
This wasn’t a woman who’d been assaulted and stabbed in exchange for her purse.
She’d been bitten.
My mouth dried at what that meant, and even though I didn’t have to, even though I could feel the moon’s sluggish crawl through the night sky, I looked up, tipping my head back so I could see the full moon.
“We need to get her out of here,” I rasped, when I heard the odd gasps escaping her mouth.
I’d never changed a human into one of my kind. We weren’t supposed to. It was forbidden. Only pack alphas were given that opportunity, and even then, it wasn’t something they did frequently. Usually only mates were allowed to be changed, but that was after being part of the pack for a few years.
Extending someone this gift wasn’t something we did often, but the woman’s choice had been torn from her.
As had her carotid.
I gnawed my bottom lip as I peered around the back of the tent. We were in the area that was for the workers. People wandered around from stall to stall, buying snacks here, playing a game there, but it was all happening at the front, not the back.
Even as I wondered why the carnival worker hadn’t come out from her stall to see what was going on, because there must have been a helluva racket, I heard noises coming from within—a hushing sound, a soft giggle, some moans.
Whoever was in there was making out with someone.
My brow furrowed at that, but who was I to question someone’s inability to hear another person having their throat ripped out while they were doing the nasty?
Even though the candy stall worker was evidently busy, I could hear movement coming from the stand behind us.
I reached down, grabbed my brother’s shoulder, and muttered, “Someone’s coming out.”
“I hear them,” he replied, his tone as loaded with urgency as mine was.
Though this wasn’t our mess, it was our pack’s, and we were duty bound to help the female. Of course, that went beyond just our duty to the pack. It was basic human decency.
If this was any other night, if this was any other time of the month, she’d have just perished and there wouldn’t have been a damn thing we could do to save her.