"Why the hell is Jak there, and not you?" he snapped.
"Long story, but I'm about to head there now."
"Ris—"
I knew what was coming, so I hung up. It'd piss him off, but right now I was more concerned about Jak's safety than Rhoan's fury. Jak might be a werewolf—and more than capable of handling himself in any normal situation—but this was about as far from normal as you could get. Just because they looked like human males didn't mean they actually were.
"Azriel—"
The rest of the sentence caught in my throat as Azriel's heat and arms wrapped around me. Then we were out of there, zipping through the gray fields so fast they were little more than a blur. My feet touched solid ground a heartbeat later, and the air became thick with the sound of screaming—a scream that stopped all too abruptly. The brief silence that followed was broken by the snarls of a wolf—Jak.
"Stay here," Azriel said, immediately disappearing again.
I snorted and ran for the house. You'd think he'd know by now that I wasn't about to obey an order like that—no matter how sensible it might be.
The snarling had come from a town house at the rear of a block of eight. More than a dozen people had gathered in the driveways of the other houses—all of them peering toward the very last town house in the row—but no one approached it. Which was pretty sensible, given that most of the people watching were either women with children or elderly.
I ran past them all and around the double garage that dominated the front of the town house. The front door had been forced open, with one half left swinging from a hinge that was barely holding on and the other lying in pieces on the white tiled floor. There was no sound coming from inside the town house now. Everything was ominously quiet.
Ignoring the tension that curled through my belly, and hoping like hell that Jak was okay, I drew Amaya and stepped inside cautiously. The purple fire flicking down her length was muted and halfhearted, and her hissing was little more than its usual background noise. If there was danger here, she wasn't sensing it.
Which didn't mean I shouldn't be careful.
I took several wary steps. Bits and pieces of furniture lay scattered everywhere, evidence of a fierce fight. The air was rich with both scent of blood and the musky odor of wolf, and twined within it was the fainter, more odious scent of unknown males. Human males.
But three human males—no matter how strong—shouldn't have been able to overwhelm a werewolf unless they'd gotten the drop on him.
Or they'd been armed with silver.