Unstoppable (Their Shifter Academy #6) - May Dawson Page 0,3

happened fast once after Clearborn fell. My eardrums hummed from the gunshots so close to my head.

Clearborn fell to his knees, his face grimly stoic and unsurprised even when he was shot, and he pressed his hands to the blossom of blood across his shirt before he tumbled forward.

Lex shot him. Before the guard even hit the ground, Penn had lunged for his gun, breaking his grip and yanking it away in one smooth motion. Now Penn held the pistol trained on the fallen guard, who was on the ground groaning.

“We need him alive,” Lex barked at Penn. “We can interrogate him.”

He looked at me and Penn. “Penn, I need you watching over the portal to make sure no one goes after Maddie and the rest of the team. Chase, you’ve got to get to the gate and make sure one of the guards didn’t open it for another pack. We can’t trust anyone right now.”

I nodded and took off.

“I can heal myself,” Clearborn promised Lex. “You deal with him.”

Behind me, I could hear the ripping, snarling sound of the guard trying to transform into a wolf. Fuck, if we still had our wolves, we would’ve recognized that he could shift himself, and we’d have known he was allied with the witches. Without all our senses, we were vulnerable.

The sounds of transformation cut off with a yelp and a gunshot. So much for needing the guard alive.

The sound seemed to echo in my ears as I ran down the long hill that led past the academic buildings down through the student parking lot. Before I reached the wooded drive, I heard movement behind me.

I whirled, braced for a fight.

Blake was there behind me, racing as fast as he could toward me. “What happened?”

I waved him off. “Another attack. Go protect Skyla.”

“She’s with the doc,” he said stubbornly. “What the fuck are you doing?”

There was no reason anyone would attack Skyla—not now—but I still worried having my little sister out of my sight. I’d never get over what happened to Blake and Skyla while I was off with the team.

But right now there was no time to waste, and I could use Blake’s help.

“Come on,” I told him, slapping him in the chest. “We’ve got to make sure the gates are closed. Can’t trust the guards. Stay with me and try to be smart.”

He flashed me a dark look, his jaw tensing. God, Blake took offense at every damned thing.

When I took off running, though, he followed.

I left the long driveway before we turned the corner that led the rest of the way to the gates so whoever was down at the guard shack wouldn’t see us.

The gates yawned wide open.

Fuck, I didn’t know where the two guards who were supposed to be manning the gates were, but they weren’t my top priority right now.

Because through the trees, I glimpsed a pickup truck racing down the road toward us.

I’d bet anything that the bed of that truck was full of wolves.

I was already moving, and I threw myself into the gates to push them closed. Blake ran to help, swinging the other gate closed just a second after I did.

The gates latched shut with a metal click. The pickup truck slid on the gravel trying to make the hard left turn into the academy’s driveway, and I saw wolves bounced across the bed.

The driver must have mashed the accelerator, because the truck gunned for me. Blake shouted desperately for me to move.

Instead I planted myself there and gripped the gate, as I muttered in Latin.

Don’t let me fuck this up, I thought as my magic flushed hot through my blood. The Latin words still felt awkward on my tongue.

“Shield,” I shouted in Latin. Golden magic rippled from my hands through the metal gate and into the high stone fence that surrounded the rest of the academy.

Blake rushed into me, knocking me down, just before the pickup truck slammed into the gates. The two of us fell together behind the concrete barrier that stood to one side of the driveway.

There was a terrible thud and then a screeching sound as the pickup truck’s engine kept whining, even though the truck had come to a stop against the gates. Blake looked at me, his eyes wide with fear.

“Stay low,” I whispered. They would be armed; I didn’t want them to know it was just me and Blake, because we were definitely outnumbered. Worst of all, the guards that opened the gate might be