Chapter 5

Odessa pov

Glass rained down over the table, and someone was screaming, and it took me an actual full second to realize the screaming was partly me.

Briar… I didn't know her name yet. I wouldn't learn it until later, but I'm using it now because it's easier. hauled me sideways by the arm hard enough to wrench my shoulder, and we hit the floor together as a second window blew in on the other side of the hall.

"Stay down!" she shouted, and I didn't need telling twice.

Chaos exploded around us. Chairs scraping, someone knocking a whole table over for cover, and underneath all of it, a sound I felt more than heard, a low, rolling growl, dozens of them, coming from every direction at once.

"What's happening?" I shouted over the noise. "Who's out there?"

"Don't know yet." Briar's eyes were fixed on the broken window, sharp and steady despite the chaos. "But it's not friendly."

Ronan's voice cut through everything, hard and commanding. "Perimeter! Now! Micah, east side, go!"

I twisted around enough to see him standing near the head of the hall, no fear on his face at all, just pure focus, already stripping his shirt over his head like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"What are you doing?" I said, stupidly, because it was obvious what he was doing.

"Staying alive," he said. "You should probably do the same."

Then his whole body changed.

I heard about shifting. Read about it, technically, in some dusty treaty document buried in the Vale archives. Nothing prepared me for actually watching it happen three feet away. Bones cracked and reformed under his skin in a wave, fast and brutal, his spine bowing forward as fur rippled out across arms that weren't arms anymore. It should have looked like agony. Somehow it looked like relief, like he'd been holding something in for hours and finally let it go.

Where Ronan had been standing, a wolf the size of a small horse now crouched, dark gray, eyes still unmistakably his even with everything else changed. He looked at me something almost like ‘stay put’ in that look, and then he was gone, out through the shattered window in one clean leap.

"Bloody hell," I breathed.

"You've really never seen a shift before?" Briar said, still crouched low beside me.

"Not up close. Not like that."

"Get used to it." She hauled me up by the arm, keeping low. "This way. The kitchen's got a door out the back, we're not staying in an open room with broken glass everywhere."

We half-ran, half-crawled across the hall, past overturned tables and a couple of younger pack members huddled together against the wall, eyes wide, clearly too young to shift and fight. Briar shoved me through the kitchen door and slammed it behind us just as something heavy hit the outer wall of the dining hall hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling.

"What was that?"

"Somebody hitting the wall that hard on purpose," she said, grim. "That's not a rogue wolf messing around. That's coordinated."

Outside, the growling had turned into something worse,snarls, real ones, and underneath it, the sound of bodies colliding, fast and violent. I pressed myself against the counter, heart slamming, straining to hear anything that told me Ronan was okay and hating myself a little for caring that much about the answer.

"You said this wasn't just training tomorrow," I said. "You knew something was coming."

"I suspected." Briar peered through the small kitchen window, jaw tight. "Didn't think it'd be tonight. Didn't think it'd be this fast."

"Who is it? Rogues? Another pack?"

"I don't know yet." She glanced back at me, something calculating in her eyes even now. "But if I had to guess, whoever it is wants it to look like Vale's people did this. Which is a really interesting thing to want, don't you think, given you're standing right here in our kitchen?"

My stomach dropped. "You think I had something to do with this?"

"I didn't say that." She held my gaze steady. "I said it's interesting.”

Before I could answer, the back door burst inward, and I nearly screamed before I registered it was Micah, blood running from a gash above his eyebrow, human again, breathing hard.

"They're pulling back," he gasped. "Whoever it was, they're pulling back toward the treeline."

"How many?" Briar asked.

"Six, maybe seven. Fast. Coordinated, like you said." His eyes landed on me, and for once there wasn't a trace of his usual smirk, just raw, unguarded fear underneath the adrenaline. "One of them wasn't a wolf."

The kitchen went very quiet.

"What do you mean, wasn't a wolf?" I asked.

"I mean I got close enough to smell it, and it wasn't a wolf, and it wasn't human either." He wiped blood out of his eye with the back of his hand, wincing. "It was cold. Like a corpse. You know what that smells like?"

I did, actually. I just didn't want to say it out loud.

"Vampire," I said.

Micah's eyes narrowed at me, some of the old suspicion creeping back in even through the fear. "Yeah. Funny coincidence, that."

"I didn't do this," I said, sharper than I meant to. "I've been standing in this kitchen the whole time, same as you."

"Didn't say you did it yourself," he shot back. "It just seems like a hell of a coincidence that your people show up hunting the same night you land in our house."

"Enough." Ronan's voice, human again, rough at the edges, cutting through the kitchen before I even heard the door open. He stood there shirtless, a shallow cut across his ribs already closing up in front of my eyes, eyes scanning the room fast until they landed on me. Something in his shoulders dropped, like he was holding his breath until he confirmed I was still standing.

"You're okay," he said..

"I'm okay." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Are you?"

"Fine." He said it too fast, the same way I always did, and I filed that away for later. His eyes moved to Micah, to the blood on his face. "Report."

"Six or seven attackers hit the east and south side at once. Pulled back toward the treeline the second we organized." Micah hesitated, glancing at me again. "One of them wasn't a pack. Wasn't human either."

Ronan went very still. "Vale?"

"That's my guess."

Every eye in the room turned to me at once, and I felt it land heavy, the same way it had in the assembly hall two nights ago, except this time it came with actual teeth behind it.

"I had nothing to do with this," I said, louder now, meeting every single one of those stares head-on. "I've been in your dining hall, your kitchen, surrounded by your people this entire night. When exactly was I supposed to arrange an attack?"

Nobody answered right away. Micah looked at Ronan, waiting for a lead. Briar's expression stayed unreadable.

"She's right," Ronan said finally, and something in the room loosened, just slightly, at those two words. "She hasn't been out of anyone's sight."

"Doesn't mean somebody didn't do it ‘for’ her," Micah muttered, low, but not low enough that I didn't catch it.

Ronan's eyes cut to him, hard. "Not now."

Outside, distant, a howl went up, long and mournful, answered a second later by another, and Ronan's whole body tensed at the sound like it meant something the rest of us weren't fast enough to catch.

"That's my father," he said, already moving toward the door. "Something's wrong."

"Wrong how?" I said, following before I could stop myself.

"That call means someone didn't come back."

The kitchen went dead silent. Micah's face drained pale. Briar closed her eyes for just a second, like she already knew what was coming and didn't want to hear it said out loud.

Ronan didn't wait for anyone to catch up. He was already out the door, into the dark, and after everything that had just happened, I didn't think twice before running out into that same dark right behind him, straight toward what, or whoever, hadn't made it back.