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Many fired wildly, and I could smell their fear and sweat, strafing the shelves with bullets as I darted between the aisles. Another man went down, he turned and I was there, ripping out his throat in a gush of blood before diving for the next, the spill wiping out the scent of my mate, too much gore filling my nostrils.

“What the fuck?” Someone screamed. “That wolf is huge!”

“Nessa, run!” one of her men commanded, roaring out the order.

“Shoot him! You can’t shoot one wolf?” She shrieked.

“I can’t fuckin’ see him now. Let’s go out the back!”

“There!” she shouted, and I finally saw her as the man beside her fired.

It felt like my shoulder exploded, and I went down at the same time I saw Sasha, off to my right, struggling to sit up. As soon as he saw me, he tried to get up, but Nessa held a gun on him, so he froze.

I needed to reach him, but the guy who’d shot me was aiming again.

“Don’t you touch him!” Sasha cried out, and when I turned, I noted, in the amber glow, that his normally blue eyes were all black. “Don’t you dare touch my mate!” He ended with a howl, having shifted faster than anyone I’d ever seen. I had no idea it was even possible for someone to shift that fast.

There were no grunts as he reformed, no sounds of pain over the noise of moving bones, the elongation of the jaw, nothing I was used to. His shift was seamless. It was like a wave rolled over him, one second man, the next wolf. And a beautiful brown wolf—a color I’d never seen in my life. Most of us were black or white, some a mixture, but always something similar. Not brown. That was new. He was small as well, not the bear-like size I was, more like a Belgian Malinois. Not big or scary. In fact, he wasn’t frightening at all, more cute and fluffy, and I was thinking, awwww adorable, until he moved. The guy advancing on me was on his feet one moment, on his back the next, hurled into the shelves from the speed and force of Sasha’s blow, out cold. Another man came around the shelves, charging up to Vanessa, and Sasha rammed into him so hard that he was launched across the room.

I sat up and shifted back, my bare ass on the cold floor as I stared, wide-eyed, at my mate. He came loping back to me then, licking my face a moment before looking at me, whimpering softly, and sniffing my shoulder. Then he turned on Vanessa, the low growl in the back of his throat chilling.

“Okay,” I murmured, sinking my good hand into his fur. “You can be in charge of protecting me from now on. Jesus, how did you get so fast?”

He snarled then, stepping in front of me, and I saw Vanessa advancing on us, Glock held high, leveled on Sasha.

“No,” I rasped, putting my good arm around his neck, clutching him to my chest, he was faster, yes, but I was stronger. She would have to shoot me first in order to kill him.

“Put the gun down or you’re dead,” Wade ordered from behind us, coming closer. “I will count to three.”

“I’ll kill them both!”

“One.”

“I just want what’s mine! What was promised!”

“Two,” Wade said flatly, his voice now devoid of emotion, as though his soul wasn’t in his body anymore, only the shadowy parts I was sure he never let Linden see.

“I never wanted to hurt anyone! Wynton said they’d never miss their jewelry or anything else.”

Meaning the omegas he’d turned over to Theo. Wynton had gotten them to trust him, taken their possessions, and sold them off. And the really good, fine jewelry and antiques that he didn’t have the contacts to move, Vanessa Howard had taken care of for him. It had been quite the operation the three of them had. River deciding which omegas to take and when, Theo selling them to the highest bidder, and Wynton taking possession of their assets.

“Three,” Wade said, sounding wooden.

Vanessa, smartly, let the gun drop from her hand.

She was swarmed by officers, and I breathed a sigh of relief as Sasha shifted back, turned, and faced me at the same time the lights came back on.

“No,” I ordered him. “Shift back. I don’t want anyone to see you naked.”

“You’re naked,” he said gently, wincing as he looked at my shoulder, his eyes welling with tears. “Why didn’t this heal?”

“Avery!” I yelled.

“Don’t yell,” he barked at me, carrying over what looked like the furniture pads movers used. He wrapped up Sasha first, which allowed me to calm down, and then me. “We need to get you to the hospital.”

“Yeah, Sasha needs to get checked out.”

“Vanessa hit me with a hammer, but I shifted,” he reminded me. “I’m fine. Why aren’t you though? You’re bleeding.”