Page 3

Stacked two and three high along both walls.

Chain-link and rebar welded together by someone who didn’t care whether the things inside them could breathe properly. A siren is curled against the bars with her throat wrapped in iron to choke the song out of her. A boy who can’t be older than seventeen, antlers barely budded through his hairline, flinches so hard at the sound of the door that he slams his head against the cage roof. A woman with wings clipped down to bloody stubs watches me with eyes that hold no hope of getting out.

Something in my chest goes very still and very hot at the same time.

“Carnage.” Sentinel’s voice has dropped into the register he uses when he already knows what’s coming and isn’t going to try to stop it. “There are children in here.”

Movement jerks at the far end of the depot. “What the fuck?” One of the men shoots to his feet so fast his chair scrapes backward and topples onto the concrete. Another spins toward us, his hand already diving beneath his jacket, while the third takes one look at the shattered door and starts backing toward the cages.

Bad choice.

“Don’t fucking move!” the first one bellows, dragging a handgun free. His eyes jump between Sentinel and me, trying to figure out what the hell just came through his door. “I said… don’t fucking move!”

Behind him, something small whimpers. My eyes cut past his shoulder as little fingers curl tighter around rusted wire.

That’s the only goddamn invitation I need.

Heat punches through my chest hard enough to bow my spine, my fingers seizing around the Glock as the first brutal crack rips through my back. I barely manage to throw the weapon aside before my knees slam into the concrete and another fracture tears through me, followed by another, my spine stretching as vertebrae wrench apart to make room for something far bigger than the body trying to contain it.

Fuck, it hurts.

It always fucking hurts.

My shoulders drag wider with a wet grind, seams splitting as muscle piles across my back. Ribs crack and reset beneath my skin, forcing my chest outward while claws punch through my fingertips, shredding nails before gouging deep lines into the concrete beneath me.

Another frightened whimper slips through the wire.

My head jerks toward the cages, seeing little fingers still wrapped around rust and scared eyes watching me.

Take another fucking bone, break all of them if that’s what it costs to get me to those kids.

I stop fighting the pain and shove straight into it. My jaw wrenches forward so violently the scream climbing my throat breaks apart halfway out, dropping into a guttural snarl as bone stretches and teeth sharpen behind my lips. Hellfire floods every vein, burning through me while my new dark black and purple fur punches through skin already on fire and spreads across the new bulk of my body.

The hellhound wants out as badly as I want him out.

He saw the cages.

Saw those little hands.

And every fresh crack of bone gets us closer.

The trafficker finally seems to understand that too.

He backs away while I force myself higher, my fingers grinding against the floor as my human shape buckles under the change still ripping through me.

His face drains.

He turns.

I don’t give him the first step—I fucking launch.

My body pitches forward as my hips wrench loose, my thighs thickening beneath shredded denim while my knees buckle and rebuild themselves for four legs instead of two. My palms slam against the concrete, my fingers spasming against the floor as the bones inside them shorten and fuse, my nails blackening before thick claws punch through the ends hard enough to split flesh. Blood smears beneath them as my weight drives down, but the pain barely has time to register before another savage convulsion rolls through me.

“Shoot the fucking thing!”

My head snaps toward the voice just as my jaw breaks.

Bone drives forward with a sickening grind, dragging my face with it while my teeth lengthen through bloody gums, sharpening into a mouth built to clamp down and keep fucking going. The sound coming from my throat changes with it, whatever was left of my human growl dropping lower and rougher until it rattles through the depot hard enough to make one of the kids cry out.