Chapter Sixteen

"Can you still feel her?" Wreck ground out.

"I have to Change." Vyr had been on the verge of a Change the entire drive.

"Can you feel her!"

"Straight!" Vyr roared, holding onto the oh-shit bar of Wreck's truck.

Could he and Vyr have Changed? Yeah. Could they have flown here, to this little town of a hundred on the outskirts of Saratoga? Yeah. Could they have burned the entire thing to the ground? Yep.

But that wouldn't get them where they needed to be any faster. Vyr needed his mind to track down Riyah.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, man, they're hurting." Vyr slammed his head back on the headrest, and the veins in his neck were popping. "I'm sorry. I have to…I have to…"

"Stop!" Wreck yelled. "You want to burn this town to the ground? I don't care. I'll help you eat the ashes. Take me to the girls first, and then you can destroy everything, and whatever prison they put you in, I will break you out! Just get me to the girls first."

"Riyah is crying. She's crying. She's saying to help," Vyr ground out. "Motel looks like…brown walls, brown-and-red bedding. Thirty-seven. Room thirty-seven. There's a woman holding her together. There's a body in the room behind them. Aaaah!" he roared.

"Get me a name!"

"Riyah," Vyr ground out in a voice that couldn't pass as human. He closed his eyes like he was listening to something. "Lodge. Pine River…Lodge." Vyr's whisper lifted the fine hairs on Wreck's body. Stank like witch's magic in here.

"Go," Wreck said.

"What?" Vyr asked. His red hair was mussed from running his hands through it with the stress. His bright-silver eyes were wide.

"I've got her. Go."

Vyr huffed a helpless sound and shoved the door to the truck open. He exploded upward, morphing into something monstrous above the highway. His gargantuan red wingspan blocked out the entire sky.

Leaning forward to look at the sky, Wreck watched the red dragon blow fire as he beat his wings against the wind, aiming for the clouds.

Pine River Lodge was right off the highway, thank goodness. He didn't even have to punch the name into his GPS because a sign appeared along the highway. Two miles ahead, exit seventy-nine.

He punched the accelerator to the floor and tried not to imagine the picture Vyr had painted in his mind.

Riyah Daye was dying. Her voice had come through to Vyr, and they'd taken off from the trailer park.

Oh, they knew they were being separated off. Knew it. That's how lion Prides hunted, but what else could they do?

The Holland Pride hadn't take the girls far, but the urge to Change was enormous.

The Pine River Lodge sign was visible from the highway. He didn't have time to take the exit and wait at the stoplight before he looped under the road.

Wreck veered left and plowed over the median, blasting through honking oncoming traffic and down a shallow hillside toward the motel.

He didn't brake until he saw the room numbers, and skidded to a stop in the gravel lot in front of room thirty-seven. He threw his truck into park and didn't even turn it off before he was bolting for the room.

There was no knocking, he just kicked the door open. What he saw there would sit in his memory for years to come. His whole life, perhaps.

There was a lioness in the corner, bloody and not moving. The furniture was upended, and Timber was knelt down with her bare back to him. She was putting pressure on a woman's stomach. Riyah, he would guess. She was pale as a ghost, and her eyes were closed.

Timber turned just enough for him to see her face, and it was not the face he recognized.

Timber was gone.

In her place existed a stark-featured, snarling, blue-eyed shifter. "I need the fire."

"What?" he asked.

"The green fire. I need it."

"What's happened?"

Her eyes welled with tears, and there on her cheeks, under those glowing blue eyes, her emotions spilled over and raced down to her jawline. "Wreck, please. We have to save her."

He didn't know how to do this. He didn't know how to save people. He could only kill them. He could only burn them. He could only destroy.

But his mate was sitting there crying, heart in her unrecognizable eyes, and she believed in him, so he had to try.

Vyr was in the parking lot now, pacing, destroying cars under his massive claws. People were screaming. A roar rattled the room, and the pressure was on, but they didn't understand.

Wreck wasn't a healer.

Wreck was a destroyer.

His dad sat on the overturned bed. "You don't do that. You only kill."

He understood his hatred for his father in this moment. For his entire life, his father had haunted him. He'd convinced him that he was only bad, but that's not the way life worked. There was good and bad in everyone.

Timber brought out the good in Wreck.

Wreck lifted his middle finger to his father and strode for his mate. He dropped down to his knees and pulled Riyah's body against his chest, then pulled Timber tight against them. "Pull the fire, then," he rumbled to his mate as tingling chills lifted across his entire body.

The room was full of magic. It was loud with the growling that emanated from Timber. It was dark with the stink of death, but it wasn't over yet. He could hear the heartbeat struggling for life in Riyah's chest, and he had to try.

Timber was looking straight into his soul with those glowing eyes. He would never get the Timber he knew back now. She would be an animal, and that bitch in the corner had done this. That lioness.

He would not let her steal Riyah from the red dragon.

Timber pressed her palm against his and lifted it next to their faces, intertwining their fingers, unblinking blue eyes on his. She was still crying, but she didn't look heartbroken anymore. She looked angry. She looked determined.

A flicker of green started at their fingertips and spread down their arms, igniting them both completely, until the room was full of green fire.

The building buckled as the dragon roared, and ceiling tiles came crashing down around them. Outside, people were screaming and shrieking, but he couldn't pay attention to that now. The green fire was consuming him. He had to concentrate so that it stayed green, and healing, and didn't hurt the woman he loved. So the heat wouldn't touch the shifter he loved.

Riyah arched hard, her spine contorting as her arms spread wide. Timber hugged her close, whispering, "It's okay. I'm going to make it okay. You're not alone."

Something about her words fueled the heat inside of him.

The small light-green flames burst wider in a wave of forest green, and suddenly, nothing else existed but him, Timber, and Riyah.

The motel disappeared and was replaced by a black abyss. Riyah's body buckled, and her eyes flew open. They were full of green flames, and she gasped. She searched his gaze and whispered, "You are needed."

With an ear-piercing scream, she clasped her hands onto his face. Pain wrenched through him.

Sparks flew out of him as he yelled in agony, and then he was blown backward.

The dimness faded into something he didn't understand.

The shadows and sparks died down, and he was squatted down in the Fastlander trailer park.

Timber and Riyah had been thrown ten yards across the clearing, and looked shocked.

"Are you okay?" Timber asked. Her entire body was shaking from shock.

Riyah looked down at her clothes, shredded and bloody. She leaned back and lifted the tattered, bloodied material to expose a thin silver web of scarring across her stomach.

"He…" Riyah looked up, her glowing blue eyes on him. "You healed me."

And Riyah, the witch, had transported them back here. He wasn't the only powerful being in this clearing.

Something ran across the yard behind the girls, and Wreck stood. Why was a lion streaking across their territory?

There could only be one reason.

The war Lucia had foreseen was here.

There was yelling from the trees, and Wreck jogged around the mobile homes to see. A line of boars was charging in from the east. What the hell?

Gunner was near the tree line, and looked right at him. "They have allies. Get Hallie out of here!"

Fuck. The boars were attacking the Fastlanders with the Holland Pride, and this was bad. They didn't have moral compasses when it came to war. There were no ethics.

"Hallie!" he yelled.

"I'm here!" she said as she came out of her single-wide, loading a pistol. Lucia's vision was coming true. Hallie was pregnant, and she couldn't change into her grizzly. Lucia had seen her popping bullets into enemies.

"Where's Ruger?" he yelled.

"I don't know," Hallie said, panicked. "I saw him run that way!" She pointed for the road, but there were cars filtering up to the Fastlander trailer park now, and they didn't look friendly.

He gritted his teeth. "Hallie, you're with Timber now."

"What? No! Gunner is in that fight!"

"And you're carrying Gunner's cub! He said to protect you."

"Timber can't protect—" the words died in her throat as she laid eyes on Timber, who had stood to her full height, eyes glowing ice-blue, naked and clawed to hell by the lioness she'd fought in the motel.

"A lioness Turned her," Wreck called out.

"No she didn't," Timber said in a low, bone-chilling growl. "The mate of the red dragon Turned me."

Wreck had been headed toward the battle, but he hesitated and looked back, took a second look at those blue eyes. Holy. Shit.

His mate wasn't a lioness like he'd thought. She hadn't been Turned in that fight at the motel.

He knew what Riyah was.

And now he knew what Timber was.

She was a motherfucking polar bear.

"I want you out of here and safe," he uttered. "Take Riyah and Hallie, and leave. Find the boy and his mother. Lucia saw him running in the woods. Get as far away from my fire as you can!"

"I don't want to leave you," Timber gasped out.

"Timber! I've never asked for anything from you."

She drew up, pausing in her advance on him, blazing-blue eyes full of emotion.

"If you care, you'll do this one thing for me. I need the boy safe."

She inhaled sharply, and nodded. "I'll find him."