Sophie screamed as the hand on her arm pulled her farther back. Another slice of golden light opened up, and slim graceful bodies piled through, crouching and leaping. They swarmed the thing with the red-gleaming eyes, and Sophie’s legs turned to noodles. She sagged, the hand on her arm the only thing keeping her upright, and when the iron fingers loosened she actually fell, the shock of her knees meeting filthy concrete jarring up through her hips and shoulders.
The pale, weakly moving shape on the ground wore Lucy’s face, and it was gasping, rattling breaths drawn in. Its throat bubbled and gaped, and as Sophie stared, it stopped moving—and the thing in the white shirt, snarling, turned away from the back of the alley and lunged for her.
Chapter 4
It shouldn’t have happened.
They’d hunted upir before, of course, while the old alpha was alive. But the farm had burned, their sleeping shaman and alpha dead in the flames, and now they were on their own, scrabbling to survive. They had cut both Tribe and upir a wide berth since.
And Zach shouldn’t have followed her, but she smelled too good to be true. Brunette, yes. Human, which was all right but not exactly appetizing. But young, female, warm—and with an edge of moonlight and snow, something cold and crystalline. Zach hadn’t smelled that in forever, and certainly not with the tantalizing musk of something that belonged to him overlaying it.
He’d leaned close and gotten a good lungful, and she was probably what he thought she was, which made it incredibly lucky, and incredibly—