Being human was a fragile, painful existence.

I dropped to one knee, keeping my gun tight to my hip. Each attempt to breathe was met with fiery resistance, and tears welled in my eyes. I’d been in worse pain before, but it felt different now. The punch wasn’t as bad as being shot or run through with a sword—both things I’d experienced firsthand—but it was worse in its own way. The agony of the punch robbed me of my basic functions and practically crippled me.

No one single blow had made me feel so helpless before.

Holden was at my side, having made his way through the throng in short order. Using my elbow as leverage, he dragged me to my feet and stood between me and the flying punches and overwhelming testosterone. Catching my breath took longer than I wanted it to as I rubbed the red spot on my chest that felt hot to the touch.

“He barely got you,” Holden observed.

“I know.”

His brows met in a disapproving V over the bridge of his nose. “There’s something wrong with you.”

Just this morning I’d been on cloud nine, thinking about how right this whole situation was. Now that I’d literally been punched by the gruff reality of my life, I was grudgingly ready to admit maybe this was wrong. Because goddamn that fist had hurt.

“I can’t talk about it now.”

“Fine. But does it keep you from knowing how to use that?” He pointed to my gun.

“No.”

“Then use it.” With his ominous instruction given, he melted back into the ruckus to help Desmond. Their unlikely alliance might have kept my attention at a different time, but he had yanked me back into my right mind. I had a gun, and there were enemies within firing distance begging to take home a souvenir of this fight.

They claimed they hadn’t come to kill me, so I would go against my better judgment and wouldn’t shoot to kill. But it didn’t mean I couldn’t fire off a few rounds to gravely injure. As long as I didn’t hit anyone on my side of the skirmish.

With my Spidey senses out of commission, I wasn’t sure I could properly assess where my boys would be at any given moment in the fight. Usually I could track someone and either aim to shoot them, or keep my bullets out of their way. Tonight I might as well have been shooting with a blindfold on and earplugs.

“Fuck it,” I grumbled. Raising my gun, which was already locked and loaded, I aimed at the nearest jostling kneecap and fired. A wolf screamed in agony, and I was grateful not to recognize the voice. When one of my mother’s pack crumpled to the ground, I was momentarily proud of myself for my good aim.

Pride faded quickly when I realized by taking down one of the men, I’d managed to draw all the attention of the fight back onto myself. Desmond launched himself at one of the men closest to him, while Holden struggled to fend off two at the same time. Just my luck too because Hank had gotten a second wind.

His face was mangled from where Desmond had thrown him against the pavement, but the injury had done nothing to deaden the hate in his eyes. If anything, being caked in dried blood with a good section of his cheek rubbed raw had fueled his rage towards me. His lip pulled back in a silent snarl as he edged closer, cracking his neck loudly when he tilted his head from side to side. I cringed at the sound of his popping joints. I’d hated the noise when I had superhuman hearing, and having average senses had done nothing to minimize my loathing for it.

If he cracked his knuckles next, I was going to shoot him in the head.

“You made a fool of me once, girlie.”

I’d laid him flat on his ass with a savage right hook. If getting beaten up by a girl—even a girl who was a werewolf queen—was his way of measuring foolishness, then yes I certainly had made a fool out of him.

I had a different opinion about what made him look bad though. “Me? I think being a racist twat who thinks it’s still cool to wear wife-beaters is what makes you look stupid.”

I didn’t need Desmond around to say it. The voice in the back of my head said, Oh my God, Secret… Shut up.

Maybe the voice had a point.

I took three steps backwards and staggered against the sidewalk but managed to keep my footing. He edged closer, and my common sense saw fit to remind me I had a perfectly good, almost fully loaded weapon in my hand.

Lifting the gun, I made my seriousness known by aiming it at his throat.

“I don’t care if you live or die,” I told him honestly. “But this doesn’t have to end with me killing you. Don’t come any closer.”

Hank stopped walking but didn’t appear prepared to back down. Instead he regarded me with an unusual patience for a man who’d seemed ready to kill me a second earlier. I didn’t trust the sudden shift for one minute.

“I ain’t allowed to kill you,” he said.

“You wouldn’t have been able to anyway.”

He sniffed and rubbed his nose on the heel of his palm. I made a mental note to avoid taking a hit from that hand. “You think you’re pretty tough.”

I had once. Instead of voicing this, I shrugged.

Hank mirrored my shrug and gave me a coy, creepy grin. “You’re a tough girl, yeah? Wonder how much a tough girl can bleed before she dies.”

The bruise on my sternum flared at his words, reminding me how much extra pain hurt in my new condition.

I got up onto the sidewalk so my height nearly equaled Hank’s and adjusted the angle of the gun accordingly. One of the first rules of weapon handling is to not point a gun unless you’re planning to fire it. If Hank took one step closer, I was prepared to go the extra mile and give him a street tracheotomy.

“Hank, you don’t want to do something stupid.” Of course he did. The guy was a fucking dumbass. His entire life hinged around doing moronic shit. “If you think Callum will—”

“Fuck Callum,” he snapped. “Do you think I care what that asshole thinks?”

The grip of my gun felt cold against my palm. “You should.”

“Why?” He stepped closer, and my certainty over shooting him wavered. I wish I hadn’t already reloaded the gun after firing, so I could give him a meaningful warning sound. Instead I jabbed the weapon into the air to remind him of its presence, like trying to say, I brought a gun to this werewolf fight.

“He’s already going to be pissed about you abandoning the pack.” It didn’t matter that Hank was a useless pack member and had been outwardly racist towards one of his pack mates. Callum didn’t have to like the guy to want respect from him. There was no greater act of disrespect than abandoning your king. “But how do you think he’ll respond if he knows you went out of your way to hurt a member of his family?”

Keep talking. One of the boys will get free in time…just keep talking.

“You think he cares about you?” Hank scoffed. “You’re deluded. You know he called on your king, knowing it was your wedding? He did that on purpose.”

I’d spent many a night wondering about that. I’d tried long and hard to understand why Callum would call that meeting, and more so why Lucas had gone. At the time I thought I’d been betrayed by them both, but now I wasn’t sure. Callum had made it clear he didn’t approve of my marrying Lucas from the get-go. I thought we’d passed all his tests when I agreed to the wolf binding ceremony, but clearly Callum hadn’t accepted Lucas’s commitment to me.

And he’d been right to question it.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, though I didn’t think I managed to sound convincing.

“Guess we’ll find out how much he cares.”

Instinct told me to duck, and I went with my gut. I dropped to the ground and covered my head, protecting most of myself when Hank collided with me. Problem was it gave him the right angle to knock me down flat with him on top of me. If I’d been on top, I might have been able to roll away and make a run for it, or at least get an easy shot off.

With Hank on top I was pinned between his legs, my gun trapped under his knee while he whaled on me. I’d been in fights before, and I’d taken hits before, but nothing quite like this. The first punch landed on my left cheek, grinding my skull across the pavement and making my whole head ring like a church bell.

Just when I thought I might come back from the pain, he drove a punch to my right cheek. My eyes shut instinctively, blinking away tears. I felt certain if he hit me again something would burst, my eye would pop or my nose. But when he did hit me again everything remained intact. There was fresh new agony, spreading like ants under my skin, making unseen parts of me burn and tingle, but I didn’t die. I kept taking it.

I gasped, and the mere act of taking a breath made my lips crack. Blood was pooling over my face, a hot liquid presence trying to sneak into my eyes and blind me.

Fight back.

I twisted, struggling under the weight of him. Yes, he was a werewolf, but he was also a small man. And sure, my superstrength was gone, but I’d been trained in hand-to-hand combat by a human. Keaty would have seen this and been appalled.

If strength fails, rely on skill. Now it was his voice in my head, calm and even.

Skill. I didn’t feel too skillful right then, but I tried to shut out the pain. Every inch of my face felt broken. What would Keaty do? It took a moment of struggling to block out the ringing in my ears, but once I had, I knew the answer.

I kneed Hank hard in the back. Ideally I would have gone for the groin, but since he was straddling my chest I didn’t have the appropriate angle to hit him. He pitched forward, stopping his assault to brace himself on both hands. I opened my eyes once he stopped hitting me and watched him come closer. When he was in the right position, I jerked upwards and slammed my face into his.

I was already in pain, so the new explosion of searing white-hot agony barely registered. He’d smashed my damn face up badly enough, one more bruise wasn’t going to matter much.

Hank grabbed his own head and fell off me, giving me a chance to scramble to my feet. That was the first rule of street fighting—stay off the ground. If you couldn’t stay off the ground, you had to find a way to get back up as fast as possible. Once I was at a good angle, I did kick Hank in the junk. It wasn’t the best move from a fighting standpoint, but I was mad. I kicked him once, twice, and by the third time he’d curled himself into a ball and was making a pathetic noise.