And I had to stop that.

Neither the cub nor I were in danger. The ones who mattered to us, on the other hand, were.

So I leaped forward, pouncing into the fray. My abrupt arrival had the cougar hissing, but she took advantage, surprising the shit out of me even as she swiped me with a claw, making blood spurt from my body, which had Eli snarling as my essence saturated the air, before she darted off. Limping as quickly as she could, she grabbed the cub in her teeth by the scruff and hurried away, leaving me a wreck on the ground.

Eli howled, long and low, outrage and sorrow fueling the powerful sound, and I shuddered, hating that I’d caused that, but unable to feel regret.

Even if it killed me.

Ten

Eli

“Why the fuck did you do that?” I roared, but even as the thought whispered into her mind, we shimmied out of being.

In seconds, we were away from the magical space and back in the circle.

She lay panting on the ground, blood spilling free, as Ethan and Austin leaped forward to tend to her.

While I was relieved to see Austin was back on his feet, I was terrified that the cougar had gravely injured my mate.

Shifting back felt impossible.

My wolf was outraged. Not only from the fight, which still had adrenaline coursing through my veins like I was back in the middle of it, but also from the way she’d done that.

What the fuck had she done it for?

Leaping into the fight—

I’d had her locked down. Purposely locked down. Speared into place with my dominance. She shouldn’t have been able to break free of my hold on her, but she had.

She’d fucking endangered herself in the process too.

Anger swirled with…

Fuck.

Was I impressed?

I knew of very few wolves who had the power to do that. Who’d be able to break out of my hold.

Ethan and Austin were two of them, but I highly doubted they’d be able to achieve it if I was as pissed off as I’d been back in the woods.

I’d worked goddamn hard to make sure my wolf was under wraps. Just because he was out and ready to party now that she’d unleashed him slightly, didn’t mean I was easy with him wandering around loose.

We were disciplined by nature, because we’d been forced to be that way. Years of lessons learned had shown us that.

But with our mate, we wanted to play, and today’s run had been a sheer joy. Not only because I’d been with her, but because she hadn’t been scared of me at all. We’d also been able to explore the crazy world that we’d been dumped in, and the truth was, I’d loved every minute of it, until it had gone to shit.

My wolf wouldn’t release its chokehold on me, so I dashed over to her side, almost nudging Ethan and Austin out of the way.

They both growled at me, and while they were still humans, their snapping packed a punch that didn’t hurt me because of who I was to them, but still, their defiance would have impressed me, too, if it wasn’t the wrong time for that.

I dove at Ethan because he was the nearest, and because, even though I was agitated as all hell, my wolf still scented how Austin was healing.

The second he saw me pounce, he shifted and snarled at me when he was on four feet instead of two.

His head was as low to the ground as mine was, our shoulders hunched as we circled the other, trying to find an in, but even as the thought to attack him hit me, I felt her presence in my fucking mind.

“Calm down. I’m all right.”

The soft words, the tone, none of it mattered. Just hearing her did. I felt myself come alive again as I twisted around and saw her trying to sit up.

That she was feeling weak was a given, and I turned to face her, instantly ignoring Ethan now that she was speaking to me.

His rumble told me he was pissed off, but fuck that shit. I’d just been through a fight with a cougar, and as powerful as I was, cougars could take wolves down—especially one who’d been protecting a cub.

The adrenaline was an issue, and I was going to be feeling fucking hyper for a good long while.

The second I shoved my muzzle against her, she sighed, and Austin’s hands hovered over her, stroking her as he tried to soothe her.

She just lay there, panting, and I got it. She was not only in pain, but the power to leap into the battle when I’d had such a hold on her had to be immense.

Like trying to break through a concrete wall with a rubber mallet.

I nuzzled her, as did Ethan, and after a while, she yipped at us, then started to roll up.

That she wasn’t talking to us, trying to calm us down, told me that she didn’t have the energy for it. I wasn’t okay with that, because I wanted to ask her how she was feeling, but also, I understood how she was having to hunker down.

How long we stayed there like that, I wasn’t sure, but Ethan shifted back and said, “We need to get her home. She’s bleeding profusely.”

“We need to get her to shift back,” Austin argued. “That will help.”

“Like it did you?” Ethan sniffed. “You’re still injured—”

“Yeah, true.” He pulled a face. “Whatever those creatures are on that other side, they’re powerful. More potent than any of the animals roaming this land.”

I didn’t have time to worry.

My wolf was growing more and more frantic over the deep black blood that oozed from his dozing mate’s side.

Knowing that I needed to wrestle back control so we could do as Ethan said—go home—I managed to tear back the reins from the beast, even though that should have been as impossible as Sabina evading my hold.

My issue with the wolf was that he could overtake me utterly, and that was why I never let him have full access.

But here, now, we were both in apparent agreement that our mate needed me as a human.

Which was when it clicked.

Deep in my being, in my psyche, my fucking soul, I suddenly became aware of why this was happening the way it was. Why it had unfolded this way.

Three creatures who weren’t scared of my wolf, one of them so pivotal to me that I wouldn’t be able to take a breath of air without her at my side, and none of them could be suffocated by my wolf’s dominance.

And where she was concerned, my wolf would always give me free rein because, at her core, transformed humans were always exactly that.

Transformed humans.

Human beings first, then wolf second.

For shifters, it was different. We were half and half, and dependent on the animal, the equilibrium could alter.

As was the case with me.

If I didn’t control the beast, he made up more than half of me.

But even though that was true, here, in my new family, my new partnership, I didn’t have to be afraid anymore.

My mate could stand up for herself.

Hadn’t she proven that with Austin?

My mate was strong enough to tear free of my dominance like she was pushing through the chains of a flycatcher hanging over a door.

And, beyond that, she wasn’t afraid to get between two dangerous predators in the middle of a fight.

It didn’t take a fucking genius to figure out that her seeing the cub was why she’d come to the cougar’s aid.

She’d seen the way I’d been leading up to the killing blows, and she’d known that the cougar was injured.