Caleb slowed his charge, sizing up the pack in front of him. Six against one, I could almost see him thinking. Calculating his odds behind those yellow eyes.
Then Talbot stood beside us. The cording around his wrists dripped with Gelal acid. He yanked hard, and the corroded binding fell from his hands. He clenched his fists in front of him and glared at Caleb. Three dead Gelals littered the ground in his wake.
Seven against one.
“Looks like we’ve got you surrounded,” Gabriel shouted from the balcony. He held his injured arm against his chest, but he brandished the metal bar in his other hand. Two Akh teens lay moaning at his feet.
Caleb took a step back.
Eight against one.
But where were the rest of Caleb’s boys?
And where was Jude?!
“Here!” I heard my brother shout. At first, I didn’t know where his voice came from, but then I tilted my head back as far as I could and saw him standing by the open freight-elevator gate. The elevator was packed with Caleb’s remaining boys. They must have fled from the upper level through the shaft. “Here, Father! Hurry. This way.” Jude waved at Caleb, offering him a way to escape.
“No,” Caleb said. “We finish this.” He glanced back at what remained of his Shadow Kings. “Come!” he shouted at them, like they were a bunch of his lapdogs.
Not a single one of his boys moved from the safety of the elevator.
“Come!”
“No, Father,” Jude said. “We’re leaving. Now.”
Caleb furrowed his brows. A snarl marred his face. Had Jude ever dared to speak to his master this way before?
“Come now, Father,” Jude said.
Caleb glared at the white wolf for a moment longer. His gaze flicked to Talbot and then Gabriel up above. I wasn’t sure which of the three he wanted to kill the most.
He turned and bolted toward the elevator.
The white wolf made a motion as if to go after Caleb, but then hesitated, staring down at me as if he was afraid to leave his protective stance over my body.
“Go,” I said. “You have to stop them.”
The white wolf grunted, and he and the five other wolves bounded after Caleb, leaving me alone in a pool of my own blood on the cold concrete floor. I didn’t have the energy to keep my head tilted back to watch them in their pursuit.
I felt warm arms scoop me up, and someone cradled me against his chest. “Talbot?” I asked, recognizing his scent.
He turned me toward the commotion just in time to see Caleb lunge for the elevator, the six wolves close on his heels—but not close enough.
Caleb slipped through the narrowly opened gate into the elevator with his boys. The white wolf pounced after him, but Jude threw himself between
Caleb and the white Daniel wolf, blocking the opening of the elevator.
The white wolf pulled up short, skidding to a stop in front of Jude. The other five wolves halted behind the white wolf, snapping and howling. The white Daniel wolf growled at Jude, but my brother didn’t move—only glared at Daniel, as if daring him to tear through him in order to get to Caleb.
Daniel took a step back with a frustrated whine. Jude had just done the one thing that would stop Daniel from catching his father. Daniel wouldn’t willingly harm my brother again.
Caleb slammed the elevator gate shut, leaving Jude on the outside. Caleb rammed his fists against the gate, rattling the cage and roaring with anger. “When Sirhan dies, so will the rest of you,” he shouted as the elevator started to lower.
Jude shouted at Caleb not to leave him behind.
“You’re on your own, boy,” Caleb snarled. He and the rest of his lost boys disappeared into the basement of the warehouse.
The Daniel wolf howled.
Caleb and his pack would be gone, out the corridor and through The Depot, before anyone could stop him.
Talbot hitched me up in his arms and started to carry me away, his shoulder blocking the scene by the elevator from my view. And blocking me from their view. Talbot could run off with me at this very moment, and no one else would even notice.
“Put me down,” I tried to shout, but it came out as an airy whisper. “Where … Where … are you taking me?”
“I’m just trying to help,” Talbot said.
“Why?”
My head felt so heavy, and the world started to turn dark and splotchy all around me. I don’t know how fully with it I was when I thought I heard
Talbot answer: “Because I love you.”
“No … you don’t,” I tried to say, but I don’t think the words actually left my mouth. Does Talbot even understand love?
Talbot said something I was too groggy to understand. I strained what was left of my superpowers to listen to him. “… because you reminded me of who I wanted to be … a long time ago. Like my ancestors—the Saint Moons. But I’ve been alone with only the wolf in my head since I was thirteen … I’d lost sight of everything I once believed in.” Talbot held me closer to his chest. He leaned in to whisper—or shout, for all I could tell—
into my ear. “Caleb offered me a family, but you offered me something worth so much more: myself.”
“Jude?” I whispered, unable to process Talbot’s confession. My brain was far too fuzzy. “What … happened …?” I couldn’t even think straight enough to finish the question.
Talbot grunted. He turned me back toward the freight elevator. My vision was hazy and spotted, but I could see the white wolf and the five other wolves surrounding Jude, who had been abandoned by his so-called father— thrown, quite literally, to the wolves. The Daniel wolf stood steady, but the other five scratched their paws at the ground and growled at Jude, looking eager to attack.
My brother dropped to his knees in the midst of the pack. He threw his hands over his face. “Please … I just want to go home now,” I thought I heard Jude say as I slipped from consciousness and my mind faded to black.
I awoke to something warm and wet brushing my face. I swatted it away and rolled over on my side to find a mound of soft white fur acting as my pillow. It smelled wonderfully of almonds, and in my half dream-like state I was ready to snuggle up with it and go back to sleep. But that was when I noticed the blanket lying under me. It was the plush velvet bedspread—on Caleb Kalbi’s bed.
I sat up quickly—too quickly—and was about to bolt when little white spots started dancing in front of my eyes. I lay back down against the soft pillow.
“It’s okay,” I heard a familiar voice say from somewhere nearby. “You’re safe. We just brought you to the most comfortable place we could think of.”
“Daniel?” I asked. My vision was still a little weird, and I couldn’t place the voice.
“No, it’s me, Talbot.” He turned to someone else in the room. “Do you think she has amnesia?”
The other person apparently ignored him. “I’m here, too,” he said.
“Gabriel?”
