The Whisper was no slouch either. Somehow, she’d gotten halfway up a pillar, vines wrapped around her torso like a backpack, scaling the stone surface while thinner, thornier ones lashed down at the assassin. I had no idea why she was fighting for us other than to secure an advantageous connection to my family.
Well, if she helped us through this, maybe I could look into returning the favor, provided no one innocent was getting hurt.
“Come on!” she shouted at the assassin, who had pulled some sort of orb out of one of the pouches tied to their belt. It explodedin a huge globe of blue fire when it hit the pillar just under her. “Quit using toys and fight me with your own skills!”
The assassin didn’t say anything, and as I closed the final distance between us, I realized they weren’t just cloaked. They were covered from head to toe in a heavy robe, and beneath that, they wore thick body armor. A mask obscured their face. This person didn’t just want to have their emotions to remain unknown, but also their identity. Was that because we knew them or simply because they didn’t want to deal with any witnesses?
Whatever the reason, those questions fell to the wayside as I darted into the assassin’s space and sank my teeth into their arm with all the vitriol I had.
This emotionless, magic-filled monster was quite massive: taller than me and shoulders far broader than my own head, which was no small feat considering the size of my wolf. But I didn’t care how big they were. I was going to avenge my brother and father!
Teeth firmly lodged into place, I put everything I had into my jaw, clamping down and waiting for the warm rush of blood. But while I did taste something akin to pennies, there was no liquid. No give of flesh. No tearing of muscle.
I was biting into metal.
It was a distraction I hadn’t anticipated, and it was just enough for me to loosen my jaws ever so slightly. However, even that small lapse was enough for the assassin to rip their arm out of my grip, then bash their metal fist into the side of my wolf head. It rattled me, shifting my balance, allowing the assassin to deliver a blow on the opposite side of my skull.
My meager training and whatever natural instincts I had for fighting wasn’t enough for this honed instrument of death, but I couldn’t back down. I snarled, only barely jumping back in time as that damned silver sword sliced through the air in front of me.
“Get away from him!”
In a funeral of quite too many surprises already, the last thing I expected was for my sister Penelope, half shifted, to suddenly leap on the assassin’s back and pummel their skull while simultaneously trying to bite through their shoulder with her unnaturally elongated jaw. That was the thing about little wolves, wasn’t it? They always went for the jugular.
The assassin was eerily silent; the only audible thing coming from them was their heartbeat and the harsh rasp of their breath. They didn’t even have a scent! Were we fighting some sort of machine? Was there a malevolent artificer hiding somewhere in the rafters, directing their inorganic golem?
More questions and still no answers. And I couldn’t devote any part of my brain to trying to figure it out, because the matter at hand was for all of us to stay alive.
The assassin backpedaled, slamming Penelope into one of the pillars that hadn’t been destroyed by their fight with the Whisper and pinning her there.
I rushed forward, intent on saving her as the assassin changed their grip on the sword and clearly meant to thrust it into Penelope’s torso. This time she was no changeling who could just move around their organs like the squishy, shapeshifting things that they were.
But I only made it about half the distance when vines wrapped around my sister’s arms and under her chest, jerking her up to safety.
Definitely owed the Whisper at this point.
However, in the sudden rescue of my sister, Penelope had apparently grabbed hold of the assassin’s cloak, ripping it partially off and over their head, like a kid getting their shirt pulled halfway over their head by a school bully. It was a completely unexpected moment of levity, but I didn’t let itdistract me. I raced forward, this time aiming for a leg that hopefully wasn’t encased in metal.
Once more, however, I didn’t quite make it to my destination. It wasn’t lightning that struck me, but rather the cloak itself as the assassin ripped it off. The ground below my feet roiled like an actual wave as the sword pierced the floor.
Although everything had been a wild rush from the moment the killer had run our decoy through, suddenly it all seemed to stop as I regained my footing. In the scant seconds it had taken me to recover, the Whisper’s vines had ripped off the assassin’s mask and one of their shoulder pauldrons.
Reddish hair, not quite ginger but deeper than auburn. Gray eyes. The strong chin and boxy nose that were so similar to my own.
“Luther?”I asked, my shifter voice impossibly small as I took in the sight of my eldest brother. “But you’re dead!”
“Imposter!”Chris cried in his own wolf voice, rushing the towering man in front of me.
But I could only stare. I knew that face. I knew it like I knew my own. That was the brother who’d helped me through my nightmares, who always had a sad sort of countenance whenever he thought no one was looking. Who liked special effects and nerdy things but was forced to be the strapping, infallible alpha-heir.
That wasLuther.
It had to be a fake. Just as we’d had a decoy for Penelope, this had to be some sort of trickery. After all, that arm had been tested up and down, and it was thoroughly my brother. The tissue that was separated out had also been tested as his. He was dead.Dead!And as much as I would give anything for that not to be true, there was no way that the monster standing before me was actually?—
“Be still.”
Although I hadn’t been moving, every muscle in my body locked up so hard that my joints creaked. For a split second, there was only confusion and panic in my brain, but then I realized what was going on. I’d only ever experienced it twice in my life from my father and never from my elder brother.
He was using his alpha voice.