Chapter 160
Ellie's POV
Seven-foot-tall werewolves don't belong in studio apartments.
Conall had Caleb's larger gray form pinned against the overturned sofa. Furniture debris scattered everywhere. Deep claw marks scored the walls. The air reeked of blood, testosterone, and that distinctive musk that screamed male werewolf territory dispute.
And Samantha—
She lay crumpled near the shattered coffee table, blonde hair matted with blood from a gash on her forehead. Unconscious. Pale as death.
My fingers began to burn. That familiar prickling sensation that meant claws were pushing through. Thalia surged inside me, responding to the Alpha dominance radiating from both wolves, to the blood-scent, to the sheer primal violence of two males fighting.
I bit down hard on my tongue. Tasted copper. The pain helped.
Don't shift. Don't shift. Don't—
Jackson stood in the doorway, golden eyes blazing with Alpha command. "STAND DOWN. BOTH OF YOU."
Lucas's wolf snarled in response, completely feral. No recognition. No obedience.
Caleb deliberately ignored the order, twisting to sink teeth into Lucas's shoulder.
From downstairs: shouting. Footsteps. Shit shit shit.
"Ellie." Jackson's voice cut through my panic. Sharp. Certain. He turned those molten eyes on me, and I felt Thalia respond despite myself—an instinctive need to obey, to follow, to submit to the authority in that gaze.
I hated how much I didn't hate it.
"Get Samantha out. Now." He spoke with absolute clarity, each word precisely weighted. "Take her to the university medical center. Tell them she was drugged at a party—hallucinated, fell, hit her head. Make her believe everything she saw tonight was chemical-induced delusion."
Every protective instinct screamed at me to stay. To help. Jackson was going to face two out-of-control wolves alone, and what if Caleb turned on him, what if Lucas—
"This is an order, Ellie." The Alpha force behind those words made my knees want to buckle. His eyes softened for just a fraction of a second. Trust me.
Thalia went abruptly quiet in my head. Compliant. Waiting.
God, I was going to have issues with that later.
But he was right. Saving Samantha—protecting the secret—that came first. And Jackson had actual Alpha training. He could handle this.
He had to.
I nodded once, sharp, and sprinted toward Samantha.
She was deadweight in my arms. One-hundred-twenty-something pounds of unconscious human, and in my normal state, there was no way I could move her quickly enough.
I checked over my shoulder. Jackson had positioned himself between the wolves and us, using his body as a barrier. Neither wolf was looking this direction.
Just a little. Just enough.
I let Thalia slip forward. Not transformation—just power. My muscles condensed, strengthened. Suddenly Samantha's weight became manageable. I scooped her up, draping my jacket over her to hide—what? The memory of wolf-things burned into her retinas?
Behind me, Caleb lunged.
Not at Jackson. At us.
The gray wolf's trajectory would take him straight into Samantha's fragile human body, and I knew with crystal certainty this was deliberate. Force me to shift. Force me to reveal myself. Make everything worse.
Jackson intercepted mid-leap, and the two massive bodies collided with a sound like a car crash. Lucas joined the fray immediately, all three tangled in a mass of fur and fury.
I didn't wait to see more.
The balcony railing was wrought iron, decorative, definitely not rated for what I was about to do. I swung one leg over, Samantha clutched against my chest, and jumped.
Three stories.
For a werewolf, barely a warm-up exercise. For a human? Suicide.
I hit the grass in a crouch, Thalia's power absorbing the impact through my legs, making it silent. Perfect. The kind of landing that should be impossible.
"What in the—"
I spun. Mrs. Patterson from 1B stood on her doorstep in a ratty bathrobe, mouth hanging open.
Improvise. Now.
"Oh my GOD, Mrs. Patterson!" I let my voice break, pitched it toward hysteria. "I'm so sorry about the noise! My roommate—she had way too much to drink at this party, and she passed out, and I need to get her to the hospital right now!"
The old woman's eyes narrowed, tracking from me to Samantha to the third-floor balcony I'd allegedly jumped from. But the lighting was bad. And people see what makes sense.
"I... you just..."
"Please, I have to go!" I was already moving, heading for my car at a pace just slow enough to seem panicked-human rather than supernatural. "I'm so sorry!"
I didn't give her time to process. Didn't let her brain catch up to what her eyes might have seen.
By the time I'd buckled Samantha into the back seat, my hands were shaking so badly I could barely grip the steering wheel.
---
Two blocks away, I finally let myself breathe.
From the back seat: "Mon...sters..."
My eyes snapped to the rearview mirror. Samantha's lips were moving, eyes still closed, lost in whatever nightmare her unconscious mind was processing.
"Lucas became... that's not real... wolves..."
The shaking in my hands got worse.
This was my rival. The girl who'd stolen Lucas, who'd made my senior year hell, who I'd hated with an intensity that still scared me sometimes.
And now she was just... broken. A human girl who'd stumbled into a world she was never supposed to see, whose entire understanding of reality had just shattered, who was terrified—
Kill her.
Thalia's voice in my head was cold. Practical. Dead humans don't talk. One broken neck. They'll think it was the fall. Problem solved.
No.
The word exploded through my mind with such force that Thalia actually recoiled.
"She's innocent," I whispered aloud, gripping the wheel hard enough to hurt. "I won't hurt her. I won't."
Then you risk everything. Your family. Jackson. The entire pack structure—
"I said no."
But my mind was already racing ahead, weighing options. If I just dropped her at the ER, the doctors would ask questions. How did she get hurt? Why is she mumbling about monsters? Was there an assault?
And if she woke up and started talking about seven-foot wolves...
The "drugged at a party" cover story was risky, but plausible. College campuses saw it all the time. Rohypnol, GHB—they caused hallucinations. The doctors wouldn't question it too hard. And if Samantha woke up insisting she'd seen werewolves, they'd attribute it to the drugs, not reality.
Please let this work.