Hybrid’s Aegis 2

Hybrid’s Aegis 2
  White-gray fur slick with frost-burn and his own blood rolled under my knee. A snarl snapped off his fangs as he surged up, ramming his shoulder into my chest hard enough to knock my breath loose.
  I stumbled back, but my paws lashed out, trying to catch his haunch. He yelped, more man than wolf in that half-scream, but kept bolting sideways through the street that led to the shopping mall.
  “You’re not getting away!” I hissed, but before I could rip him back, a wrongness prickled through the haze of the heat and frost.
  My ribs jolted painfully cold. Then hot, then numb all at once. Something intrusive dug into my side.
  As the pain began to spread, I looked down to see a skinless, wet hand with a black sheen and slender blade-like fingers poking out of my right.
  Vorare stood behind me. He hadn’t made a sound. He hadn’t needed to, but I recognized him from the dread that breathed on my skin in goosebumps.
  “Ah. Little wolf. Or should I say hybrid.” His voice dripped through my eardrums. That close, he sounded more off in a way my ears rebelled. “…you should do just fine.”
  He twisted his hand, and a cry clawed out of my throat as hot blood spattered the frost around my boots. My snarl broke off in a strangled gasp. The cold fire in my veins sputtered against the raw void he poured in.
  “Satiate my hunger,” he crooned, leaning in like a lover with his mouth near my ear.
  I felt instant emptiness.
  A new roar bellowed through the parking lot. Ethan’s. “HARLYN!” It rang in the ear like a threat to the heavens themselves.
  With teeth clenched through the pain, I barely twisted my head to catch him blur into existence at the once-upon-a-time light pole.
  I didn’t see him move. He was just there. Wind and space buckled around him like they bent the second he willed it.
  I felt Vorare stir behind me, but it was too late for him. Ethan was already on me with one hand at my wound and the other curling at my nape.
  We cut through the air as the world split around us. And then I wasn’t in the parking lot anymore.
  At first, there was just the rush of wind and his scent, with the thunder of my pulse diminishing. Then there was the coffee shop I'd smashed through a window in a fight. It all happened in a minute.
  “Did we just,” I breathed out easily, “teleport?”
  “Fuck! That doesn't look good,” Khalid's voice pulled my attention to the people behind Ethan. He moved to my side as Ethan tore my top.
  “The lupomancer,” a hoarse feminine voice commented in disgusted disbelief, and my gaze moved to the goth-looking woman situated at the far corner of Mug Shots.
  “Yes, the lupomancer you tried to kill in the same event that summoned your cursed kind,” Abigail snappily retorted, and I almost leapt to hug her.
  “You're fine,” I managed to let out. My body grew more fatigued as I rested against an alarmed Ethan, who was fussing over my wound.
  Ethan’s hands didn’t shake, but his jaw was tight enough to hear his teeth grinding. He pressed down on the wound at my side, trying to stem the bleeding with the hem of his already half-ruined shirt. “He touched you,” he muttered with a dark pitch to his voice like the words themselves hurt him. “He touched you.”
  “I’m fine—” I lied out of habit.
  “You’re not,” he snapped sharply, but I could only smile at him. “Don’t say that when I can feel your pulse stuttering like you’re seconds from collapse.”
  My vision fuzzed at the edges, but I held on, murmuring the chant in my head as I'd read two days ago from Lorcan's book.
  Khalid moved closer, crouching on my other side. “Hard to believe you when you’re bleeding through your ribs like your lungs are trying to crawl out.”
  “Thanks, Khalid,” Ethan growled low.
  “I’m just saying what we’re all thinking,” Khalid muttered with that blunt tone he never cared to soften. Still, he peeled off his outer jacket and shoved it beneath my head like a pillow. “Here. Better than a coffee table.”
  Ethan looked seconds from snapping, but I reached up weakly and tugged at his wrist. “Necklace,” I whispered.
  His brows knit as he followed my gaze to the pendant nestled against my collarbone. It had begun to glow faintly with a dim blue pulse that matched the throb in my ribs.
  He didn’t question it. He just pulled it gently into my palm and closed my fingers around it.
  Everyone quieted, or maybe I tuned out. The last I caught before I closed my eyes was the three Melbringer women, Abigail had been arguing with, who went still, watching.
  I gripped the pendant tighter and let my mind go still, like the instructions had specified. It felt like a stroke of luck, reading in Lorcan's book about sorcery that the pendant was actually a tool. A tool for a sorceress to seal her power.
  When Vorare touched me, I was more than wounded. He stole energy from me. That was the only way to explain the emptiness I'd begun to feel when Ethan teleported us. That wasn't something my wolf nature could heal.
  So, I let the sorcery rise. My birth mother's sorcery. She must have done so knowing she'd die hence she poured herself into the metal.
  It surged up my arm like warm wine, weaving into my bloodstream with a familiarity that was nearly unbearable. I didn’t just feel her, I almost was her. The warmth spread to my ribs as the pain slowly simmered down.
  My flesh and bones curled back into place, healing faster than they usually did. I wasn’t crying, but my eyes stung anyway.
  “I’ll be fine,” I said aloud with a steadier voice now. “I’ve got my mother with me.”