God, I was furious. Bloodlust plagued Tahoe. How the hell had we become the enemy? I needed to help my sisters and find Aric.

Something hard whipped me across the legs as I leaped toward the entrance. I crash-landed on the stone steps. The sharp edges sliced me across the br**sts and shins and knocked the air from my lungs in a painful rush. My fractured rib slid torturously beneath my skin, but if I wanted to live, I needed to move. Fast.

I flipped onto my back, holding tight to my side. Pieces of wood lay by my feet. It seemed Blondie had found a nice thick branch to hurl against my legs. My eyes trailed from her soiled black dress pants to the sharp, pointy shard of wood she aimed at my heart. I rolled out of the way and kicked her in the skull. She shook her head and struck again, but my next blow to her noggin made a snapping sound and ass-planted her onto the walkway. I yanked her up by her skimpy shirt and rammed my finger into her chest with each word I growled. “You’re. Pissing. Me. Off!”

Granted, I was beyond pissed from the moment I saw her touching Aric. But she didn’t need to know that. Besides, my tigress preferred to intimidate at every given opportunity. Especially when someone tried to kill us.

I shifted her underground and jetted into the house. My ribs hollered in protest as I dove onto the floor to avoid the sizzling were Taran shot overhead with her lightning. “Eat shit, Snoopy!” she yelled from down the hall.

Emme stood in the center of the demolished foyer, next to what remained of the chandelier. She fought to separate Liam and a vampire using the full potency of her force. Liam’s growls cut amid the escalating chaos, rattling the chandelier’s crystals and Emme’s fragile nerves. His muscles tightened beneath his torn shirt, geared to change and release his beast.

The vampire snapped her vicious fangs, impatient to bite. “I can already taste your blood, mutt,” she sneered. From her knife-length nails hung the shredded pieces of Liam’s shirt.

Their shared hatred thickened the air, making it hard for me to catch my breath. One of them was going to die. I knew it. And apparently so did Emme. Sweat glistened on her brow, and her fair skin deepened to red. The opposing forces circled each other, but neither could get through Emme’s power. They thrashed and beat against her hold, ready to draw blood.

Emme’s strength wouldn’t last much longer, but she wasn’t in immediate danger. Shayna was. She balanced on an oval table in the great room, splattered with blood, her swords at the ready. Three enormous werewolves in their powerful beast forms circled her with fangs bared. She shifted her weight from side to side, her long, sleek ponytail whirling behind her. Determination strengthened her pixie face. She wouldn’t allow them to take her down.

And neither would I. Time to come out and play, baby.

Like a ripple of water flowing across my skin, my tigress emerged, tripling my petite stature into an awesome body of dense muscle, fur, and razor-sharp claws.

My T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers fell in tattered threads at my colossal paws. The change didn’t typically hurt, but my injuries caused the already sore areas to stretch painfully and my broken rib to separate further. I collapsed, struggling to push past the relentless stabbing at my side.

I forced myself onto all fours, but not before a five-hundred-pound red wolf lunged past me and jetted toward Shayna.

Fear for Shayna turned to shock as he struck the other wolves like a mighty sledgehammer to a set of bowling pins. The wolves rolled away, their claws scratching against the stone floors as they quickly scurried to their feet and attacked once more. But the red wolf’s deep rumble forced them back. The others exchanged glances and snarled, yet none appeared willing to take on the herculean wolf.

The red wolf communicated to his pack through thunderous growls in alternating pitches and subtle twitches of his body. I didn’t speak wolf, but I understood him to mean, “Back the f**k up. Now!”

The wolves slowly abandoned their target. They paused to glower at me before hustling to the back of the house, where Aric and Misha continued their supernatural smack-down.

The red wolf turned his back to face Shayna. His body changed. Fur retracted and bones and tendons contorted, transforming the limber figure of a beast into the formidable body of a man. A sea of black satin hair spilled over rock-hard muscle and rust-colored skin. The wolf disappeared. In his place stood the gargantuan Koda.

Shayna slowly lowered her swords, her jaw falling open with an audible pop. Koda gripped her waist and gently lowered her to the floor with as much effort as it took to hold a pen. He kept his hands at her h*ps and twirled her caringly, sniffing at the bloodstains and examining her for injuries. Shayna appraised him, too.

Just not in the same way.

Her already wide eyes narrowly missed falling out of their sockets once they headed south of Koda’s waist. Koda’s thick brows set with concern. “Did they hurt you?”

Shayna shook her head, but didn’t say anything. I couldn’t blame her. Koda’s butt cheeks were tight enough to crush wood with a single clench. I couldn’t imagine the frontal view was any less impressive.

“Son of a bitch!”

My paws tore down the hall toward the sounds of Taran’s not-so-ladylike insults. I skidded into the immense kitchen, where she stood on the countertop, gripping a cabinet door to keep her balance in her damned platform pumps. More wolves had arrived. Taran jolted them with lightning as they neared, but her strikes weren’t as effective. The wolves yelped and twitched, yet continued to advance. Taran was almost out of juice. But she wasn’t out of attitude.

She slumped a little when she saw me and shot the wolves a siren grin. “You’re so screwed,” she declared. “My sister is going to kick your asses!”

There were many moments throughout our lives when I wanted to slap the snot out of Taran. This was one of them.

The wolves’ hackles collectively rose as they set their diabolic sights on me. They moved as a single unit away from Taran and toward their newest prey.

Thanks, Taran.

A black-and-tan wolf leaped on me. An avalanche of blasted bedrock wouldn’t have rammed me as hard as he did. He aimed his bear-trap fangs at my jugular. My claws dug into his shoulders, keeping him from making confetti out of my throat.

In the wild, he wouldn’t have stood a chance. A tigress could shred through the hide of a wolf like packing foam. But this wasn’t the wild, and he was no mere wolf. Four hundred–plus pounds of abominable lupine threw me around like a dead squirrel. My claws and teeth appeared to have little effect. Unlike the students in the alley, this guy had seen his share of combat.

“Get ’em, Celia. Show these bitches what you’re made of!”

Taran didn’t get it. The most I could do was continue to dig my claws and fangs and use the wolf as a shield against his pack. He wasn’t, however, a willing participant. His claws scratched and pressed into my chest with the bulk of his weight while the others continued to pound against him to get at me. Their frustrated growls and impatient hunger for battle terrified me, and my stomach lurched from the wolf’s blood dripping down my throat. I needed to get him off me, but the floor wasn’t thick enough to shift across. If I tried to shift down, I’d land in Misha’s basement and damage my already battered ribs, allowing the wolf to easily finish me.

“What are you doing, Celia?” Taran screamed. “Beat them shitless and let’s get the hell out of here!”

Taran missed her calling as a motivational speaker.

I tried to use the wolf’s momentum to roll us into his buddies, but my bones ached brutally and my muscles begged to stop moving. We banged into a butcher block stacked with kitchenware. Plates, glasses, and a few pans kerplunked, banged, and shattered onto the floor as we shoved our way through it.

Taran must have finally reabsorbed enough magic and realized my struggle to the friggin’ death. She detonated a clamoring jolt, sending the wolf airborne and into an industrial-size stove.

That would have been great had a brown wolf not ransacked me. I think my skull made a serious dent in the stainless-steel refrigerator—or at least it should have, considering the canaries circling my head insisting I not move and just die. My broken rib now had a friend. Or two. I couldn’t tell, since my lungs had stopped working from the increasing strain of my attacker’s weight. I briefly heard the beautiful howl of a wolf before the abundant mass lifted off my chest.

I didn’t so much leap to my feet as creep. Even my eyelashes hurt. They fluttered, trying to help me focus. When the haze and pessimistic canaries vanished, I took in the remains of the ransacked kitchen. All the wolves had disappeared but two. An oil black wolf with a white spot on his front paw sniffed at my head. The other waited near my trash-mouthed sister. Taran was clearly all out of supernatural juice. Exhausted and terrified, she could barely hold on to the cabinet door.

Taran’s wolf was the identical twin of mine, except the white spot was on his opposite paw. He watched her, but failed to move, whereas my wolf nudged me with his head, trying to encourage me to stand. It almost seemed strange for him not to try to eat me, but his touch remained gentle and reassuring.

Because my luck generally sucked big, hairy moose, Taran misinterpreted his actions as another attempt on my life. “Get the hell away from her!”

It appeared Taran had some juice left after all. She propelled her last bit of lightning at my wolf, hollering with the anger of a thousand Latinas.

The wolf easily leaped out of her path.

I didn’t.

The force from the bolt knocked me back into the fridge. Sparks flew as the huge appliance short-circuited. Some might argue that it took the brunt of the shock. My scrambled insides argued not.

“Oh, shit,” Taran muttered.

My wolf sped to the one at her side. I flopped onto my belly in time to see the pair curl their necks together as if embracing.

Before joining to form one enormous wolf.

The transformation happened so fast, I almost missed it. Two halves merged in unison, the perfect blend of yin and yang except beautiful, frightening, and mesmerizing all at once, like the death of two and the rebirth of one almighty.