Fighting with Fire #2 ✔

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟐𝟓 - 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐨

I blinked and nodded quickly. "Yeah."

"I'm not," she said bluntly and wrapped her arms around my waist.

Keeping my hands on her upper back, I enveloped her in my arms. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing." She stepped away from me and forced a smile. "Nothing new, anyway."

"We gotta get going, Ember," my dad told her — Storm, Abi and Zack were already in his truck.

Ember nodded, and it looked like she blinked back tears before Thea led her to the car.

"Is everything alright?" My dad asked me, one eyebrow raised.

"No, but it will be."

Wrapping his arms around me, he whispered in my ear, "Be safe, tonight, son. Remember that those hunters are still out there."

"I couldn't possibly forget."

<Have fun in the woods tonight, big bro.> Thea advised, <But not too much!>

<What do you mean?> I frowned back.

<Never mind.>

<See ya tomorrow.>

<Later.>

Then my dad drove his truck away from the ashes of Coloma, taking along with him my newfound family and the girl who had the splinters of my heart.

"Theo! You should see something!" A yell came from within one of the semi-burnt down huts.

I broke into a jog as I ran towards the hut.

It was Maia. She was lying unconscious on a makeshift bed of ferns, much like the beds my pack and I used to sleep on when we lived here...

"What's wrong with Maia?" I asked.

Abi stepped into the hut, and peeled the bandage off Maia's right leg, unveiling the bite that had healed.

"It's happening, isn't it?" I glanced up at Jason. "The reversal of her lycanthropy."

"Yeah," Jason confirmed with his eyebrows furrowing. "And now we know how those bastards did it."

"How?" I frowned.

"Whilst they had us," he continued, "They... extracted some of the power that I have, the power that enables me to turn a human into a werewolf."

"How...?" The question died on my lips.

Jason shook his head in defeat. "We don't know that yet. But it's clear that they're trying to reverse lycanthropy — maybe on a huge scale, who knows?

"Shit, do you think she'll shift tonight?" I threw an anxious look at the full moon, before settling my gaze on my Alpha once again.

"There's no way of telling." He responded.

"Well," Jade added, "Even if she does shift and is, like, super violent, at least we're miles from anywhere."

"True," Jason acknowledged.

A sudden prickle of pain ran through my body and Ryder juddered like he'd felt the same thing.

"What's up with the moon tonight?" Jade exclaimed as she saw her claws were already lengthening.

"Supermoon," Jason replied through gritted teeth — fangs.

Only nanoseconds apart from each other, we all started shifting — including Maia.