Teamwork

Lake

Lucy’s tears are dried; all that remains on her face is disgust and anger.

Lucy brushes Coal aside and gets right up in my face, her nose nearly touching mine. I can feel the heat of her breath—her rage—on my cheeks.

Sylas stiffens beside me, ready to fight her off if necessary. His presence is strangely comforting, but I know I can hold my own with Lucy.

“Lucy, now is not the time to be doing this!” I growl, something stirring inside of me. “My mate—your brother—is a prisoner!”

I can’t tell if Lucy is hell-bent on killing me or just maiming me. Her black eyes are glossed over from her tears, and the bags under her eyes are more prominent now that she’s so close to me.

The silence and tension in the air could be cut with a rusty old dagger.

The forest is still like the air over a graveyard or the ocean when something troubling is about to happen. I can feel the ground grow cold and bitter, something I haven’t felt since I was still living with my pack.

This isn’t how I thought this would go. Granted, I didn’t think it would be smooth sailing, but for Lucy to be acting like a rabid wolf with a thirst for my blood? Definitely a one-eighty from my plan.

“Lu, please,” I beg. “I’m not going to fight you. Derrick is in trouble. It’s my fault.”

Lucy loses it as if she’s insulted by my begging.

Before I know it, her brilliant black and white wolf springs out of her human body. The female shakes her coat out like she hasn’t been out in a while.

Lyla, Lucy’s wolf, bares her teeth at me. The hackles on the back of her neck stand straight up as the big-ass wolf begins to stalk me.

I push Sylas out of the way as Lyla pounces for me.

I narrowly dodge the attack when her paw slams down on the ground just three inches away from my thigh. Picking myself up, I exhaustingly try my best to dodge and weave in any angle that I can. I jump from tree to tree, rock to rock, and this wolf is still in step behind me.

I misjudge the length of my jump and crash to the ground with my head hitting a tree branch on the way down. Lyla’s claws happily meet my chest as she lands right on top of me.

“Lyla!” I hear Coal’s voice call, but his mate refuses to listen.

Two big black eyes stare down at me as my back seeps into the soil and Lyla’s huge body presses my chest so hard that I swear my rib is about to break.

“Lake!” Sylas exclaims.

“No!” I tell him. Something is stirring within me. A raw, animalistic power I haven’t felt since my first shift.

~It’s Lynne!~

“This is my fight!” I bellow. Lynne’s need to surface mixes my voice with an animalistic melody. “No one is to interfere.”

Her presence is dull and has no real touch to my consciousness, but it’s enough to give me the strength I need to at least lift Lyla off of my chest. I try to shift, but it’s basically impossible. Without Lynne fully here, I’m unable to take her form.

“Enough!”

Lyla is kicked off of me by Sylas, who helps me to my feet without taking his eyes off of the she-wolf. I guess the impact from his boot was enough to spook Lucy as she shifts back into her human form before landing a good ten feet away from us.

Coal holds himself from his mate, knowing this is not the time to come over to her. That, or he’s on the verge of ripping Sylas a new one. Either way, he stands his ground where he is.

Lucy stands and straightens her matted hair. The force from the landing would’ve given a human some sort of concussion or worse. Thankfully, none of us here are humans.

“Vampires have no say in this.” Lucy states, “Especially ones that align themselves with ~her~.”

~Okay, I’m tired of this shit.~

“Are you done yet?” I ask, “I came here for ~your~ fucking brother! Not to make amends!”

“You’re on thin ice, Lake.” Lucy spits, “If it wasn’t for you Edward wannabe—“

“Don’t talk about him like that.” I retort, a hint of protectiveness rushes over me, “Like you said, Sylas has nothing to do with this.”

“So it has a name…” Lucy rebuttals, “Did you name it, or did it come with it? I heard vampires are nothing but relentless savages who feast on harmless humans at night.”

Okay, now this she-wolf is beginning to ruffle my feathers.

I take a breath and try to reason, “Lucy, please don’t say such things—“

“Afraid I’ll hurt the blood sucker’s feelings?” Lucy’s tone is sarcastic and hateful. If we weren’t here for help, I swear me and her would be scrapping right now.

Knowing I won’t do anything, Lucy continues her taunts, “You’re looking to be on the thin side, but nourished enough to take on Lyla… Have you fed on an innocent human recently? I bet you ripped them apart, didn’t you?”

“Now, listen you fu—“

“Okay, okay.” Sylas comes between Lucy and me, “That’s enough for today.”

I growl, “No, I’m not—“

Coal interrupts his mate, “Sylas is right. Fighting amongst ourselves isn’t helping anything.”

Lucy’s naked frame comes apparent as she calms down and covers herself. Her hair is frizzy and her eyes are dull. I can see a large scar on her lower abdomen and wince.

When wolves miscarry, the process is nothing like that of a human’s. Our body still feels the pup and holds onto it until it’s fully developed. Seeing as this would never happen, the dead tissue from the pup would cause a massive infection and the mother would eventually die from it.

The only solution would be for the pup to be cut from the belly.

I couldn’t imagine the pain and suffering both of these two went through. Knowing what happened, Coal had to have been the one to cut his son from his mate’s stomach. The thought of Derrick or Sylas having to do something like that to me makes my heart pulse with anguish.

Lucy takes notice of my gaze over her stomach and growls loudly, “What do you propose we do?”

Sylas answers for me, “I’m working on a plan. We just know that the two of us can’t do it on our own.”

Coal tries to comfort Lucy, who is tearing up again, “I know it’s not the best situation considering the circumstances, Poppet... But for this to work, we need complete teamwork to save Derrick. You don’t have to trust them.”

“Damn right, I don’t have to,” Lucy mutters.

“So, you’re in?” Sylas claps his hands together lightly. I cringe slightly.

“Of course, we’re in,” Lucy growls. Her black eyes are narrow as her brow is sewn together.

“Great!” I reply, slight excitement swells within me, “We’ll start planning—”

‘Shut the hell up,’ Lucy curses. She pushes Coal and Sylas as she comes closer to me. Our foreheads are almost touching as both of our eyes lock again.

“Let me make this clear as a motherfucking crystal to you... Hybrid.” She grits her teeth, putting more emphasis on ‘Hybrid,’ like it’s a bad thing, “If anything—and I mean anything—happens to my brother and to my mate during this whole thing, I will end you faster than you can blink.”