Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6), Lan Chan [free ebook reader for android TXT] 📗

went flying past in a blur of silver and black. When he landed, his clothing hung from him in strips, his gorilla form dwarfing the clearing. Breaking a gum tree in two when he used it as a crutch to stand, he raised himself on his back legs and beat at his chest. When he lumbered forward, my heart rocked in tandem with the stomp of his front paws. If Military Woman wasn’t holding on to me, I might have lost my footing. Between Jeremiah’s brown bear and Harris’s King Kong imitation, the clearing was now chaos.

Still Max hadn’t shifted. He was bleeding from a cut on his bottom lip but the feral grin on his face said they would have to do better. And then they did. The wolves proved why they were the quintessential pack animals as they descended on him in numbers. Five of them at once. Max hammered his foot into the side of the first shifted wolf, sending it flying into the scrub. I heard yelping and then the scrape of paws trying to regain balance. He grabbed another wolf by the scruff of its neck and compressed its windpipe. I inhaled sharply as bone crunched. My blood turned to ice. I couldn’t help turning my head away from the violence.

My attention landed on Anastasia. Instead of cheering along with her squad, she was studying me with a haughty curl of her lip. “Are you that soft, girl?” Military Woman asked.

My voice was barely above a whisper. “He’s going to hurt them.” I’d seen Max kill things before, but they had always been demons and monsters. The thought of him hurting his friends, his pack, because of the crazy in his blood made mine turn cold. And I worried that when the fever calmed down, what he’d done would hurt him in return.

“This is how we are,” she informed me. “It’s not always pretty.”

I knew all about shifter dominance games. Something about this just seemed odd. And then those thoughts were flung from my mind as Gwen cracked her knuckles and stepped up to the fight. The other shifters had tried to use brute force against Max. Being physically smaller, Gwen must have known she would need another strategy. I’d witnessed her fight before when I’d arrived early for Weaponry and Combat. More than once I’d seen her take out opponents twice her size. She wasn’t just leopard fast. She also had a calmer temperament that allowed her to keep a cooler head in a fight. My appreciation of her technique did not change the fact that I screamed when she shifted and her leopard came straight for me.

I tried to move but found myself suddenly shackled by Military Woman. Gwen’s claws were a foot from shaving my face off when Max’s arm whipped out. He caught her by the throat. As he pulled back as though to toss her aside, she dispensed with modesty and shifted back to human form. With her elongated limbs, Gwen managed to throw Max off balance, and they toppled. Falling in a cat-quick pounce, she was up and sprinting for him again. With his attention focused on the naked woman in front of him, Max barely had time to avoid Ari steamrolling over him. Pushing Ari out of the way to stop his face from being eviscerated, Max found himself inside a circle of leopards. All of them female, their eyes turned hunting bright.

At their head was a sleek, golden creature with intricate markings along her pelt. She moved with the assured gait of a huntress. Even in her beast form, Anastasia’s reflective eyes were ravenous when she watched him. The leopards trotted around Max in an unbreakable circle, nipping at his heels and lunging at him in turn. I wasn’t sure what they were waiting for until Harris and Jeremiah joined them along with the wolves. They formed a second ring around Max, splitting his attention.

Right beside my ear, Military Woman gave a short, sharp whistle. Max’s head snapped up. He wouldn’t have given her another moment’s notice if her hand hadn’t suddenly winched around my throat. “What the hell?” I got out a second before Max booted one of the wolves running in his way out of sight.

That was when the pack descended on him. Not caring who took collateral damage, they stampeded over him using both speed and force to pin him to the ground. My heart jack-knifed as Anastasia clamped her jaw around Max’s forearm and bore down. He grunted, slamming her into the nearest shifter, but she wouldn’t ease her lockjaw. Harris caught hold of Max’s left ankle. The gorilla shifter pulled Max off balance. The other shifters didn’t move as Max fell. They converged on him, biting and scratching.

They became a mass of indiscriminate claws and teeth. Blood, skin, and fur splattered on the ground and against the bark of the trees. I whined as some of it splashed onto us. Struggling in Military Woman’s arms, I tried to break out of her hold. “Stop,” I screamed.

Nothing changed.

Having shifted back into his human form, Jeremiah wrapped his arm around Max’s throat. With Anastasia and Harris still latched on to him, Max managed to take a few steps back and slam Jeremiah into a tree. Wood creaked as the tree gave in to the weight bearing down on it. The leopards swarmed Max’s back, dragging him to the ground. Harris yanked Max’s feet out from under him, forcing him to his knees.

I saw the hit coming but couldn’t stop it. Throwing a circle around Max did absolutely nothing. Pumped full of adrenaline, the shifters tore through it like kindling. Ari’s fist connected with the side of Max’s head. One of the leopard minions raked her claws across his chest, drawing a splatter of blood that soaked his blue T-shirt in seconds. I caught a hint of the tattoo Lex had gifted him for his ascension. The loop of her writing peeked out, and I