Forty-Three

                                    

                                          
Red
                          
"Oh shit, I think he's waking up."
                          
            "Put your gun down, Kyle.  He's not going to hurt us."
                          
            "What makes you so sure?"
                          
            A steady stream of conversation invaded Red's pounding head.  His mouth felt dry, his tongue like sandpaper as he swallowed.  He could tell that he was lying on the cold hard ground and knew that at some point, he'd Shifted from his wolf skin to his human one.
                          
            Nothing else was clear.
                          
            Red remembered running and fighting and the thundering bangs of gunfire that accompanied screams and whimpering of dying hunters and werewolves.  He had started on the front lines, a few hundred feet away from the wall when the hunters had taken it down.  Henry had taken charge of one group of wolves to Red's left and on the other side of Henry was Monroe with her own set to lead into battle.
                          
            Scattered throughout the pack, hidden high within the trees, were some of their best marksmen – all trained by Blake and being led today by Phillip and Hope.  They would do their best to drive the hunters towards where the wolves waited while picking out those that the pack couldn't take care of.  All of it in an attempt to prevent the hunters from making it near the clinic where the Luna, and Red's Mate, waited.
                          
            When the wall had fallen, Red had done his best not to think of Blake but that was easier said than done.  Especially as he'd seen hunters and wolves falling to the ground around him, blood leaking into the cold hard autumn soil.  He'd banished her from thought, if only so he hadn't thought about how breakable her human body was.
                          
            And so Red had fought with claw and teeth until his paws and coat and muzzle were coated with red blood.  There were so many hunters that they seemed endless.  Everywhere he turned, there was one waiting for him and even the ones he couldn't see posed a threat.  He was stabbed and sliced and grazed with blades and bullets of silver and still Red had fought. 
                          
Until he'd found himself on the edge of the territory and had been updating Henry through the link on the fact that the number of hunters was dwindling when the scream had sounded.  Through the trees, just beyond pack territory, Red had seen two faeries being dragged away by a group of hunters.
                          
            The faeries, a female and a male, were bound in iron and Red had known instinctively that these were Lavinia and her son, Vulir.  With only enough time to tell Henry that he was leaving the territory, Red had launched into a run.  
                          
            That was where his memory grew fuzzy and dark and unclear.  Red remembered lunging towards the hunters, killing the man holding Lavinia's chains and then feeling something bright and burning rake across the side of his neck.  After that, it was pain, blinding and fierce, and Red had fallen, vision growing dark as he'd Shifted into his human skin with a bone-deep coldness seeping through him.
                          
And then he remembered something that couldn't be true because what Red thought had happened after that was hunters dashing through the foliage and turning on their own people.  
                          
Before he'd blacked out, his last thought had been of Blake.  Of her eyes, hard as steel and shining with starlight. He might have even said her name.
                          
But that was all.  Red didn't know what had happened after that blinding pain but as his eyes fluttered open, he was sure that it couldn't be good.  Not as he looked up and saw three humans leaning over him.
                          
"Hey," one said.   He grinned and the expression lit up his brown eyes in a way that seemed trustworthy.  A lock of his chestnut hair fell into his eyes.  "Take it easy.  You went down pretty hard."