Last Female Sypher and Her Brother's Friends novel Chapter 69

ale Sypher and Her Brother’s Friends

Chapter 69

Footsteps. Closer now.

A voice calls out, muffled but clear enough. “They went off here!”

My heart slams harder.

“Liam-”

“Aria.” His voice softens just for a second. “Trust me.”

I hate that word.

Trust.

It feels like something fragile. Something that breaks.

But he’s my brother.

And right now, he’s all I’ve got.

“Fine,” I breathe.

He nods once. “On three.”

I confirm with a nod of my head.

“One.”

The crunch of leaves get louder.

“Two.”

“Shit. I think the hut might have killed them, Ray,” one of the hunters says to the other.

“Nah, it takes more than a crash to break those cursed things,” a harder voice says.

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Chapter 69

“Three!” Liam shouts behind me.

I push myself up, legs unsteady but holding.

Then I run.

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“Hey!” One of the men shouts. “Nab the bitch before she warns the others!”

Branches whip against my face as I sprint blindly into the woods. My lungs burn, my body screams, but I

don’t slow.

I can hear them behind me now.

Shouting, but they were cut short by a growl.

“What the fuck is that thing?”

“God damn beasts are evolving,” someone shouts before more gunfire rings out.

Don’t look back.

A horrendous scream.

The crunch of bones.

Don’t look back.

The sickly thud of a body.

A pained howl.

Don’t look back.

A gunshot cracks the bark of a tree to my left.

Wood splinters, and I close my eyes to avoid getting debris in them.

Shit, it’s too close.

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I duck instinctively, veering left.

“Aria!”

Liam’s voice.

Behind me.

Relief surges-

He’s with me. He’s following behind me.

Then more voices. More scents. Several new humans joined the group of assholes.

Fuck. They were leading us here.

Surrounding us.

“No,” I whisper.

I risk a glance back.

Liam bursts through the trees, right behind me-

It happened all at once, Liam shifted but her didn’t drop down into a wolf form, his beast was bipedal, haunting. A creature made from myths and legends.

I’ve seen Liam shift before.

I know what it looks like–the tearing, the bones breaking and reforming, the surge of fur and muscle.

This-

This is different.

His body twists, but it doesn’t settle into a wolf.

It stretches, expands–something larger, something wrong and right all at once.

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Half–man.

Half–wolf.

Neither.

Both.

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His spine arches, muscles bulging beneath skin that flickers between human and fur. Claws rip free from his

fingers, elongated, deadly. His face–God–his face is a nightmare of shifting features, eyes glowing with

something wild and ancient.

The hunters lifted guns.

And then they open fire.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

“No, I scream,” but the bullets don’t leave a spray of blood in their wake.

Not bullets.

Darts.

They thud into him, one after another.

He roars, the sound shaking the trees, vibrating through my bones.

His passive limbs, he knocks the hunter to the ground, fighting his way through as more darts are blasted

into him.

For a heartbeat, I think he’ll tear them apart.

He lunges, slamming one of them into the ground with brutal force.

Another rushes him.

Another dart hits.

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Then another.

And another.

My stomach drops.

Tranquilizers, my wolf realizes.

“They’re trying to take him,” I whisper, horror flooding my veins.

Liam stumbles.

Just slightly.

But I see it.

They see it too.

“Keep firing!” one of them shouts.

“No,” I breathe.

My chest tightens, panic clawing its way up my throat.

He’s slowing.

Fighting it, but-

There are too many.

Too many darts.

Too many hunters.

I should run.

That’s what he told me to do.

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That’s what I agreed to do.

But I can’t.

Because that’s my brother.

And they’re taking him.