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  “Timing the…contractions?” he parroted, his voice rising. “That’s what I’ve been feeling? I thought the baby was kicking wobblers.”

  Another grimace crossed Darcy’s face.

  Quentin cursed beneath his breath. Through letting her call the shots, he lifted her into his arms and strode toward The Compound. “Not another word, ridiculous woman.”

  As he approached the gate, the floodlights that were set to detect motion failed to light. He slowed his steps, the hair lifting on the back of his neck.

  Darcy stiffened in his arms.

  “I know,” he whispered, noting the lack of human guards around the perimeter. “Something’s wrong.”

  “Put me down.”

  He did and quickly shoved her toward deep foliage next to the wall. “Wait here.”

  “Like hell!” she hissed. “What if the trouble’s out here? Vamps and weres both have a great sense of smell.”

  “All right,” he said in a clipped tone, damning himself for his carelessness. With the wind coming off the ocean, he’d found no scent to give him warning. He punched the security code on the touch pad. The lock on the gate released with a soft snick. He slipped through and held it open for Darcy.

  Once inside the wall, he noted the stillness—no hint of the guards’ movements, no distant murmurs of conversation. He sniffed the air and froze, finding the scent he feared most.

  Wolves!

  “Damn him to hell!” he gritted out, rage already hardening his body.

  “Who?” Darcy said, clutching his arm.

  “Our pet!” he spat. “He’s brought friends.”

  With Darcy matching his steps behind him, Quentin crept into the courtyard, past the flowering bougainvillea and palms, past the edge of the tiled patio to peer inside the darkened living room.

  Darcy shouldered her way into position beside him. “We have wolves—plural—in The Compound?”

  “Stay behind me.”

  “But Lily,” she said, a note of fear entering her voice, “they’re here for Lily. We have to get to her.”

  “Once in the house, you will run straight for the panic room. Today, you’re not a cop, Darcy. I’ll take care of Lily.”

  “All right, but Quentin,” she said, tugging at his sleeve, “this isn’t Max’s doing.”

  “Then why didn’t he sound the alarm? He and Pia are supposed to be the watch tonight.”

  “I don’t know. But I do know he couldn’t do this. He wouldn’t betray us.”

  “Be quiet now, love. Remember what I said. Get to the panic room.” He opened the door and let Darcy slip past him to make an awkward dash for the stairway. The panic room was along the upper corridor. He followed behind her, facing the opposite direction, waiting for a foe to charge up the stairs and cursing the fact he hadn’t brought a weapon other than the silver-bladed knife strapped to his ankle.

  What had he been thinking? The weres in the area appeared to be conquered. The few stragglers of the pack that had wreaked havoc in Vero Beach had been easy to find—they’d left bloody trails in their wake.

  In retrospect, they’d been too easy to find.

  As Quentin braced himself for the fight of his life, his mind raced. Where were the human guards? He detected no scent of death in the air. And what of Pia and Max? If Max wasn’t responsible for the breach in security, then who was?

  A gasp erupted behind him, and he whirled to see three weres in varying forms of transformation creeping down the hallway toward them.

  As he faced them, deep-throated snarls erupted from the wolves.

  The newly installed panic room lay just beyond the three. Quentin guessed they had been about to enter, so at least he knew where Lily was.

  He pushed past Darcy and shoved her against the wall, bending at the last moment to slide his knife from beneath his pant leg. “Watch for your break,” he shouted.

  Still crouched low, he summoned the beast inside, letting his body bulk out with just enough of the monster to even up the odds. When his shirt strained across his shoulders, he lunged at the closest of the wolves—a brindle bastard, fully transformed and nearly foaming at the mouth.

  They met in mid-air. Quentin rolled with him, coming up on his feet after slashing deep into the wolf’s neck. The next, a dark-furred cur, caught him from behind and knocked him to the ground.

  Darcy shouted and a shot rang out.

  Quentin couldn’t look back. He kicked backward and grabbed for the muzzle locked around the top of his right shoulder. Adrenaline and rage numbed him to the pain of teeth sinking deep into muscle.

  The knife traded hands, and Quentin stabbed over his shoulder, hoping to spear eyes. When the wolf broke his hold with a screeching whine, Quentin came to his knees and slammed the wolf clinging to his back against the wall, at the same time digging his right elbow into a vulnerable belly. With the stunned creature wriggling to come to its paws, Quentin slammed the blood-slick knife in its chest.

  With the red haze of rage threatening to steal his intellect, Quentin pitched through the bedroom door, ready to take the next foe.

  The sight that met his eyes brought a howl of pain and denial. Before the closed panic room door, Darcy lay beneath the bloody claws of a man-wolf, a gaping maw in her belly, her arms and hands nearly shredded. A gun lay on the ground beyond her feet. Darcy hadn’t gone on her walk without backup after all.

  Quentin’s heart screamed and he crouched, ready to spring at the wolf to tear its head from its shoulders, when he saw the slightest movement of Darcy’s lips.

  Thank God! She still lived.

  The monster’s lips pulled back in an unholy grin, and he held up a red, wriggling baby, its placental chord dangling from its round belly.

  Quentin had only a moment to note Darcy’s child was a boy with a thick cap of dark curls.

  Then the creature placed the child in his mouth and completed his transformation to wolf, dropping on all fours to the floor.

  The dark wolf approached him and brushed boldly past.

  Quentin clenched his fists and let him pass, fighting the encroaching haze—Darcy lived. The baby was likely already infected by the bite Darcy had received, and if not, it soon would be from the saliva of the wolf using it as a hostage for safe passage out of The Compound. The baby was lost whether the beast ate it or not.

  But Darcy wasn’t—yet. And while she had breath, there was still a chance to save her.

  He crossed the room and knelt beside her, taking her head into his lap, cupping her face between shaking palms.

  Darcy’s eyes fluttered open. “Quentin….the baby,” she whispered, her voice thin, her breath labored. “Save the baby.”

  “I will, love,” he lied and bent to end her life.