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glowing golden eyes shooting around until they landed on her. He pulled back his lip in a feral sneer, white teeth glistening with saliva.
    “Rian,” Coal growled.
    Shyla could barely follow him. The table shoved into her ribs, and the painful screech of the chair on the floor came only after she noticed Coal diving through the air, barreling toward the massive stranger.
    Before her eyes, she watched what her mind fought to deny.
    Black melted over Coal’s skin. His body contorted and twisted unnaturally. Shreds of clothing dropped from the changing form arcing through the air. Black fur bristled and extended, covering every inch of what once was a man.
    His face narrowed and elongated into a snout with fatal white fangs. Fingers molded into paws, and arms drew in to form front legs. Hips narrowed and legs crooked like those of a dog. A tail emerged.
    A huge black wolf crashed into the unwelcome patron who had already begun a similar transition. Within seconds, two wolves thrashed across the floor, knocking tables aside while Shyla sat in complete shock, watching what should have been two humans battle it out in the dining room.

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Four
     
    Jacy bounded off his chair and lunged across the room. The threatening growls and barks from the wolves echoed above the clashing of furniture. His fellow wolf buddies looked on in horror as two of the strongest wolves in Hood River took to each other in a frenzy of snapping teeth and fur.
    Coal locked down on Rian’s throat and whipped him across the diner. The larger wolf grunted as he slammed into the wall, leaving a smear of crimson blood against the wood planks. The acrid odor stung Jacy’s nostrils and made him salivate with the primitive thoughts of a kill close at hand.
    Jacy began to transform when a piercing shatter erupted behind him.
    Shyla screamed.
    He spun around to see another man grab her in a bear hug and rip her out of her seat.
    He looked at Coal.
    “Get her! Don’t worry about me, you idiot. Get Shyla!”
    Jacy nodded, glancing at Rian as he stumbled to his legs. His friend would be fine.
    He bolted after the second man, who rushed out toward the back door. Banking on his wolf speed in leaps and bounds while remaining in human form, he caught up to the man halfway across the back parking lot. He swung an arm around his neck, bringing him to a sliding halt. Shyla shrieked as the stop pitched her body forward. She slammed into the gravel ground and slid to a stop, curls of dust rising around her. Jacy ignored the twisted expression on her face and the pain her mind screamed to him. He heaved Rian’s accomplice to the ground. The man’s head bounce on the uneven gravel. Jacy crouched down beside him, bearing his sharpened wolf’s teeth despite still being in his human body.
    “Who sent you? That measly little bitch Laela? Pathetic, worthless shits that you are,” Jacy snarled. His fingers thickened, his joints popping and the bones in his hand reforming to those of his wolf. Razor-sharp nails extended out of the tips, and he raked them across the man’s face, leaving deep, gushing wounds. The man growled, but the dazed look in his eyes from the impact of his skull on gravel assured Jacy he would be no challenge. “You aren’t getting your paws on our mate. You got that? You would’ve been better off staying at home with your whore today.”
    Feeling for Shyla’s thoughts, latching on to the telepathic link and making sure she wasn’t watching, Jacy ripped open the man’s throat where he lay. He climbed to his feet and rushed to Shyla’s side, his paw changing back into a hand and his teeth retracting. He brushed aside her mussed hair and kissed her forehead. She grimaced.
    “Where does it hurt?” he asked.
    “Elbows. Back.” Shyla lifted her palms, scraped and bloody. Jacy shook his head. “Hands.” She tried to crane her neck to see past him, but he barred her view from the dead man. “What happened to the