Kate and Jasmine were running after him.

Too slow.

As Swagger opened his massive jaws ready to scissor straight through Tom’s neck, Rico shoulder-charged him. Swagger growled and snapped instinctively at Rico’s arm, his teeth sinking easily into the boy’s flesh. The sharp yellow teeth were soon bright red with blood.

Rico screamed with pain –but Swagger was howling louder. He spat the boy out, who fell lifelessly against Tom’s flank.

The huge blond ’wolf twisted and writhed, his deep, bellowing roars modulating to high-pitched screams as he switched back to his human form in a series of sick spasms. It was like he’d swallowed acid and now it was burning its way through his entire body.

Finally he laid still, eyes dull and glazed, a thick white froth seeping from his cracked mouth.

As she ran to reach Tom, it dawned on Kate what she had just witnessed. Rico was a total-resister – the boy’s blood was deadly poison to the ’wolves, that waswhy Stacy and Takapa had both treasured it so in their researches.

Swagger the man may have known that – but Swagger the ’wolf had seen just another piece of meat. All sense blinded by bloodlust, he’d been the final victim of his own violence.

But Kate’s eyes filled with tears as she covered the final distance. Who had he taken with him?

Chapter Nineteen

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

Jasmine reached Rico a second before Kate did. She scooped him up from where he lay slumped against Tom’s prone body. Rico’s eyes were rolling back in his head, his arm was a mauled mess. That treasured blood was everywhere.

‘Stacy!’ Kate yelled, panting for breath. ‘We need you! Quick!’ Her voice echoed and re-echoed around the vast arena.

An eerie calm was settling over the battlefield now. The surviving ’wolves had either slunk away through the exits to freedom or else changed back to human form, huddling together in small groups among the corpses dotted around the arena. Stacy left one of the groups and began to move towards them. But she was on the far side of the arena … how much time did they have?

‘Shit, Rico,’ Jasmine muttered through her tears. ‘Don’t you dare leave me alone. Don’t do this. You hear me?’

Rico coughed, his eyelids fluttering like he was falling asleep. ‘¿Esta sangrando mucho?’

‘Only a little, Ric,’ she whispered soothingly. ‘It’s only bleeding a little.’

Rico closed his eyes. ‘Sure … Thanks, Jas.’

While Jasmine clutched hold of Rico, Kate turned to Tom. She heard his back twist and crack as his body straightened, his ribcage snap and flutter as it shrank in on itself; watched his regular human features return. She found a heavy shawl discarded close by, and draped it around him like a blanket.

‘Sorry,’ he croaked, dabbing at the sticky gash on his neck. ‘I couldn’t reach you. I was useless.’