My mother frowned and began unbuttoning his shirt. Gently she pulled the material from the waistband of his jeans and laid his shirt open to expose his torso. The left side of his chest was already blue and purple; at the very least, he’d broken several ribs, on the same side as his broken leg and the arm with the open fracture. He’d landed on his left side.

“How many were there?” My father bent to help my mom pull the rest of the shirt loose, and Charlie started shivering.

“Two. From the roof.” He flinched over another short inhalation, as every single head swung toward the house, to make sure we hadn’t just walked into a trap. But the roof was clear now. The birds wouldn’t take on so many of us at once. Hopefully.

I crossed my arms against the cold as Charlie continued, and my father shifted into his line of sight so the injured tom wouldn’t have to strain to see him. “I heard this whoosh, and when I turned around, they were on me.” He coughed, then swallowed, eyes squeezed shut against the pain. “Then I was in the air. One had my arm, one my ankle.”

“I can’t believe they could carry you,” I said, thinking of how the first thunderbird had struggled with Kaci, as little as she weighed.

“Weren’t trying to.” Charlie closed his eyes again, and spoke without opening them. “They took me up about thirty feet, then let me go.”

My own eyes closed in horror. They’d dropped him on purpose. And if he’d weighed any less, they might have dropped him from higher up. They weren’t trying to take him. They were trying to kill him.

When I opened my eyes, I found my father watching me, and I saw the same bitter comprehension behind the bright green of his eyes. Thunderbirds were unlike any foe we’d ever faced. They swooped in out of nowhere, then flew off once they’d inflicted maximum damage. We couldn’t defend ourselves from their talons, nor could we Shift fast enough to truly fight them. And we certainly couldn’t chase them across the sky.

In the span of a single hour, they’d injured Owen, gravely injured Charlie Eames, and killed Jake Taylor. We were down three men, at the worst possible time.

The lump in my throat was too big to breathe around. How could we fight Malone if we didn’t survive the thunderbirds?

“Greg…” Vic emerged from the crowd and my dad stood to take the phone he held out. “I got him on the line.”

“Thank you.” My Alpha turned to pace as he spoke into the phone, while my mother did what she could for Charlie. “Danny? How close are you?” He paused as Dr. Carver said something I couldn’t quite make out over the static. “Can you get here any faster?”

I squeezed Marc’s hand when it slid into my good one, and we followed my father away from the crowd to listen in on his call. If he hadn’t wanted anyone to hear, he’d have gone inside.