AVERY

Wyatt led us outside, and I gulped in lungfuls of fresh air, needing it to clear my head.

I'd embarrassed myself enough in the past thirty minutes to last me three months.

It reminded me of how I'd humiliated myself the very first time I'd met Wyatt Jamison. I'd only been thirteen and was brand new to Ridgeback—his hometown in British Columbia. I'd been sitting at the local diner with my parents, eating a gooey caramel sundae with hazelnuts. Wyatt had entered the establishment with three of his pack mates. I'd gone numb when I'd first laid eyes on him. He was so tall and broad, and absolutely beautiful.

Wyatt and his friends had ordered extra-large banana splits to-go. I'd watched him so avidly that I'd completely failed to pay attention to my ice cream. The huge spoonful I'd held aloft had plopped onto my lap.

I'd shrieked, and Wyatt's attention had snapped to me. For the briefest moment, amusement lit his eyes. I'd sworn something else fluttered in them, too, but then I'd become consumed with mopping up the caramel sticking to my shorts while my parents frantically threw napkins my way.

Ugh. That'd been my first introduction to the boy I had a painfully wicked crush on all through adolescence.

But I wasn't at the SF to reminisce over past encounters. I was here to train.

Yeah, so keep that in mind.

The eight of us walked along the sidewalk. Wyatt's broad shoulders filled the width of his green SF uniform top. The material gripped his body like a glove, and his cargo pants clung to his lean waist and muscled thighs, and his ass—

I abruptly averted my attention and focused on the distant training fields and other SF members we passed on the sidewalk.

The damp scent of earth clung to the summer breeze, and the beautiful forest and rolling hills stretched for miles at the base's perimeter. I concentrated on the scenery, and slowly, my pattering heart calmed.

After a few minutes, my composure returned, and I vowed to keep it together. I was here to train and officially start my ambassador position in three months. I wasn't here to rekindle an old teenage crush or act like an idiot around Wyatt Jamison.

I nearly groaned at that thought. Major Jamison. That was how I needed to start thinking of him. Here he was Major Jamison, not Wyatt.

We rounded a curve in the sidewalk and Major Jamison slowed when we reached a three-story brick building.

"Privates Baker, Lane, Larson, and Sanchez," he called over his shoulder. "Your living accommodations will be in this building. Privates Morris, River, and Meyers, you're farther on ahead."

He strode up to the brick building and was about to pull open the door to the men's barracks when something buzzed in his pocket. Wyatt . . . ugh, Major Jamison, pulled out his tablet, a frown turning his lips down before he let go of the door.

"If you'll excuse me, new recruits. I have to attend to something quickly. I won't be gone long. Please wait here for my return."

Without another glance at any of us, our commander strode back the way we'd come.

I sighed and let my bag drop at my feet.

"I could not help but overhear you conversing with Charlotte. Is it accurate that you knew Major Jamison when you were a youngling?" Eliza's doe-like eyes batted prettily.

My lips twitched. Given Eliza's formal speech, I guessed she didn't venture out of the fae lands much. "Yeah, sort of. We lived in the same town for a while when we were teenagers."

"Who lived in the same town?" Nick asked. I could still detect his undercurrent of sorcerer energy, unlike Bo's energy which had long since faded.

"Our new commander and Avery," Charlotte answered for me.

"No shit?" Chris pushed away from the brick building he'd been leaning against.

"No shit," Charlotte replied.

"What was he like when he was younger?" Chris asked eagerly.

Zaden rolled his eyes. "Got a crush on the big bad wolf, Private Larson?"

Chris scowled. "Fuck off."

Zaden laughed. "Ooh, I hit a sore spot. Good to know."

"I'd be curious to know too," Nick said, ignoring the growing tension between the vamp and wolf, as did Bo. At least the two sorcerers seemed a bit more even tempered.

"Um, I don't know," I replied evasively. "We had mutual friends so hung out sometimes, but that was a long time ago, and I didn't really know him." Which was true. Wyatt and I were never close friends. We'd just hung out on occasion while I'd admired him from afar, him none the wiser of my wickedly painful crush.

But one thing that hadn't changed in the past eight years? My crazy attraction to him, which was apparently hell bent on flaring back to life. Crap. That was all I needed.

Chris's hopeful look faded making Zaden laugh harder.

"Got a hero complex for alpha wolves, eh?" Zaden flashed his fangs at Chris.

The werewolf growled at him, then turned away, just as a spark of distant energy filled the air.

I straightened. What was that? My internal radar spiked when another magical flare shifted in the air around us.

I whipped my head around, but none of my new squad mates seemed fazed. Charlotte and Eliza were talking quietly. Chris was glaring at Zaden, and Nick and Bo stood casually beside one another.

Yet . . .

Something wasn't right.

"Maybe someday you'll be as strong as our commander, although I doubt it," Zaden added when Chris didn't react to his first jab.

Chris lunged for him.

"Guys!" I said just as a wave of power blanketed the field around us. It tingled on my skin, making my hair stand on end. What the hell's going on? It felt as if a storm was about to unleash, yet the sky was blue and the air calm.

"You guys!" I yelled again when Chris tried to tackle Zaden in a headlock, but the vampire twisted at the last moment and broke free.

"What, Meyers?" Chris's concentration finally left the vamp.

I shook my head. "Something's not right. I can feel—"

An explosion rocked the ground, shaking the earth beneath my feet.

I screamed and pitched forward, nearly falling on Eliza, but Charlotte caught me just in time. Her grip tightened on my arm as dark clouds formed above, swirling in a tight circular pattern.

Lightning cracked, flashing in hellacious zigzags across the sky, as the wind whistled through the trees while another great rumble shook the ground.

Holy shit.

"What is happening?" Eliza's eyes grew wide.

"Is it an earthquake?" Bo asked as he placed a hand on the brick building to steady himself.

Nick shook his head, his gaze skyward. "No. This isn't Mother Nature.

Magic is causing this."

Chris and Zaden now stood on high alert, their earlier tackling forgotten just as a red mist formed from mid-air only thirty yards away.

Eliza took a step closer to me. "Does everyone else see that peculiar formation?"

"Yep." I gulped.

The mist turned into a swirling fog, covering the ground and slithering toward us as it rose up to create a shifting crimson wall of magic and crackling energy.

"What the fuck," Bo whispered.

I scrambled back, pulling Eliza with me.

Charlotte, Chris, and Nick sprang in front of us, their stances wide while Zaden hissed, his fangs descending.

"Does anyone know what that is?" I asked warily. "No," Nick replied. "But it doesn't look good."

The blood-red fog crept across the grass, inching malevolently toward us. It was only twenty yards away now.

"Where did everyone else go?" Charlotte squinted, trying to see through the mist.

I tried to look through the red wall of magic, to see the SF members that had been training on the distant field, but I couldn't see anything through the opaque fog.

"I don't know," Chris replied, his skin shimmering as his magic swelled. "Maybe it's advancing on them on the other side."

Bo looked frantically around the grounds. "Should we sound an alarm?

Or run for help?"

"I don't think we'll have time," Charlotte replied. "It's coming too fast."