The brothers advanced on them, their eyes greedy and hungry for a fight. They were changing but the process for them seemed less fluid than it did when Russel changed. It almost looked painful. Their faces were even twisted into snarls of pain. Ro, the tall, slender one, was nearly bent over double, his eyes glaring at the two of them the whole time. The other three brothers didn’t look much better off, but they, at least, weren’t bent over double.

“What’s wrong with them?” Lola asked, taking a cautious step forward.

“The change is typically not…pleasant,” he explained. His eyes kept track of each brother. “For some, like these assholes, it’s worse.”

She leaned in and whispered to him.

“When you start to change, it doesn’t look like it hurts.”

He didn’t respond but shot her a smile. The comment did a lot to boost his confidence. Werewolves that had an easier time with their change were often viewed as weak, like the ease somehow lessened them. Lola’s words sounded like she thought the complete opposite was true. In fact, she actually sounded impressed which made him feel not just more confident, but proud as well. He would need both in the coming fight. He had tangled with his brothers on and off ever since he was little. They were nasty, vindictive bastards that liked to gang up on him and beat the crap out of him so much that his natural, regenerative abilities could barely keep up. Sometimes, if he was especially fed up with all their bullshit, he would land a few hits but, in the end, not enough to do him any good. They would just get enraged and renew their efforts to a much higher level and really lay into him. After a while, Russel had simply learned to deal with it and passed it off as a miserable part of life he would never be able to escape. Not even his father would help. In fact, going to his father only resulted in him doing the beating and then shouting things like, “A real wolf has the strength to handle himself,” or “Either get stronger or let them kill you.”

It had been a terrible childhood in retrospect and one of the biggest reasons why he had been almost eager to take on the mission to find Lola and kill her. Everything that happened afterward hadn’t been planned, sure, but he was still happy with how things turned out even if his father now wanted him dead for disobeying. In retrospect, taking her to his kingdom wasn’t one of his brighter ideas, but at the time it seemed the most logical one. Lola needed safety. A place where no Harvenk mongrels would be able to get to her.

What better place than his home? It was, after all, an exceptionally fortified castle palace with plenty of defensive walls and soldier-wolves ready for a fight.

“Look at ‘im,” the hairy brother said through a mouthful of fangs. They just finished sprouting out of his mouth and completely butchered the words he tried to say. “Just sittin’ there doing nothing with that dumb as fuck look on his face.”

“That’s cuz he is a moron,” the heavyset brother chimed in. He was the furthest along in the change and had swelled up to monstrous proportions. “I mean, what do you expect? He brought this girl here, to us, when he knew she was supposed to be killed.”

“You’re right. That was dumb as hell,” another brother said although Lola was having trouble telling them apart now. In wolf form, they all looked too similar to distinguish.

“Not to kick you when you’re down, but they’re right. Why would you bring me to where your father is when you knew he wanted me dead?” She was clearly irritated, not so much because of the brothers’ words but because they were right. A simmering anger still boiled inside her at Russel and the massive lie he told, but the fact that he would do something that put her directly on a path toward death really did seem idiotic. “I mean, what even was the plan here?”

“To be honest,” he answered, grinning the grin of a wisecracking and sarcastic asshole he directed right at his brothers. “I was going to lie and say you were someone else. These idiots are usually so dumb, they believe anything I tell them. I even told Rutger.” Russel leaned closer to her and gestured at the heavy brother. “That’s the fat ass over there.”

Rutger let out a long, rumbling growl.

“I told that moron once that shades were attracted to fat slobs,” Russel said with a harsh, biting laugh. “He spent the next three months doing nothing but exercising and eating only lettuce.”

Rutger’s growling intensified and his eyes flashed with amber light. His lip curled into a vicious snarl.

“Shut your mouth,” the werewolf snapped. “I’m gonna kill you!”

“Stop, Rutger,” Ro snapped, his voice gravelly and hoarse. “Don’t let him bait you like that. It’s what he wants.”

“You stop!” Rutger shouted back. Then his face fell and he looked lost in a painful memory. “That was the worst three months of my life.”

Russel laughed out loud, a loud, mocking one that only made Rutger even more pissed off.

“You see?” Russel asked, looking at Lola. “What did I tell you? Tell these fools your name is Anna or Cassie or Alice or Chloie or whatever the hell else we came up with and they would’ve believed it. Well, would have if it hadn’t been for my father anyway.”

“You forget yourself, Russel,” Roland growled

“I forget nothing,” Russel shouted back. “What I did, I did because it was right. Lola doesn’t deserve to be killed. And I don’t give a fuck what the old man says.”

The four of them advanced on the pair, each one starting to stretch out their claws. Lola and Russel didn’t back up. They stood their ground against the brothers. But Lola wasn’t without her fears. There were four of them and they looked aggressive, nasty, and extremely willing to kill them.

Russel, as big a talker as he wanted his brothers to think he was, inside knew the cold truth.

There was no way they could stop them no matter how hard they fought. He hated to admit it but there didn’t seem to be a way out of this. All the hard-won struggles. The close brushes with death. Traversing the human kingdom when they were on the hunt for werewolves of any kingdom. All of that was about to be for nothing.

And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.