Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
There’s a cell slash cage in front of me with three other people in it. Two men, both middle aged, dressed in camouflage. They look like hunters. Then there’s a woman in a short skirt with a tight bodice. She’s pretty. She’s also terrified. The men are angry. I am pushed into the cell with them and the door is shut and chained behind me.
We look out at the warehouse, which contains all sorts of things that would be really useful if they were inside the cell with us. Guns. Knives. Big containers that lock and unlock and probably contain other weapons. The wolves take themselves away to some other part of the warehouse to continue their murderous deliberations.
Meanwhile, in the cage, one of the men starts talking to me. He’s rough and angry and scared.
“You saw those fucking freaks? They shouldn’t exist. Have no fucking right to be walking this planet.”
“I don’t know, isn’t it kind of cool?” I keep my tone even. I’m not here to bond with the other inmates. I’m here to survive, and that starts with making the wolves think I am still somehow on their side. I assume they can hear us in here. It would be stupid to imagine we’re not under surveillance of some kind.
My response does, however, immediately piss the man who spoke right off. He turns on me with a vicious, beady-eyed stare. He smell like sour beer and hate. He can’t get to the wolves. He’s imprisoned. And he’s looking for someone to hurt. I’m available.
“Kind of cool to be an animal? You’re a wolf fucker, aren’t you. Just like the other girl. It won’t work out for you. They fuck you and then they put you in holding and then they kill you.”
“Uh. Okay.”
Those two sounds, not even words really, seem to enrage him entirely.
“Fucking bitch,” he curses.
He comes at me and grabs me by the throat. There’s not enough room to get out of the way before he takes hold of me. The cage is too small and I am too slow.
I feel his hatred flowing through his hands, squeezing the breath from me. I try to reach for my gun as he slams me back against the chain link of the cell cage, but I don’t get a chance because the wolves are already on it.
A wolf man comes over, throws the cell door open, grabs the hostile man out by his hair and in an instant there is more blood on the warehouse floor than I ever imagined seeing in my entire life. I’d like to scream, but I am frozen, and the lady in the cell is doing that for me to great effect and at very high volume.
I see the flash of a knife being wiped on the camo fabric of his clothing, and then it is gone.
He didn’t even bother shifting. There wasn’t even a point. He just slaughtered the guy like an animal. He slit his throat and ended it almost immediately.
It’s over.
Just like that. The wolf shifter who just saved me looks at me with a frown, as if I’m the problem and he had to solve it. I get the feeling it would be better if I did not become any more of a problem.
“Holy shit.” The other camouflaged man looks shocked. The girl is still shrieking. I stand still, horrified by what is playing out in front of me. I thought I was still alive because wolf shifters don’t actually kill people, but the man now being dragged away by his ankles, leaving a sanguine smear on the floor very much disabuses me of that idea.
Just an hour or so ago, all I wanted to know was that wolves were real. I wanted to know that my memories were indeed my memories, not the frightened fabrications of a child. Not a sickness. Not a mental illness. Something real.
Now it is far too fucking real.
“What’s going on here?” More wolves come to handle the situation. They look like generic bad guys. It’s not a good way to describe them, but it’s also the best way to describe them. They’ve all got short dark hair. They’re all wearing black jeans and dark jackets. They’ve all got mean expressions on their faces too, as if they’re being inconvenienced by having to imprison and kill us. Their leader is the biggest of them. His jacket is leather and his boots come up to his knees. He looks the most annoyed out of them all.
“Get rid of them. Except the one Gray’s been fucking,” the leader of this little group of very unkind wolves says.
The same guy who just cut the other man’s throat comes back to the cage. He looks at me, then he looks at the other lady. He’s confused.
“Which one of you has been used by Gray?”