Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71067 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71067 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
“She punched a car!”
“She what? She went feral in the street?” I hear Laura say. She puts the phone back up to her face. “Sorry. I gotta go. Come to the warehouse if you want. Or don’t. Whatever. Bye.”
She hangs up on me.
I look at the phone for a brief moment, then make a decision.
“Gentlemen, I have to go. We can continue these negotiations later.”
The negotiator across the table from me blanches. There’s a notable shuffle of consternation from several parties. “We’re on the verge of deciding the fate of billions of dollars and thousands of workers, Mr. Regent.”
“Yes, we are. All the more reason not to rush anything,” I say, already walking. “Reschedule with Fescue, please.”
* * *
Nicky
My boys have me pinned down. Tom is sitting on me, blocking blows as I swing at him and tell him to get the hell off me.
“No, boss. I’m sorry,” he says. “If I let you go, you’re gonna go feral.”
“I’m not gonna go feral,” I say. “Let me up. I’ll be normal.”
“You punched a car. And now you’re punching me with a broken hand. You’re doing everything but foaming at the mouth, boss.”
He has a point. My hand does hurt, now that he mentions it. But there’s too much else going on in my body to notice. I do not feel like my usual self. I feel like a much more heightened, angry, horny version of myself.
This is what coming into my feminine self is like, apparently. I can only imagine how terrible I will be if I stop fighting it. If I let myself fall into my wolf form, I will never be the same.
They got me back to the warehouse by carrying me, and they’re trying to convince me to go and see a doctor, but I don’t want to see a doctor, and also how can I do that when they’re sitting on me?
Then something happens that makes me go absolutely still.
I scent something that shouldn’t be possible.
“Rex Regent is in this fucking building, isn’t he?”
I stop trying to cuff Tom off me and look around for whoever told on me. There’s no immediate reply. Maybe they don’t know. Maybe I haven’t been betrayed as thoroughly as I suspect I have been betrayed.
“Fuck! What’s he doing here?”
“Well,” Laura says. “Technically I called him.”
“Why would you do that?”
She gives me the kind of look only someone who is your very best friend in the whole world can give you. It’s a look that says, you’re crazy, and I love you, but you cannot keep being crazy.
This is not fair. The hormone storm Rex unleashed in me is taking over my body and my mind. I’m still fighting it, because goddamn, I will not be controlled by a man, or a relationship.
I’m still being sat on as he stalks into the room.
“Up,” he says to Tom, giving him a short, curt order that is immediately obeyed.
I scramble up, breathing heavily. It feels like I’ve been fighting for hours. I’m tired. I’m wired. I’m angry. I’m so many things, and none of them cast me in a particularly flattering light.
“What are you doing here?” I snap the question at him.
“I heard you’ve been naughty,” he says, looking down at me with those piercing eyes. “I heard you’ve been acting out.”
“I’ve heard nothing about you,” I rejoin.
He snorts under his breath with amusement. “You’re cute when you’re being driven mad by the need to shift and your own need to resist nature,” he says. “Why are you fighting this? Why are you fighting me? You know we mated. You know that events are destined to unfurl because of that. You are making your life hard for no good reason.”
“I don’t have to tell you my reasons for anything.”
“You don’t have to, but I do have ways of making you talk,” he says. “But first, you are going to see my pack doctor.”
“No, I’m not. I’m not sick.”
“Your hand looks like it’s been hit with a meat tenderizer,” he says.
“Actually, it was a Honda Accord.”
He does not laugh. Doesn’t even smile. “I let you have your way,” he says. “I let you run off and set yourself apart from me, because I believed in letting you choose. All you’ve done is run off and resist your very nature. If you won’t talk to me, fine. But you are coming with me. That is an order.”
I knew that one day I’d have to deal with this. I knew that one day, the impulse to be animal would overcome me and I’d turn into a monstrous creature and do things I have no control over. I knew when I fucked him that I’d have to fight this. But I also know that you can fight the shift. Every time it tries to come over me, I push it away. It’s working.