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)
“What do you want?”
“We need to talk,” he says.
“We really don’t.”
The bed sinks as he sits down anyway. Whatever. It’s his bed. He can do what he likes. Suffice to say, I am angry with him. It’s fundamental to animal nature that a trapped creature is going to try to escape. So I tried to get my pack to steal me a car. So what. Anybody in my position would do the same.
“I want you to tell me what happened when you were fourteen,” he says.
Every single hair on my body stands on end, as a fear so intense and so nameless I can barely contemplate it runs through me.
“You’ve been stalking me,” I say.
“I’ve been trying to understand why you’re so scared, so angry, and so afraid. Now I know something happened when you were younger. You don’t have to tell me about it, but I’d like you to. I want to know you. I haven’t been doing a good job of that.”
“Really? Pinning me down, fucking me, and keeping me captive isn’t a good way to get to know me?”
He leans over me, putting one long, strong arm by one side of my head, boxing me in with his body as he looks down at me with a gaze so piercing it makes me want to cover my eyes.
“I know I’ve made mistakes with you,” he says. “I’m going to try to not do that as much.”
“Then ask me about something else. Ask me what my favorite food is. Ask me what my favorite color is. Don’t try to force me into disclosing the worst thing that ever happened to me that I can’t even remember.”
His expression softens.
“I have skipped a lot of steps with you,” he murmurs down at me, using his free hand to brush my hair out of my eyes. I liked it there. It gave me some protection from his inexorable inspection.
“What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?”
“My father used to kill people.”
His head jerks back slightly. “Is that one of the limited edition ones, or…”
I laugh. I didn’t mean to tell him that. I didn’t want to tell him anything. But I guess, eventually, the truth wants to be told.
“Do you want to tell me about him?”
“No,” I say. “Chocolate.”
“We are going to go and get some chocolate ice cream and we’re just going to talk like people,” he says, sitting back and pulling me up with him.
“What makes you think I want to eat ice cream with you? You put me here, under guard. You made me a captive. And you think you can come in here, remember that the past exists, and make it all better with ice cream?”
I pull back from him and sit up, knees raised defensively.
I am starting to think I should show him what the fuck he has been messing with. I have tried so hard to contain myself. To stop the shift. I tried to leave. But he wouldn’t let me go, and he is going to keep mating me and eventually this is all going to end in blood.
Why not now? Why not take the form he wants me to take so badly and just let nature take its course?
He looks at me, and something sparks between us. He can feel parts of me that are hidden to most. I think he might be able to feel the wild thing inside me shifting.
“Don’t,” he says softly.
“Why not?”
“No wolves on beds. It’s a pack rule,” he says.
“The bed would be the least of your worries,” I say.
He cocks his head at me, and a smile plays around the corners of his mouth.
“Are you threatening me?”
“You know I am.”
He laughs.
“You are so adorable. You haven’t taken your wolf form while conscious yet, but you think you are going to be, what, un-handle-able?”
I want to wipe that fucking smirk off his face. He really has no respect, no understanding of what I truly am. He really thinks I am just a female wolf who could never truly cross him.
Fuck. Him.
* * *
Rex
I’ve never seen anybody shift that fast. Nicky bursts out of her skin and into wolf form in less than a second. The process is explosive. One moment she is glowering over her knees at me, the next she is hurling herself at me in full wolf form. Her jaws close around my throat and she has me pinned against the bed for a dangerous moment in which neither I have time to respond, nor any of the guards have the notion that something is wrong.
She could kill me in that moment. It would be easy. This is the first time with her in conscious control of her wolf form and I know she will be operating almost entirely on instinct.
I shift as fast as I can, taking on my much larger, more powerful form. I roll onto my back, push her with both front paws and get her off me, then up and over onto my feet because now I need to subdue her.