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)
But she is not trying to fight me anymore. She has instead pointed all her animal force at the glass windows. She leaps and crashes through the safety glass, which is not reinforced nearly enough to survive the weight and momentum of her.
It shatters into a million pieces and she is gone through the barrier. I follow as fast as I can, and the guards flow into their wolf forms at the same time. In under a minute, we have gone from sitting around calmly discussing the events of the past, to an all-out hunt of my mate.
She runs as if her life depends on it, heading straight for the road. She is going to make her escape one way or another. She’s faster than I imagined possible. Her ginger form shines gold in afternoon light through the dappled spaces between leaves.
Just as we are about to overhaul her, snapping at her paws and hinds in the effort to try to turn her away from the road, three wolves come out of the undergrowth, tossing themselves at us in what amounts to a very half-hearted assault.
It’s a distraction, of course.
I know exactly who they are. Three rangy, long-legged, generally patchy looking creatures put themselves in the way. They’re young. They’re not conditioned to shift, and they’re not functioning as anything much more or less than a roadblock.
It’s enough to give Nicky a chance to get away. She outpaces us as we are tangled in a mass of limbs and teeth and by the time we are able to disengage, she is gone.
I shift back into my human form. By this time, the young men from her pack have been subdued.
“Get the helicopter,” I order my men. “And put those three in the deepest dungeon we have.”
* * *
Nicky
I’m out. I’m free. I’ve got everything I need. Finally, after years of repressing what I really am, every part of me feels complete and correct. I run for longer than I knew was possible. Four legs propel me a very long way, far from the territory that is clearly owned by my wolf mate.
I know I’m not going to be able to run forever, but fortunately people pull over from time to time and when I find a truck parked on the side of the road, I jump in the back of the pickup and nuzzle my way under a tarp. I don’t know where it is going, but I do know that it is going away from wherever I came from.
The driver must have been peeing in the woods, because he comes back a couple of minutes later and he drives off and takes me with him. I know Rex is coming after me, and I know he won’t stop hunting until he finds me, but I think fortune is on my side. It favors the bold, and everything I have done is bold.
* * *
Fate keeps working for me. The truck pulls in for gas and I hear a helicopter going overhead. Rex’s, I bet. My animal brain doesn’t have a good model for helicopter surveillance, but it does understand being seen from the sky.
It is hard to hold everything at once, but I know when I am hidden and when I am exposed, and right now I am hidden.
But I am also hungry. The energy required to keep this wolf form is much more than to keep a human going. My stomach is growling. I leave the shelter of the truck and I hide away near the gas station.
When night falls, I prowl in the dark, following my nose until I find a big metal bin full of discarded donuts. I eat each and every one of them. They are delicious. Then I slink away from the human smelling place, out into the wilderness.
There is still some human in my head. Not a lot. Not enough to read, but enough to think. I was so afraid to be animal, but it is actually a comfort, I discover. There is so much less to worry about. Once I am fed, all my concerns disappear. I find a cozy hollow beneath some bushes, curl up, and sleep.
* * *
I wake up freezing. It’s so cold it feels like the cold has made its way past fat and flesh and all the way into my bones. The thoughts are back, dozens upon dozens of them skittering about my brain. I’d forgotten how noisy my head was.
I am not a wolf anymore. I am a naked human woman a few hundred feet away from a highway truck stop and gas station. I know immediately that I have fucked up.
Then everything gets worse.
A warm stream of something borderline unmentionable comes arcing through the frigid morning air. I have to leap out of the bush to avoid being covered in it, giving both myself and the trucker relieving himself a huge fright as we come face to face with each other.