I fling up a hand as if it could possibly ward him off. “Don’t! Get the fuck away from me.”
Rage and terror and sheer confusion are swirling within me. And beneath it all, my wolf, pulling toward him.
No. No, that’s not going to happen. Not now. Not ever.
I turn and run.
Not as a wolf. I can’t shift. My body is too far gone for the control it takes, every muscle shaking, the bite throbbing, the unwanted connection screaming. Besides, if I become the wolf,she might turn back to him. I run barefoot through the trees, branches whipping my arms, stones slicing my feet. The blood from the bite has reached my breast, warm and ticklish, a line of evidence running down my body.
My wolf strains backward with every step. The pull is savage. Running from him feels like tearing stitches out of a wound — each stride ripping something my body is trying to hold together.
I’m sobbing when I reach the truck. Great choking gasping sounds that rack my entire body. My claws are still out. I grip the tailgate and hang there, bent double, breathing through my teeth until the nails retract enough to work the door handle. Spare clothes behind the seat. I drag them on. The shirt sticks to the blood on my shoulder.
Engine. Road. Go. Fucking go!
I start the engine, slam my foot on the gas, and hurtle out of there, tires spitting gravel as I put distance between us. But I can feel him. Still in the clearing. Standing where I left him. The fangs retracting. The wolf receding, but not gone. He’s satisfied, settled, certain in a way the man is not.
But I don’t care about that. He’s not my fucking problem. My wolf just demolished the only thing I ever trusted about myself.
I drive north. Ravenclaw is ten hours away. I wish it were further. To put more distance between us.
I drive like the devil’s on my tail. Because maybe he is.
Chapter 8
Garrett
Her blood is on my teeth. I run my tongue along the inside of my lip, and there it is — iron, salt, and something that belongs to her and only her. I want to spit to get rid of the taste. But I don’t.
Four red lines run from my collarbone to the bottom of my ribs. They’re still open. Little beads standing up along each furrow like she signed her name on me in Braille. I press my thumb against the lowest one and the pain sings back up my arm, clean and specific.
My wolf hums.
That’s the word for it. A low, pleased sound in the base of my skull.
Good.She marked us back. Not a bite, but still good.
I close my eyes. Count to five. Open them.
The clearing hasn’t moved. Everything is just as it was when I burst through the trees. I can see the ground where she stood.Grass flattened in the shape of her foot. Another flattened patch where she went to her knees when—
Don’t.
I turn my head. Look anywhere else. The moon. The trees. The dark line of the ridge.
My jaw aches. I lift a hand to it and work the hinge with two fingers. Something pops back into place that shouldn’t have been out, and the last of the fangs slide up into my gums with a slow grinding burn that feels like teething in reverse. That part — that part’s mine. I recognize that pain. Shifters know the shape of their own body hurting.
The rest of me is a stranger’s.
I stand there until my hands stop shaking. They take their time.
“Alpha controls the animal.”
My father’s voice. Maybe twenty years ago. The kitchen, the smell of bacon, his hand on the back of my neck, firm enough to mean it.“You hear me, Garrett? A man who can’t hold his wolf is no kind of man at all.”
Yes, sir.
I saidyes, sirfor twenty years. I said it with my spine and my shoulders every morning of my life. I said it when I took the alpha seat, and everybody in the big room went quiet and watched to see if I’d flinch.