Four
Mind racing, hands a flimsy shield, I back away from Grayson. An automatic defense.
Another shudder rolls through him and he doubles over, the moon-mad wolf screeching out a cacophony of suffering. The desperate scrambling to remove the shallow poker from its eye yields nothing.
Grayson drops to his knees, his hands scrubbing through his hair, short black bristles of fur tearing through his skin.
Please.Come out.Now would be a great time to make an appearance.
No amount of pleading has ever coaxed my wolf to the surface before. Being moonlocked isn’t as bad as being moon-mad, is it?
“It’s fine.” A desperate laugh scrapes from my chest. “It’s going to be fine.”
The moon-mad wolf pulls free from the window clutching its skull, rotten blood seeping between its claws.
Grayson is here, solid and hurting. I met him after the first attack and since he hasn’t changed yet, the shift will suck, creeping and painful.
“You have to breathe through it. Don’t fight the shift. Your wolf will need you to be calm otherwise the pain is hard to manage. Stop the shift before it roots.”
It will be worse for him if he’d been changed by one of the cursed.
I keep those thoughts to myself.
Grayson opens his mouth but there are no words, only a guttural growl too similar to the syllables of my name to be mistaken for anything else.
“Grayson—”
His head snaps up at my approach and pupils narrow into slits. His shoulders hunch forward as bone snaps.
The cleaver. He lost his grip on it and it fell. Where is it?
Outside, the creature roars, half blind and clawing through the wood to make a larger hole to get inside the cabin.
Grayson jumps to his feet and whips around to face the creature. Grabbing the table near the side of the couch, he grips the legs, swinging it like a baseball bat.
It makes contact with a dull thunk that only enrages the creature.
Trapped.
We’re trapped with nowhere to go. The second I bolt, it will set them both off.
The wolf howls again and Grayson answers with a growl of his own. The hair on my arms bristles at the sound, low, guttural, rough. My guts slacken and the moon-mad beast jerks backward, blood-red nostrils flaring at the new scent in the air.
Grayson’s wolf.
It’s everywhere, pungent and demanding, a force in itself. I swallow a gasp.
Sweat and fear seep through my pores and coat my skin.
“Grayson, you have to stop fighting it. Your wolf is part of you. If you accept it, talk to it, you’ll be able to stop the change. There’s no danger,” I croon. “I can handle the moon-mad wolf.”
As long as I find the cleaver.
If Grayson actually goes through with the change, there isn’t a doubt in my mind. We’re all dead meat. The madness is real and he’s managed to hold it off this long. If he gives in tonight, the curse will take him.
I drop to my hands and knees, breathing shallow and stalling. The walls of the cabin close in around me as I scrape my hand under the couch to search for the weapon.
Shit.