It’s too late.
Whatever this last change triggered, there’s no coming back from it, there’s no saving either one of us. No matter what desperate final measures we’re prepared to take.
My forearm throbs and when I pull my hands away from Grayson’s face, I’ve left twin crimson handprints on his skin from holding him so tightly.
I force myself to sit up, to keep him close when he starts to shiver.
Whatever power in this godawful world brought us together, I want to hope it did so for a reason. Not just to give me a taste of tenderness, a tease of what life could be, then to yank it away.
What will I do if I lose him?
The thought is a spear of ice straight into my chest.
I pinch my eyes closed.It won’t come to that.
Suddenly Grayson jerks on my lap.
I glance down as his eyes pop open, the pupils narrowing into slits and his lips peeling up in a snarl. Any resolve I’d bolstered by sheer willpower disappears.
“Grayson?”
A curse falls dead on my lips when his spine arches, his body bucking and fur sprouting along his arms once more. Panic cuts sharp and painful between my ribs but my yell dissolves in his roar.
“Don’t!” someone yells.
The shift takes Grayson, but he’s not there, no hint of humanity left inside him. There’s only the wild animal now, trapped in the car with us and growing larger by the second. Limbs scrabble, claws digging into the seat, into my skin.
I shrink and curl myself into as small a ball as possible to protect my head. Grayson isn’t done. His body swells, muscles bulging, the wolf taking over and skin and fur flaking off him. Saliva drips and someone shouts.
My center of gravity lifts when the car swerves off the road. Tires bounce along the gravel-and-dirt incline into the short gulley separating asphalt from forest.
The bitter tang of blood fills the inside of the car. It coats my mouth and tongue, bile rising. We go up on two tires and the car shudders, spinning, metal grinding.
Then crunching.
We smash to a halt against the trunk of a tree, jolted forward from impact. Grayson scrambles into the front seat, his rear claws digging in for purchase. One claw catches my thigh and jams against bone, sending my heart into my throat.
I’ll remember his roar for the rest of my life, hear it in my head, in my dreams.
“Grayson—”
It’s his name in my voice. My legs go useless underneath me.
I slam my hand against the door, fumbling for the lock. Steam belches up from the crunched hood and I pull, the door finally swinging open.
Fresh air, my eardrums threatening to blow out, and pain screeching up from my thigh and into my skull.
I fall to my knees as my vision cuts in two. The roaring in my ears throws me off balance.
Glass crunches and something heavy thuds to the ground beside me. Heat rolling off Grayson threatens to turn me to ash and all I can do is scream as his weight collapses on top of me.
Black rings my vision and I almost give into it. I’m desperate to make it all stop.
Somehow despite the burn, I scramble free from him, my veins hardening. Dread solidifies around my heart and I turn on my back.
Grayson rises on two legs with his approach, his massive body balanced on muscular limbs tipped with wicked black claws. Red lips pull away from his canines.
Terror turns the world monochrome.