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“You have to trust us, Charlie,” Levi said, moving even closer. “Let her out.”
No. I can’t. “She’ll destroy everything…everyone.” I didn’t mean to say those words out loud, but they slipped past my clenched jaw.
My beast snarled. I snarled back. She’d never been part of me, never one with my goals, my life.
I forced myself to stand, moving past the pain of Kane’s punch and faced off with him again.
I took a swing to fake him out then swept my legs to knock him down. His calves were like steel beams, but I used a partial shift to put some extra power into the move. He staggered back with a yell. As I went for another kick to take him down, white-hot pain seared into my thigh.
Johnny’s claws ripped a gorge along my flesh. I was so shocked that I dropped to my knees then let out a scream full of fury.
My beast rushed me. She pulled me back and threw herself in front. My body transformed in an instant. Fur, fangs, bulk, my frame distorted as she took up more space than I ever could. Her rage blinded me, so I was in the dark, closed off from her awareness, not knowing what she’d do next other than obliterate everything in her way.
“Charlie,” a familiar voice echoed in the darkness. “Charlie, Charrrrrlieeeee.”
I turned, spinning on an axis I could only feel, searching for the source of the sound.
Panic clenched at my throat, making it close, my heart thundering in my ears. I was surrounded by shadows, lost to the darkness. I was desperate to see something, to know what was going on outside myself, where my beast was raging. She’d never blocked me out like this before. I’d never felt so helpless.
“Charlie…” The voice sounded distant. “Call us in.”
“Levi?” I moved toward him, tangled in the opaque web of my mind.
“Call us in, now,” Kane roared. “You have to. Do. It.”
“I don’t know how,” I screamed, my voice ripped away from me, swallowed by the darkness. Not during chaos. Not like this.
I was flooded with fear, anger, uncertainty, helplessness, so many emotions battering me, urging me to curl up, to hide away—to close my eyes and accept the destruction that she was doing.
I had no control. I had no idea how to pull her back. This was a bad idea.
Terrible.
People would die.
A flash of light so blinding it was painful opened a window outside myself. I squinted, shielded my eyes and saw…Kane bleeding, his furious expression enough to tell me how the fight was going. Johnny, still in his wolf form, was dancing around her, going in for nips and scratches but favoring his left side. Levi was shouting, desperation in his eyes, along with pain. She was going to kill them. She was going to destroy any possibility for me to have a life…
A life with these men.
Not bonded. Not mated. Not bitten. She didn’t get to take away the chance I had to be part of a pack, equal footing, arm in arm. She couldn’t take away the chance for revenge. My mother, the females that Sal had cut down, they deserved retribution.
I didn’t understand my beast. I didn’t know why she was the way she was—why I was the way I was. But I knew I’d had enough.
“Stop!” I roared. Then, on instinct, I reached out and gathered all the inky darkness around me. I tugged and yanked, pulling all the threads close before I threw it out again as a web, just like I did with the pack, tossing wildly, hoping to catch all three males in the threads of my mind.
The battle froze. My werebeast halted her attack. There was silence…but not peace. My werebeast was stunned, unsure of what was happening, but she wasn’t in my control, not yet, and her rage burned bright, muted only by the strands of the web that had fallen on her.
It wasn’t enough.
“Charlie, we’re here.” Levi’s voice infiltrated my awareness. I could see him in the shadows, moving around me, wisps of a solid form. I tried to turn but found I was rooted in place.
“Picture the threads moving closer, cocooning you, Charlie.” He brushed against me, and there was light attached to him rather than dark. It stuck to me, too, pulsing to the beat of my heart.
The shadows sparked with bright colors—reds, yellows, purples shooting off in all directions. One was attached to a shadow Kane and one to Johnny, still in his wolf form, as they stepped out of the darkness.
They circled me, moving closer. My beast tried to tear at the threads attached to her, her bloodlust still pumping wickedly through our body.
“Pull her to you.” Levi ran fingers along my cheek as he passed me, infusing me with warmth. “Call her into your embrace. Force her there, if necessary.”
