And I amdone.
I’ve spent weeks being told how to behave around him. Now she’s doing it too. thinking she has power over him.
She’s wrong.
She’s moving toward him, confident, arrogant. Smug. Convinced that the only thing to be concerned about is standing in front of her.
She should have looked at me.
“You’re watching the wrong wolf, bitch.”
My dormant beast finally snaps the leash. I shift.
The transformation rips through me mid-stride. My wolf comes through fast, like something locked up too long that’s runout of patience. I hit four legs before Dr. Fell finishes moving. No growl. No howl. Just paws on wet asphalt and the momentum of a body built for taking down prey.
“Faith!” Creed yells.
She turns at the last second. Her hand still reaching for Rafael. Her mouth opening.
There’s a moment of raw, uncoordinated fury, and then I hit her at full speed.
She goes down hard, skull cracking against the asphalt. Her arms flail. I have her on her back before she can scream. My jaws close over her shoulder, and I tear.
That’s when she screams.
The suit rips. The skin gives. Muscle separates. Blood floods my mouth, hot, metallic. She tries to push me off, but her hands are soft and human, made for instruments and blades and the delicate work of carving into living flesh when it’s strapped down. They scrabble at my fur. I shake my head. Her shoulder dislocates with a wet pop. She screams again.
“No! Get… Get off!” she gasps.
I ignore her. My claws rake across her ribs. She arches. Another scream. I bite again, higher, near her throat. The skin tears in strips. Blood sprays across my muzzle, across the asphalt, across the white of her hair. She’s still fighting. Her legs kick. One hand catches my ear and twists. The pain is distant. Irrelevant.
I snap at her face, fangs sinking in. Blood pools in the hollow of her throat. One eye is still visible, wide. Something in it that isn’t cold or calculating.
Fear.
Good.
Her voice is coming out in wet, gurgling sobs, but I’m pretty sure I hear the word “Please.”
I step off.
I shift back. Naked. Bloody. The mountain cold slams into my bare skin. I turn my head and spit, lip curling in disgust.
Dr. Fell is alive. Her chest moves in shallow, jagged gasps. Her face is a ruin; cheek laid open, jaw visible through torn flesh, ear hanging by a thread of cartilage. Her throat is scored with claw marks, but the arteries are untouched. I didn’t kill her. But she’ll carry what I did for the rest of her life.
“Now you have scars too,” I tell her.
Behind me, Creed’s remaining SUVs haven’t moved. I turn.
Creed is standing beside his vehicle. Door open. Two operatives flank him. They’re watching me. They’re watching Rafael. They should. We’re both lethal.
Rafael is standing. Legs braced.
The fog is clearing from his eyes. He’s looking at the woman on the ground. The woman who haunted his nightmares. The voice that owned him. Lying on a wet road with her face torn open and her blood mixing with the rain. Small. Ordinary. Without her composure, she’s just a person who hurt him for a very long time.
He stands straighter. The power holds low and steady in him. His eyes find Creed’s across the gap.
Creed looks at his surviving operatives. A traumatized dragon who can barely stand. Men dragged back half-conscious. Others who just watched a wolf tear a researcher apart. He looks at the blood on the road. He looks at Rafael.
