Page 46 of Oakheart

His hand wrapped around my throat, and I growled. My claws out, I raked them down his face. He howled, but his skin was already stitching back together.

It was damn hard for a werewolf to hurt another one of our kind. It had to be brutal, permanent, or it had to come from an alpha.

Marcus’s fist crashed into my ribs, and I swore I felt them break. It was a different kind of pain than the shift.

But they healed too. Just not in time for me to get my breath or bearings. I doubled over, and Marcus grabbed my hands and jerked them behind my back, hauling me upright. The room spun as Grant stepped into it.

“Where’s the girl?”

“The girl?” I echoed.

“You took Evie. Where is she? Why come this way? What are you up to?”

“He’s a traitor,” John sneered.

I bit my lip against the strangest urge to laugh. What the fuck I was up to was trying to keep my family safe, trying to survive, and in that moment, something broke in my mind, because it was all so wrong and ridiculous. Nothing was supposed to be like this.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

Grant breathed in deep. Evie’s scent was all over the room. There was no hiding it.

“You’re lying.”

I laughed then. It was bleak, but I couldn’t help it. “Of course I am, you halfwit dick, but you’re fooling yourself if you think I’m going to put what you want over what Evie needs, and what she needs is the fuck away from you.”

Behind me, Marcus was growling again. I could feel it rumbling through my back.

Grant? He didn’t react.

He stood there, contemplating me, for the space of a breath or two.

Then, his hand slashed out, and a sick slicing preceded the worst pain I’d felt in my life.

Cackling, Marcus let me go, and I toppled onto my knees, gripping my middle, sure I was touching parts of myself that shouldn’t ever be on the outside.

Grant crouched in front of me and I fell back against the end of the motel bed. He wiped his bloodied fingers clean on my shirt.

“I’ve got no need for traitors and liars, Cash, but you bet your ass I’ll find use for your girl.”

I wanted to shove up, stand, fight him off, but he turned away and my limbs weren’t—they weren’t responding to me. Not at all.

I sagged to the side, bracing my hand on the floor to try and push myself up, but the pain left me dizzy.

I was bleeding so much. How the fuck did I have this much blood in me?

Everything was hazy and chilled, the pain so deep it became all that I was.

I heard the sound of Marcus clearing his throat, thehauckof him spitting on me, but everything had gone cold and needly feeling, and the pain in my middle was overwhelming.

His spit didn’t register. It didn’t matter.

I was dying.

My last thought before the darkness at the edges of my vision spread across the whole field was that I should’ve given Evie the phone. I didn’t even think about it until Marcus was shoving me over, digging it out.

He held it up. “He’s got a phone.”

“I want the number,” Grant said. “And anybody he’s communicated with. Think he got one for the girl?”