Page 168 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

The course had smelled like leaves and salt a minute ago. Now it smelled like animal breath, churned dirt, and blood.

Mine.

A second wolf stepped out ahead of me. This one moved slowly, shoulders rolling under dark fur, moonlight catching along its wet teeth. The first wolf paced behind me, blocking the gap. The second lowered its head and made a soft, almost pleased sound.

Then a third appeared on top of the wall. It was pale gray, too thin, with ribs showing through its coat and one torn ear folded against its skull. It watched me with an intelligence that made my stomach turn. Not animal. Not human. Something worse than both.

I reached for the whistle in my pocket. The gray wolf dropped from the wall.

I blew once before it hit me.

The sound shrieked through the course, cut off when the wolf’s weight drove me into the stones. Pain burst through my side. Its claws dragged across my ribs, not deep enough to open me completely, but deep enough that my shirt went hot and wet. The whistle flew from my hand. I tried to crawl after it and got exactly one foot before the first wolf caught my ankle in its teeth.

I screamed.

The bite didn’t sink in fully because my shoe took most of it, but pressure clamped around my foot with horrible patience. The wolf pulled me backward, dragging me over stone. My nails broke against the ground. Dirt filled my mouth. I kicked with my other leg, connecting with its muzzle, and the wolf shook me once hard enough that my knee cracked against rock.

The world narrowed to teeth.

Not metaphorical teeth.

Real teeth. Teeth in my shoe. Teeth near my throat. Teeth in the dark.

The second wolf shifted. I saw it happen from the ground, and some part of me went cold and far away. Bones stretched. Fur crawled back under skin in patches. Hands split out of paws. The face changed last, not into a man but into a long-jawed mockery of one. His mouth stayed wrong. Too wide. Too full.

He crouched in front of me, blocking what little light the moon gave.

“False mate,” he said.

His voice sounded like meat trying to speak.

I grabbed a rock and hit him in the face with it.

He blinked then he smiled. One of his teeth was loose where the rock had struck him. It hung crooked in blood.

“Mercy kill,” he said.

I wanted to say something clever. I wanted to say something sharp enough that if I died, at least my last words would have good structure.

What came out was breath.

The half-shifted wolf caught my throat in one clawed hand and pinned me against the stone. Not choking yet, just showing me he could. His thumb pressed under my jaw, forcing my head back. The gray wolf’s teeth scraped my injured side, worrying at the torn fabric like it wanted to find the softest place to open me. The first wolf still had my ankle.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t even reach the bond because terror had filled everything.

Then the half-shifted wolf leaned close and inhaled at the bite on my shoulder.

His mouth twisted.

“Wrong,” he whispered.

The word hit worse than the claws.

Wrong.

Wrong woman. Wrong body. Wrong place. Wrong to live. Wrong to want. Wrong to be chosen.

Something in me, meaner than fear, lifted its head.