AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She thought of Declan, his love, his family, her sisters, and her parents as she slammed the old lock upward with her palm. It clinked upward, leaving an indent in her wrist that would surely bruise.
Taryn wrapped her fingers around the edges of the door, nearly ripping it off its hinges and letting it thud against the wall. Something tumultuous roiled inside her that she couldn’t quite define. A feeling that didn’t have a word. A blend of fear, fury, and a hurricane of protective love.
Taryn forced her legs forward, and her muscles strained as she moved as quickly as her injured body would allow.My head feels like it’s about to fall off my neck,she thought with a groan.
What looked like a dilapidated building crumbled around her. She trailed down rickety stairs and saw the light of the moon seeping from under a doorway. She sprinted for it, but Phillip was waiting.
“Oh no, you don’t!”
He launched himself at her in human form, snaking his long arms around her waist and forcing her to the ground face first. It had the same slimy, gritty feeling as the dungeon she had been locked in. Taryn not only felt it as her forehead collided with the dirt but also tasted it, along with the metallic taste of blood trickling from her nostrils.
That was when something happened. Something Taryn had not foreseen but maybe should have.
Something both monstrous and beautiful. Taryn had felt glimpses of it before in her young life … moments in the garden back home when her parents grounded her for sneaking out, the desire to toss dirt in their faces overwhelming. It was just anger, but a righteous kind. She had accepted it as teenage angst back then, but while she lay on the ground with Phillip’s grimy arms sliding down past her waist to assault her, she knew that it was much more powerful than anguish.
Her wolf had finally come out to play. It surged through her body like lightning, pain ravaging her in the form of cracking bones in her jaw, limbs, pelvis, and even fingernails. She watched as golden fur sprouted from her skin as seething rage and hatred tinged her vision with streaks of crimson.
There was a sprinkle of satisfaction behind it all, of course, because Taryn, along with her sisters, had always felt cursed in some capacity. She opened her mouth while her eyes widened, her body stretching in length and height. An agonizing howl tore out of her mouth, rising from the very depths of her soul.
Her vision had gone black from both the rapture and shock of finally being able to shift.
It was something that most of her kind were taught to soothe and tame at a very young age. She was like an unhinged pup, taking Phillip’s leg in her teeth and snapping it like it was a twig.
Phillip’s screams of horror and pain filled the space they were in. Blood spurted from his leg like a fountain. Taryn couldn’t help but take sick pleasure from his agony, although she wasn’t entirely conscious of what she was doing.
Because the wolf is in charge.
She tightened the grip of her teeth around his leg and shook her head furiously side-to-side.
Taryn was sure he saw his death as his body went limp.
“Taryn, no!”
She rose onto all fours, flinging him about, enjoying the vise grip of her newly acquired fangs. The textures in her mouth were interesting. She had bitten down to the bone through clothing, flesh, fat, and muscles.
The blood has the most interesting taste.
His squeals had reached a deafening pitch, and she flung him to the side, sending him crashing into the stone wall, where his body went limp. That was when reality truly set in for her.
She gazed down at her blood-stained fur, still feeling the acute craving for violence, but she was unsure how to handle it. All of her thoughts were a jumble in her mind, mixing in dazzling arrays of shades and emotions.
Taryn saw what she had done and retreated out the front door, smashing through the flimsy wood and into the night air. She didn’t know where she was going, unable to navigate in such a state of mind. She drooled and whimpered in fear, wishing for Declan as she found her way into a thicket of forest nearby.
TWENTY-EIGHT
DECLAN
It was nearly four in the morning when Declan climbed into his car and sped out of the palace grounds. He instructed his emergency guards to fan out across the kingdom while he drove to a location he had long ago banished from his mind.
It was a place he had not wanted to remember.
There was a benefit to having known Phillip since they were children. Their friendship had blossomed despite Phillip and his family living in the gallows of poverty while he thrived under privilege. It allowed him to see from a different point of view, which encouraged him to aid the less fortunate throughout his reign.
But Phillip had a dark side that Declan had perhaps ignored until it was too late.
On the outskirts of the kingdom were the crumbling bones of a previous era. Places that were now calledinstitutionsbut were asylums for the insane.
Declan had ordered them destroyed very early on while under the crown, but all that had done was strip them of their royal protection. They became shelters for the homeless, rogue shifters, outcasts, and travelers searching for a haven.
