Page 16 of Rabid
The mongrel is smaller than Burke’s animal with a light gray coat and hints of red around his muzzle. Recognition fires through me, and my wolf releases Burke’s throat at the last second as Seamus barrels into her. She turns and sinks her canines into his shoulder, forcing him back into a tree, overpowering him so easily that it sends a shockwave through me.
He throws his head back to yelp in pain, and she pounces on the opportunity. Salty blood tries to drown me as she tears into him. Seamus doesn’t even have time to yip and squeal in pain before she rips the front of his throat from his body.
Just like that, he’s dead.
She drops the meat of his neck and then picks up his body, tossing it away like the garbage it is. She turns to find Burke again. He’s hurt and unmoving, but the second she takes a step, she stumbles. My beast’s body is suddenly heavy and uncoordinated, and she shakes her head to clear the daze filling our vision while trying to stay upright. In my head, I know that someone shot us. I can feel the tranquilizer coursing through our adrenaline-fueled veins, but we’re only focused on the threats.
Shadowy figures surround us, and my wolf bares her teeth in a livid growl. She leaps at one of them, teeth sinking into skin with no fur. The man screams, but we’re hit from the side by a different pack monster in fur. We go down, but when my beast tries to get up, her legs no longer work. She rages, growling and snapping at anything that gets too close.
A completely feral sensation overtakes us, tainted with helplessness. No one tries to get close as the man and wolf scramble away. Everyone just stands around like weaklings with their tails tucked between their legs as they wait for the drugs they darted us with to render us unconscious.
My wolf and I try to fight it, but our vision tunnels and everything inside of us goes numb. We bite back a whimper that wants to escape, refusing to show any sign of weakness, even though fear spikes in us. I don’t know if we’ll wake up or if they’ll kill us in our forced sleep, but I feel sick satisfaction that she at least took one of them with us and fucked up Burke.
My vision splinters, everything around me doubling. My wolf and I both look out at the pack that failed us, at the alpha somewhere in the shadows who betrayed us.
And then, everything around us blurs and blinks to nothing.
Chapter Six
Iwake up with claws and fangs.
My dry eyes peel open and focus on a cold, concrete floor. There is no forgetfulness, no struggle to remember what happened. I wake up as though I’d only just blinked, my consciousness snapping to immediate awareness.
I take stock of my sore and chilled body, trying to let my senses tell me where we are. I smell blood and dirt and bleach. Gooseflesh covers my body nearly as much as bruises do. I try to look around, but my vision bends, nauseatingly so, and I realize that my wolf isright herewith me. I’m not shifted into my wolf, but when I look down at my naked body, I see hooked claws in place of my human fingers and feel elongated canines in my copper-tasting mouth.
The rest of me feels normal, but when I attempt to pick up my head, my vision roils again, like I’m standing on a boat in the middle of a storm. Realization strikes me that we’re both looking out of my eyes, trying to claim control over my sight. She grapples with one eye while I hook onto the other, and it’s so disorienting that I have to squeeze them shut, have to breathe out a shaken breath as a wash of seasickness sways me.
“She’s awake!”
The shout has us springing our eyes open, which only pitches us into horrible dizziness. It doesn’t pass until a pair of feet are standing in front of us, and the scent of that overly ripe, rotten fruit invades the air.
“Shift.”
The alpha order washes over me. I can feel the potency of it as it licks across my skin, but shockingly, the power doesn’t sink into me and force me to follow it. I try to look up at Burke, but this double spirit vision that’s happening is disorienting. I reach out to my anxious wolf, soothing her and reassuring her that we’re one. I ask her to give me control, but she’s wary. I make it clear that if she senses anything and needs to step forward to protect us, I won’t fight her, not like I did before.
Burke snarls above me, bellowing, “Shift,” with even more authority than before. My wolf and I ignore the command, which is something we shouldn’t even be able to do, but with a warm sensation and a small nip of warning, she backs off and gives me control.
In a painful yank, my half-shifted state retreats inside of me, my animal crouching down in wait. My claws disappear and my fangs recede, and luckily, my vision settles back to normal as she pulls away from my eyes too. I roll my sore body up to a sitting position, wrapping my arms around my knees protectively to shield my naked body as I look up at the malignant alpha.
I want to kill him, I want to taste his blood on my lips and teeth as it rushes out of him and cools on the ground. I look from him to his back up, incensed that they would lend their muscle to execute this weakling’s orders. My wolf and I can’t beat them all, but maybe if we time this just right, we won’t have to.
My glare finds Burke’s cruel black eyes, and he stares down at me with venom dripping from every plane of his face. Dark satisfaction spills through me as I take in the face Burke is so proud of and the claw marks now running down it. His neck is also bandaged, and I suspect that’s not the only wound that had to be dressed, based on the lumpy bits beneath his T-shirt. “You are going to regret attacking me,” he promises, standing over me like some angry god with little man syndrome.
My wolf paces inside me, but I work to calm her, asking that she trust me. As much as I’d love to give her control, we need to be smart about this. We’re only going to get so many chances to rip out this fucker’s throat, and we need to make it count. They didn’t kill us, so there must be some form of a plan happening, and I need to be lucid enough to know what it is so we can make it work for us. Thankfully, she backs off, and I send her my gratitude as I focus back on Burke with every ounce of hate I possess.
“You’re going to regret killing my mother and not finishing me when you had the chance,” I bite back, working hard to tamp down on the almost overwhelming desire to paint the room with the blood of every wolf standing in here.
For a second, he just stares at me, and then quicker than I can stop, he sends a kick into my ribs.
I cry out in both fury and pain as my body slams to the side, falling into a concrete block wall that I realize makes up the entirety of this ten-by-ten room. He steps on my hand, pressing my splayed fingers against the hard floor, putting all his weight on it until I’m sure every bone is going to snap.
“Watch your fucking mouth. I am youralpha!”
“You’re a fucking coward,” I toss back, yanking my hand away and cradling it against my chest. “A male with no honor. You killed my old alpha with trickery, and you tucked tail and ran from a fight with me.”
He kneels down in front of me and clutches the hair at my left temple, yanking my head to the side so far I worry he’ll snap my neck right here and now. My wolf surges, and this time I don’t stop her. We snap for Burke’s neck, faster than a bolt of lightning, teeth sinking into cotton as a ferocious snarl tears from our throat. Just as fast, wolves are ripping us away from him. The smell of blood fills the room as they punch, stomp, and kick us until all we can do is cover our head and take it.
Slowly, like the trickle of an ending storm, the attack stops. The smell of testosterone and rage is an acrid tang now mixing with the tinge of my blood that coats not only me, but spatters the floor, walls, and wolves all around me.
