Page 41 of Rabid
A curved swipe at his face is deflected before I can land the blow, and my claws catch into the wall instead. I make them retract, replaced by only my fingernails, but he grabs my other arm, wrenching it behind my back and spinning me around until my back is against his chest. “Submit.”
“Fuck you!” I spit.
He pulls me against him harder, and I can feel his erection against my ass, but even my wolf doesn’t get sidetracked. She’s infuriated, nose still clogged with the scents of all the faceless females that he left for us to find.
With my free hand, I reach up and fist his hair, yanking on it as hard as I can.
He growls and shoves me away, and I aim a kick at his balls. Unfortunately, he manages to grab my leg before I can deliver the blow, and he bends back my foot, making me hiss in pain. “You need to calm the fuck down and learn better control. Go for a damn run.”
I hear the words, but I don’t comprehend their meaning. Instead, my teeth snap at him, hands once more taking swipes. I’m so lost to the rage that my eyes are burning bright, fur popping up along the length of my arms.
“Shift and run,” he orders.
I close my eyes as my wolf batters inside of me, trying to break free, but I don’t want her to yet. I want to punch and shove and scream at him, I want to fling horrible words, because I feel horrible inside. There’s this horrible, gnawingwrongnessthat won’t stop screaming in my skull, and I just need...I need...
“Shift!”
My spirit cracks open.
This shift isn’t easy. It isn’t peaceful. Unlike my mom when her wolf spirit took over, there’s certainly nosmiling.
There is only agony. It’s physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. We cry out, my wolf and I, for every hurt that keeps clawing us apart, that’s ripped a line down our joining and shoved a jagged fragment in our eyes.
When the shift is complete, my wolf staggers to her feet, feeling bruised and battered all over. But the fury is still there, mouth drooling with the insatiable need to attack, to taste blood. The savagery is all-consuming, just as much as the soul-deep sorrow.
Tyran stands over her, looking not at all concerned by her bared teeth and snarling lips. After a moment of simply watching, he seems to make a decision and shoves off his pants. The next second, he bursts into his huge wolf form as effortlessly as breathing.
It doesn’t matter that he’s bigger or that alpha power radiates off his dark brown form. Nope, my wolf doesn’t give a fuck about anything other than her anger and the need to punish him for disrespecting us. She lunges for him the moment he’s fully shifted.
He takes her down in an instant, knocking her feet right out from under her. Before she can even get back up, he turns and runs out of the room. Furious, she bolts after him, following his every step. His longer legs ensure he stays two steps ahead so she can’t take a bite out of him.
He leads her directly out of the house through a back door open to the lake and mountains beyond. The fresh air hitting our lungs begins to clear our nose and mouth of the horrible cloying scents of the other females. Our eyes tunnel, legs putting on a burst of speed, as we follow the male taunting us with hiscome and get itlook over his shoulder.
And then, werun.
Chapter Fourteen
Crisp mountain air breezes through our fur as we fly past trees, over boulders, and skirt tiny streams. All I can hear is the panting of my wolf, our paws as they hit the dirt, and the wrath pounding in our heart. Tyran runs ahead of us, outpacing us no matter how hard we push to catch him.
We’re powerful, a force to be reckoned with, and yet we can’t seem to sink our teeth into him regardless of how much he deserves it. New smells and sensations dance in our periphery, begging me and my wolf to veer off and check them out. But we can’t be swayed, we’re single-minded in our need to hunt and hurt the male running two lengths in front of us.
The espresso brown wolf looks over his shoulder, once again checking that we’re still on his trail. It’s insulting at this point, as though we’re too weak to follow where he wants to lead. Every time he looks over at us, it just drives us even harder. We feel like a steam locomotive, but instead of being powered by coal, we’re powered by hate and abhorrence and the need for blood.
We chug along after the asshole alpha, unable to catch him but also refusing to stop trying. We fly past the mountain’s timber line, the soil lighter and less rich, the air thinner, forcing our lungs and our body to work even harder. We push and pant over rocky terrain, our sights fixed on the pain we want to mete out at the first opportunity.
We run for a long, long time.
I don’t know where Tyran’s wolf is going, but we chase unwaveringly, our muscles and effort spending our anger faster than we can create it. Then, the brown wolf lifts his nose as though he’s chasing a scent, sharply turning left and taking us further up the mountain. We catch the hint of something too, but we can’t identify what it is. Excitement for a new hunt moves through us as we carefully pick our way through jagged rocks and outcrops of boulders.
Slowly, one paw forward at a time, our rage starts to peel away like petals falling from a dying flower. My wolf and I physically exert ourselves harder than we ever have before, and it empties our reserves of vengeance and violence so that we can focus on the task at hand instead. But this physical demand, it feelsgood, sating the rabid edges inside of us as we push onward.
Tyran crouches lower as he moves toward a part of the mountain made up of sheer cliffs and sharp ledges. Our footing is becoming more and more precarious, but he doesn’t hesitate as he moves, so neither do we. He stops at the top of a bluff, muscles tense and his eyes fixed on something.
By the time we catch up with him, he’s leaping over large rocks and darting forward. We hear a snort, as though there’s a horse on the other side of the rocky precipice. As my wolf and I crest the large rocks, we see Tyran darting at a herd of mountain goats. My wolf’s excitement surges.
Our first hunt.
The herd’s white hair is stark against the gray and brown rock of the mountain. The sharp cliffs and narrow footholds signal this as their stomping grounds, but it doesn’t stop Tyran from singling out a male on the outskirts of the herd. My wolf and I immediately follow, sizing up our options for how to bring the goat down, for how to work with the alpha to earn the kill. The goat jumps from one rock to another as though there isn’t a sheer drop just under its hooves, and we notice that it’s not putting all its weight on one front leg.
