Page 115 of Wolf's Endgame

I’ve been waiting. Come, it is time.

CHAPTER 29

Kezia

I’d been floating for a very long time.

It wasn’t even peaceful floating. It was like the feeling of being suspended but not dropping. When I was younger, Kris used to carry me in his mouth, and this was the same. I was weightless but felt as if I was in the maw of something much bigger than me.

The pain had stopped, and at first, I thought I had died. But I was too aware to be dead, and after floating endlessly for days, I decided I was too stubborn to die.

Cannon would be so pissed if I died.

Cannon was going to be pissed at me no matter what.

I remembered his fury. I remembered I deserved it.

I remembered the pain.

Above all, I remembered the pain.

It had been everywhere. Burning through my body, eviscerating me with its intensity.

Then pressure, immense pressure that made me think my skull was going to crack, squeezed me relentlessly. My bones had felt shattered under the weight of it, and I had screamed for it to stop.

Then it did.

And I was floating.

And now it was nothing.

Sometimes, there was a flash of light. A noise. They made me jump. I’d never been scared really as a child, but flashes of noise and light now had me jumping like a ninny. Kris would laugh at me.

Kris.

My brother hurt me.

No…my brother would never. But the pressure? I felt him when the horrible pressure was there.

Sadness slipped over me like a blanket.

Had I died? If this was the afterlife, I wanted a refund.

I rolled through nothing as I thought about my life.

Everything that had happened to me in my life had been because of Bale.

He killed my parents.

He took us into his pack and forbade me to shift, treating me like a leper, so his pack did too.

He operated illegal fighting rings, sending killers after me when he learned I was fighting in them.

I paused. Had he? Maybe not. But he had always known where I was.

He kept me from my mate.

He gave the order to kill my mate.

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