Page 2 of Predator

I’m just his mate who’s lost her fucking mind.

Blood is bad. The last time I smelled my blood like this, I was dying. The rain was falling. I was running… to Lucas, from the wolf on my heels… I was running. I was falling.

I was being mauled by a wolf, my blood perfuming the air so that my last memory in another life was pain and grief, the stink of my life’s blood being erased by the rain, the heat of it mingling with the icy drops as I lay broken in the woods.

He’s a wolf. He bit me. I was bleeding…

And I attack.

Lost in another life, trapped in someone else’s body, confused and frightened and angry, I give in to a set of instincts that should never have been mine. Rearing back on two of my four paws, swishing my tail as though it’s a part of me—because it is a part of me—I launch myself at Lucas.

Wolf shifters use their fangs to mark their mates. That’s all I wanted to do, but that’s not what I do. I don’t bite him on the meaty part of his muscular shoulder. Oh, no. As though I’m back in the woods, feeling the rain pelting my skin, knowing that death is at hand because I made the wrong choices… I snap my jaws at him, catching him right in the middle of his throat.

And then I bite.

His arms wrap around me, pinning me in place. But that’s just my forelegs, my back legs, my middle. He doesn’t try to prevent me from biting, and when I rip through the flesh, tasting his blood for the first time, I know then that I can’t be Fallon.

Fallon hates blood. Of course she does. She’s terrified of it… but that doesn’t stop me from doing this to my Lucas.

The last thought I have before I completely lose myself is that he’s letting me do this. He’s letting me attack him. As strong as he is, he could rip me off of him, throw me away from him, snap my neck before I could dig my fangs deeper into his skin… but he’s not doing that. He’s holding me tightly, murmuring my name, choking my name—Fallon, Fallon, Fallon—until he can no longer speak at all, and that’s it.

And with his hot blood pouring into my mouth, my already shaky hold on my sanity shatters completely as everything grows dark.

Even then my wolfish jaws don’t release my lover.

My mate.

Mon chiot…

CHAPTER 1

WHO

Idon’t know who I am. I don’t know what’s happened to me.

All I know is the cage.

It’s about three times the length of my from tip to tail, and wide enough that I can curl up inside of it. I’m trapped, and no matter how much I throw my furry body up against the four sides of it, it doesn’t break. It’s perfectly designed for a wolf, and that makes sense.

I am a wolf.

It takes me a while to remember that. To understand that the four paws are mine, the tails is mine, that when I whimper, it’s a sound I’ve made on my own. Even more importantly is the fact that I haven’t always been a wolf.

I was human. I walked on two legs, and I spoke, and then something happened and I changed.

I want to change back. As soon as I realized that I’m a wolf, but I’m also a person, I’m determined to figure out how to go back. Only one problem. Since I don’t remember what happened to make me like this, it’s impossible for me to fix it.

I died?—

No. I didn’t. Not me. Not the human I was. The human I used to be… the one who never got to be a wolf… she died.

But she’s still here. She’s a part of me. And when being the wolf becomes too much, she returns.

I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what’s happened to me.

I only know that sometimes I’m Fallon, sometimes I’m Jolie, sometimes I’m neither…

…and I’m not sure what to do except bare my teeth, snarl, and wait for any of this to make sense.

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