Page 116 of The Wild Wolf's Rejected Mate

Efa’s terrified, shivering, her fur bristling.

She did nothing to deserve this.

She’s going to remember this forever.

She’s going to wear this fear, from this moment, like a second skin. It’s going to burrow into her brain and torment her, dogging her steps, stealing her peace, tainting every good thing that will ever happen to her until she runs away from hope. From love. From life.

And this male doesn’t care. He’s smirking. He wants her to be afraid.

For all of us to be afraid.

He snaps his fingers. “Send the pup to me now, or I’ll come get her myself.”

He’s a male, and we are nothing to him. Nothing.

No.

Not again.

Never again.

The needles. By the chair.

I see them, the two medium needles I absentmindedly left stuck in a ball of orange yarn the day before my heat. They’re sticking out of a burlap bag beside the place the rocking chair had been before it became a barricade.

I can’t. I’m too scared.

Yes, you can. You can run.

“Now!” Leith barks.

Now!

I shift. No bones break. No muscles tear. I lift my paw and my bare foot hits the ground. I blink and the grays and browns of the sycamore turn bright, spring green. It’s not a shift; it’s a flip. Like a flip of a switch.

I stumble, but I don’t lose momentum. The voice is right. Icanrun.

The females notice me, see where I’m heading, and they break into a single-throated cry of deafening howls that shakes the ground. They lunge forward and scramble back, distracting him. Nessa dashes for Efa, throwing her body of top of her pup.

I’m close. So close.

My fingers wrap around the needles, one in each hand, and I whirl, setting my sights on the enemy. He still has his back to me.

I’m small. Weak. Not a threat.

Aim for his throat.

I break into a sprint, and when I’m just close enough, I leap, my wolf powering my legs, and I drive a needle into the place where his shoulder meets his neck, sinking it all the way to the acorn carved on the top.

He spins, blinking in surprise.

I raise the other needle.

Stick it right in his eye.

A male roars behind me. Bloody arms wrap around me like a vise, the scent of earth and copper surrounding me.

Justus.

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