Page 3 of Wolf Tamer

Soon she disappears entirely, leaving me with a dead body and my own harried breath.

Shit. That didn’t go the way I’d hoped on any front. Everything fucking hurts. My back arches against my will as I swallow the bellow of pain that wants to rip out of me. Too close to the edge. I’m too close, with blood dripping onto the floor and Crane’s sightless human eyes still seeming to bore into mine.

I hold on to the love I feel for Tasha, darkness creeping ever closer across my vision, unconsciousness stealing everything away from me as I sink into the sensation. My world is nothing but pain. My lips part, my chest struggling to rise, and the rest of me as helpless as a newborn welp.

Until footsteps sound at long last, and someone comes walking up to me.

Too late.

I barely manage to make out Julius and his too familiar face a moment before his scent winds its way to my nostrils. I want to take comfort in the familiar, but I know. I know too well why he’s here, and it’s a sick fucking twist from the universe that he should be the one to find me now.

“What did you do?” he asks. He glances around at the blood, with shock glazing his eyes and his mouth set in a grim line. “What happened?”

My brother has always wanted to be alpha. Now is his chance.

Now is his time to take what he wants and dispatch me.

As long as Tasha is safe. That is the only thing that really matters to me at the moment; making sure of her safety. Her happiness.

Her smile is the only thing I need, and for the smallest stretch of time, she’d been mine. That has to be enough. I close my eyes and wait for Julius to finish me off, hoping I’ve done enough to keep Tasha from harm.

ChapterTwo

Tasha

The chill of the stone floor bites into my skin, seeping straight through to my bones. But that’s the way they had it planned from the start. The longer I spend in the cell, the surer I become of that.

Afuckingcell.

That’s where the witches threw me, none too gently, and I have to wonder what kind of people have a witch-proof cell in the basement of their house. Sadistic, apparently. These Maine witches are no joke, and I want to slap myself for underestimating them.

This is where they plan to keep me until my execution. At least I don’t have long to wait; they’ve scheduled it for the morning.

Lucky me.

For the most part, they’ve left me alone. Once they clasped me in irons, so to speak, most of the witches didn’t seem to think me a great enough threat to guard. The worst part is that they’re right.

My powers don’t work for shit.

They rarely have, even when my parents had been alive to see to my education on coven matters.

And my invisibility powers, which are completely witchunrelated?

Yeah, they aren’t working either.

I’ve beat my fists and literal head against the wall looking for weak spots. I’ve kicked the door, I’ve kicked the stones—anything that I’m able to actually kick, I did. Andnothing.

Morning is only a few hours away, and the coven leader, Mae, and her cronies are probably doing a happy dance around my funeral pyre right now.

I want to say that it’s an act of mercy on their part, for them to do away with me that quickly. It could be a lot worse. They might have tossed me into a rat infested, musty, and disgusting cell for weeks on end, wanting to break me before they kill me.

Footsteps echo in the hall outside the door.

“What’s the matter?” I taunt, muscles tense and ready for… something. I just wish I knew what. “Have you come to get one last look at me before you burn me alive? Huh?”

Hearing my voice out loud is the smallest comfort. It seems I have to take what I can get.

I swear I hear a snort before the footsteps recede, and I’m completely alone once again. So far in life, bravado has served me well. Currently, my well is running dry, and I’m down to the last dregs of acerbic wit I possess.

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