Page 119 of A Wolf's Heart

Markus’s body contorted and shifted against his will. He fought every moment of it, and when he finally made it to human form, his limbs were hanging in a very unnatural way. Kage grabbed him by the arm and began dragging him to us.

“Angel.” I turned my head to Rainor. His eyes were lit like fire, all he wore was a pair of spandex shorts, and his hair was sticking up in different directions.

“I hate you too,” I told him, narrowing my eyes.

“I know.” He threaded his fingers with mine and brought my hand to his lips. “She is like ice.”

There’d been a challenge, down in the bay back home, a number of years ago. It was called the polar bear dip, and a bunch of officers completed it to raise money for charity. I was part of the group, but the icy cold of the winter water hadn’t bothered my shifter body when we jumped in. Though, watching everyone else take gasping breaths against the frigid dunk and then begin shaking… I imagined I was now feeling what they had felt.

Rainor slipped his arms under me, and I screamed out in pain. Even without the collar, my body had done nothing to heal the broken ribs, burns, and bruised muscles from my earlier beating. No doubt, the silver had stopped any possible healing. I arched my back away from his touch.

Weylin grabbed hold of my shirt, raising it and exposing Markus’s handiwork. A chorus of curses and growls erupted.

Rainor gingerly scooped me into his lap, holding my back against his chest as carefully as he could.

Kage threw Markus before me. He was still alive, his eyes wide and filled with fear as he stared at me. Kage held out his hand, and I watched it morph, changing into a hybrid of a wolfand human, neither one nor the other, but a combination of both. He drove his claws into Markus’s chest.

Markus screamed as his ribs were cracked wide open, but only for a moment. Though his eyes were blinking, tears trickling down, and blood bubbled from his mouth, he had fallen silent, and I was now staring at his heart, still beating.

Kage reached in and pulled the organ out, tendons and muscles stretching tight until snapping off. He walked over to me, tangled his other hand into my hair, and tugged my head until I was looking up at him.

How tragically beautiful Kage was, I thought as I stared into his blue eyes. Absolutely broken inside and out. His only way to survive was to shut any semblance of emotion out of his body. I guess I now understood.

“Show me your teeth,” he said.

I knew where this was headed…and I couldn’t. I hated everything they had done to get to where they were. I hated the greed for continuous power. Greed that jeopardized so many innocent lives. This was where I was meant to die. And die, I would. They were making me one of them, and I refused, jutting my chin out defiantly.

I pressed my lips tightly together.

Anger flared behind his stare. “Show me your teeth,” he ordered, and for the first time ever, I felt the persuasion. This whole time, I’d thought I was immune to them, when in reality, he just hadn’t used it on me. Kage had gone on and on, stroking my ego as he told me how much of an alpha I was. Relinquishing control to me now and then while holding his true strength back. It was all a tactic. Kage was stronger than me, more alpha than I could ever be, and had the power to hold complete control over me.

And he used that power now.

The force was pushed upon my body, and my teeth began elongating through no want of my own.

The heart, still warm and twitching, was then held up to my lips.

“Eat.” The persuasion fell on me again, and I bit into the flesh. It was almost hot and chewy, the blood thick and coppery against my tongue, but it was smooth. I tried not to hold it in my mouth too long, swallowing large chunks to get it over with, because it became apparent my body wasn’t going to stop consuming until it was all gone. My wolf obeyed, even when neither of us wanted to.

The moment the flesh moved down my throat, I could feel a pulsing energy within me. I could feel my body healing, my own heartbeat becoming stronger, the coursing waves of power filling me with everythump-thump.

Thump-thump.

Thump-thump.

This was a dangerous drug, however…the silver still wrecked my body, and even though I was healing, I could still feel within myself that I was dying. The liquid metal killing me faster than a weak heart like Markus’s could fix me. The shakes worsened, my body going limp and shutting down.

I kept my eyes locked on Kage’s, because for some reason, I wanted him to see. I wanted him to watch me die. I wanted him to feel the pain of losing me, his efforts to save me all for nothing. I wanted to punish him by dying because, as the heart restored my outer body, it had also restored the bond.

The damaged bond that I could feel him opening as wide as he could and, within it, allowing me to feel his weakness. There was nothing he could do now to save me, and that killed him.

34

RAINOR

“All I am saying is, from this moment, going forward, the bond remains open,” Weylin said. He had been smug as hell the last two days, lying in the hospital bed with Lila, half naked, as she always seemed to do better touching one of us skin-to-skin. That wasn’t what had him smug, though.

“Just because you’re a blood-type match for her doesn’t mean you get to make the decisions,” Kage snapped. Yeah, he had a new sore spot.

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