Page 85 of Moon Cursed

“Ungh!”

—and nothing.

I cracked my eye open, peering through the blood.

Badr’s eyes rolled in their sockets—bugged and panicking as writhing, green snakes wound through his open mouth, between his fangs, around his jaw andpriiiiiedit open, wrenching it further than it was supposed to go.

I gasped when I heard itsnap.

Badr yelped, whimpering piteously as the snakes lashed around his stomach and limbs... and squeezed.

“Wait! No— Aghhh!” Orion’s grip suddenly disappeared, dropping me flat on my face.

Screams and shouts sounded all around me, battering my burnt ears. I strained to lift my head and managed only to shift it to one side. The cool hardwood soothed my ruined left ear while I struggled to make sense of a sideways world. All around me, the snakes were everywhere.

No... not snakes.

Vines. Thick, rope-like vines slithered across the floor, through the windows, and down the walls—going after every alpha in sight.

Johnson shifted as four heavy vines wrapped around his limbs. His wolf snapped at the threat, chomping through a vine, until the vines snapped back.

They slammed him against the wall once—twice—five—eight times until he stopped moving for good.

Megan ran screaming past me, tearing for the door much like the metal wolves she terrorized. A vine swept her leg out from under her. Her head bounced off the floor as it yanked her into the air, suspending her screeching from the ceiling.

“Help me! Get me down!Put me down now!”

“Sorry, darling.” Nyx. My handsome, strong, bare-chested, devilishly grinning Nyx stepped into view. “That’s not going to work on me.”

Nyx held a hand out to me. I couldn’t move— Couldn’t think about moving—as a shower of palm fronds surrounded, then slipped under me. Gently, they cradled and lifted me into the air.

Nyx floated me to his side. Up close, I made out the thick black bandana wrapped around his forehead. “Now”—his charming, jovial tone vanished in an instant—“which one of you soon-to-be dead fuckers laid a finger on my mate?”

“You think you’re tough, mud boy!?” someone roared.

“Yes.”

“Let me down from here and we’ll see who’s tough!”

“It’ll still be me.” Nyx lazily swept the space as his vines choked, attacked, and suspended wolf after wolf—shifted and human. “No one’s going to fess up?”

“Argh!” A figure charged Nyx from the back.

I gagged, choking on the blood in my mouth to warn him.

Boom!

The floor exploded under the attacker’s feet, propelling him like a canon blast through the open window.

Of course...I’d have smiled if my mouth would’ve responded.Hardwood. Wood.

“Well, if no one’s going to admit it... I’ll just have to punish you all.”

The hardwood ripped off its subflooring, finding new life as vines, twigs, and thigh-sized branches sprouted from its polished surface.

“Attack.”

The living wood surged forward—punching, pummeling, stampeding every being breathing and non-breathing that came into their path.

---