Page 88 of Feral Werewolves

“Paladin,” he hissed into my face.

I was choking, so I couldn’t really say anything. I wanted to struggle against him, to flail out, try to hit him, to scrabble at the place he held my hands. I knew all of that was going to be ineffectual. Judging from the difference in our sizes, I had basically one shot at downing him, so I waited, staying still, biding my time, losing oxygen, while he told me that he had Clementine and that he was going to claim her for himself and that he was going to make me watch him force himself on her and a bunch of other shit that did not make it easy to concentrate on waiting for my moment.

He knew her name.

Clementine.

He said it like five times.

Anyway, eventually he opened himself up for it, and I took my shot.

I kneed him in the balls.

Not a sporting sort of move, but fuck it. He was a lot bigger than I was.

He let go of me, face turning purple.

I punched him in the face and kicked his chest and he collapsed against the far wall.

If I’d had a fucking knife, I would have danced over there and stuck it in his temple. Done.

But I didn’t.

Could I kill him some other way? There was nothing in the fucking room, but there were curtains on the window. I ran through grabbing them, trying to roll them up and wrap them around his neck and—

No.

Instead, I just advanced on him and kicked him under the chin, hard enough to make him dazed, hard enough that he grunted.

Then I left the room.

Out in the hall, I thought,Check him for weapons, you dumbass.

I hesitated for two seconds. Could I go back in there?

No, he’d be up by now. I ran. I ran down the hallway and toward the front door.

There were wolves on the door.

I leapt up over the railing of the stairway, vaulting onto it, and scurried up the stairs while they were still sputtering and tripping over themselves.

At the top of the steps, I grabbed the first thing I could find—happened to be someone’s laundry hamper. I don’t know why it was sitting in the hall. Guess they were sloppy here at the compound—and shoved it down the stairs.

That didn’t hurt them, but it got in their way, and I ran further into the house, thinking to myself that I had seen this fucking horror movie and why had I gone up thestairs?

But then I smelled her.

I stopped, going entirely still, and turned.

Then, slowly, deliberately, sniffing the fucking air like a dog, I turned and went after her. I went around a bend and crossed into an area of the house which had obviously been built on.

I found her in a room with a guy—a slight, short sort of guy who scented like a tithe, except… not right exactly. There was another element to the scent, like the mates downstairs, I realized, something that said that this person belonged to some other wolf.

Clementine leaped off the bed and ran for me.

She collided with me and caught my face in both of her hands. “You’re bleeding,” was the first thing she said.

“Who is Noah mated to?” was the first thing I said, eyeing that guy, because… because maybe I knew from the scent or maybe I’d puzzled it out, because it took someone with pull to have gotten Clementine out of that room with the other mates, and—

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