Page 68 of The Shattered Kingdom
The one on the left favors his right side, overcompensating for an injury. He’s Priority Number Two. Priority Number One is fast and covered in thick muscle. He’s going to rip off my fucking arm, and I shake out my limbs as I crouch down and meet him head-on.
He lunges for my neck, a move I expect and just barely dodge. Shifters always go for the necks. It’s where Mason went the first time we met.
Abby’s pounding heart is all I can hear. It’s all Iwantto hear, and I listen to every pump as I turn to the side and kick the shifter in the hip.
Priority Number Two doesn’t come for me. He goes straight for Abby, bumping him to Priority Number One. I reach him before he reaches her, and when he opens his mouth to bite me, I grab the upper and lower parts of his jaw and rip them apart.
A tooth impales my palm, but adrenaline makes the pain easy to ignore.
The whine the shifter lets out is sickening, and I try not to think about the fact that he’s a person with a family as I rip his head in two. He crumples to the floor, but I don’t have time to ensure he’s dead before turning back to the remaining shifter.
He’s taken advantage of my distraction, and I watch in slow motion as he lunges for Abby.
She screams and throws a bag at his head, slowing him enough for me to reach them. Blood pumps through my veins, panic rendering me unable to think as I throw myself against his sideand knock him off-balance.
Four claws gouge my arm as he falls, the sharp nails easily tearing through my skin. It burns, and I grunt as I throw my fist into his eye socket. His position on his back puts him at a disadvantage, and I avoid his kicking feet as his skull shatters beneath my fist.
The area around his eye caves in, and at least one of my fingers breaks. Still, I don’t stop until the shifter falls limp. Are there more? I don’t hear anything, but that’s not reliable.
This is their land, and they know it better than I do.
Abby digs through our bags, and cold fingers wrap around my wrist a second later. I hold still while Abby pushes the torn skin on my arm together and staples it in place. Mason and I have been taught how to use stitches, but we packed the stapler for Abby.
She takes advantage of it, and I wince as she works her way up my arm.
Then she rises, her breath hitting the back of my neck. “Thank you.”
I nod, only relaxing when Mason finally emerges from the woods. He’s covered in blood, and his eyes dart between me and the two shifters who snuck past him. He doesn’t speak, but I know what he wants.
“Help me clean my arm?” I ask Abby.
Mason needs to dump his kills in the river, and he doesn’t want Abby to see them. My kills were brutal, but they were quick and relatively clean. Shifters fight differently, and the ones Mason fought will be shredded into pieces. He doesn’t want Abby to fear him more than she already does.
I place myself between her and the bodies, blocking her view as I crouch beside the water. Abby quickly joins me.
“Is Mason okay?” she asks, peering at him over my shoulder.
He’s sniffing around my kills, probably ensuring they’re dead.The one whose face I tore apart must be hanging on because Mason darts forward and sinks his jaws into his neck. Abby flinches, and I grab her chin and guide her head away.
“He’s fine,” I say. “Don’t look at him.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s embarrassed.”Embarrassedisn’t the right word, but it’s close enough. “He’s going to drag the bodies into the water and rub mud over the blood trail, and he doesn’t want you to see.”
“Why?”
“Because he doesn’t want you to be afraid of him.”
Abby makes a quiet noise, then falls silent. She looks deep in thought, which I won’t interrupt. I busy myself instead, searching through our bags until I find soap.
I’m covered in blood, and the scent will carry. I need to wash it off before any other shifters wander into the area. It’s one thing if Mason kills a few, but it’s another if I do.
I can’t meet with Alpha Theon covered in shifter blood—not if I want anything productive to come from our meeting.
Chapter Twenty-Six
ABBY
