Page 57 of Stormbinder King
What if I sent Symeon spiraling into madness?
Then I turned and leapt over the edge into the waterfall.
For a moment I hung suspended over the crystal-blue waters, the spray wetting my legs, then I plunged deep into the thundering waves.
The waterfall dragged medown down downuntil I scraped along the bottom of the river.
Panicked, I pushed up from the pebbly bottom as hard as I could, out and away from the falls, and my lungs were burning before I was able to break through the surface, gulping desperately for breath.
I let the river pull me along until I was able to grip some of the low-hanging ferns and haul myself over the edge.
Shit
A few feet in the wrong direction and I might have dashed myself on the sharp rocks.
But I hadn’t.
The air was still, so still and quiet that I couldn’t even hear the bugs making a sound.
And that should have been a warning for me, but I was too busy sucking deep lungfuls of air into my chest and trying to remember how to breathe.
Finally, I rolled to my side and scanned the other side of the river.
Nothing
Staggering to my feet, I attempted to wring out the water from my skirts, my teeth chattering.
Then I froze.
Two coal-black eyes gleaming from the treefall.
No, surely not. It had been a trick of the eyes. . .
And then. . . One step. Two.
And the Alpha Wolf King slunk menacingly into view.
Shit, how had he gotten to me so fast?
I turned and fled, stumbling headlong into the forest.
After all, Iwantedhim to catch me, but when I heard that deep, angry growl I couldn’t suppress the gut-deep panicked prey instinct torun.
And I ran.
He chased me, his wolf form massive, the dark fur blending into the forest.
Hot, angry breath scorched down my back as I fled as fast as I could through the trees, gripping wildly at branches and leaves, trying to tear them off, throw something behind me to get him off my trail.
But it wasn’t going to work.
Symeon pounced, and for a moment he was all wolf, and I felt sharp white teeth sink into my throat.
Shrieking wildly, I cried out in pain with the claiming bite.
Then he was man and beast and man and beast again.
“You disobeyed me, Andromeda, and now you are going to suffer the consequences!”
