Page 11 of The Beast's Betrayed Mate
She woke up slowly, sensing that she wasn’t alone in the room. She eased her eyes open, then widened them as she drew a sharp breath in shock at the sight that met her.
The dog.
It was standing next to the sofa, staring at her.
It was no goddamn dog; it was a fuckingwolf.
There was no sign of a break-in. The front door was firmly shut. Her eyes flitting from ascertaining where the wolf might have come from and back to the wolf, her heart feeling about ready to explode with fear. She could hardly breathe.
What the fuck could she do? Why was it just staring at her?
“Go away,” she whispered, a tremor behind every word.
The wolf did not obey.
She had the urge to tell it to sit, see if it would follow that command, but refrained. Her mind was running a mile a minute and she was clearly losing control of it. Where was that whisky bottle when one needed it most? On the other side of a huge, fucking intruder of a canine, that was where.
She couldn’t think. She could only stare back at the animal.
It held her gaze with eyes that were like liquid gold, and she furrowed her brows as she looked closer. Then even closer, into the depths of the golden eyes as they began to glow as if from some internal fire.
She drew a soft breath and said slowly, tryingly, “Peter?”
The wolf bent its head down, its enormous muzzle nudging her foot.
“Oh, God,” she murmured. “Okay. You… you had a bite… on your hand. And now… you’re… a wolf… Right.”
She swallowed slowly, her entire world view beginning to sway. Was this happening? Perhaps she was dreaming. But no… There was the wolf and, even though she was pinching the skin of her thigh as hard as she could, the wolf remained.
“What do I do?” she asked him, scooting herself away from him and slowly getting off the sofa. She didn’t want it to be too obvious that she was moving to get the piece of furniture between them, but even though he seemed docile enough, the sheer size of him was making her heart race with misgivings.
She could imagine this encounter was akin to swimming into a shark in waters where one did not expect to swim into anything with teeth.
Cold sweat was beginning to form between her shoulder blades, making her blouse stick to her skin. What the fuck did this mean? That he was a werewolf? That couldn’t bepossible. It was scientificallynonsensical.
How could he haveincreasedin volume?
The wolf looked twice the size of his human self. That defied the laws of nature. Everything about this defied those laws, and she had always thought that, if nothing else, at least those laws would be obeyed. Mankind had no other choice. And here he was, breaking every last one of them.
“This is too much,” she murmured, continuing to back away from him slowly. “I just helped you out because you were hurt, alright? I don’t want any part in this.”
She had no way of telling if he could understand her or not.
Then he lifted his head, ears twitching forward as though he’d heard something she had no hope of ever picking up on.
And in the next breath he turned, as graceful as though he had been made of oil, his brown fur rippling as he headed for the front door. He got the doorknob between his teeth but rather than twisting it to open he practically tore the door out of the doorway, heading through it.
A loud scream was heard in the hallway.
“Fuck,” Olive muttered.
It was a very easy pick of choices that she had before her—she could either follow him or she could go home. She didn’t need to think any further about it because she knew what the right thing to do was. To follow.
He might hurt someone, even if he wouldn’t hurt her.
She didn’t know that much about werewolves, and she sincerely doubted anything she’d seen in the movies would be applicable to whatever type of wolf he had turned into, but there had been a hunger about him that had transferred into her. It was still buzzing underneath her skin. That long, wordless stare of his. It had seemed a question or a challenge. It had certainly not been vacant. As though he wanted to see how she would react, what she would do.
There was nothing else for her to do but accept it. Perhaps he had known that she would. That she couldn’t simply go home and let him run amok. Couldn’t it be that he wanted her to stop him?
