Page 46 of The Beast's Baby
She pushed the door open with her muzzle, thinking she’d better simply make a run for it and try to avoid any flying bullets. She didn’t think they’d do much harm to her, but if one of them hit Jay, she would never forgive herself. And she felt the truth of that like a heavy iron rod through her heart: if something happened to the father of her baby, she would never be able to live it down.
She had to run like the wind for all of their sake. So that they would make it out of there. So that they could be a family.
The corridor was empty, but there was a kerfuffle further down and she chose to go left to avoid it. There was the scent of blood in the air and then she realized she was scenting it on herself. Cora’s blood.
The dragon had made the fight a barely even one, moving like a bolt of lightning, breathing fire at every turn. But all Isobel had been focused on was the humiliation she had suffered that night, when she had been brought out of her bed after making love to Jay.
They’d put her in a nearly see-through hospital gown on a gurney. They’d made her lay back and spread her legs while they dug around in her as though she was a science project. She’d wanted them all dead but had calmed herself. Some of them were most likely exactly like Jay—blinded to the truth, simply doing their job. They didn’t deserve to die for that. The thought of Jay had steadied her. The knowledge that he was good and so could the people surrounding her be as well.
She’d focused on that.
On the possibility of goodness.
And she’d endured.
But Cora wasn’t good. And once she had the dragon in its true form before her, she knew with every fiber of her being. Cora was selfish, destructive and only in the position she was in because it gave her power over others. Power to tell them what to do. Power to tie them to a bed and have some stranger fuck them if she wanted to.
And that was why the fury had been allowed to take over and why Cora had ended up dead.
The taste of blood on Isobel’s tongue made her balk at the fact that she had just killed someone, but the wolf in her growled softly that the someone had had it coming.
They reached the elevator portion of the lobby, the glass entrance doors just beyond, the high desk of the guards right next to them. And the lobby itself teeming with people as desperate to leave as they were.
There were wolves, but not many.
The guards must be off fighting the threat to the facility rather than guiding people out of the building.
How many were with Olive? she asked.
“I didn’t ask,” he replied.
You didn’t think to ask what the numbers are?she asked.What kind of analyst are you?
“Hey,” he said. “I was distracted by the sounds of you possibly getting yourself killed, alright? There wasn’t a whole lot of time for chit-chat.”
Chit-chat, she huffed, shaking her head at him then she slid to a stop on the stone floor, nearly causing Jay to fly over her head though he managed to hang on.
“What the hell?” he exclaimed, and then he must have noticed the reason for why she’d stopped so abruptly because he grew still on her back.
Her mother.
In wolf form.
On the other side of the entrance gates.
She was enormous, her eyes golden, her fur so dark it was nearly black. If Isobel thought that she might be the size of a larger car, then her mother was the size of a smaller van.
“What do we do?” Jay asked.
You get down, Isobel replied.
“You can’t fight her alone,” Jay said, a note of desperation there that she shouldn’t lap up like honey but that still was lovely to hear.
Then Isobel felt it. The soft familiarity of three other wolves approaching through the lobby, even though she’d never met them. She knew them, and they knew her. She let out a very soft growl of greeting and sent the reassuring thought to Jay, telling him,I won’t be.
Come now, her mother said.Can’t we all sit down and have a cup of tea and discuss this? This is your legacy. I built all of this for you.
I met dad, Isobel said.
