Page 57 of Depraved
Dammit.
I’d had visions of taking Elena right here, throwing her on the metal table and fucking her while she was still in human form, and I was still a monster. Would she be able to take my knot that way? Would it be too big? Would she writhe and scream and beg me to stop before she begged me to keep going?
Fuck. I’m hard as a rock.
But there’s no way I’ll be able to pound her the way I want to with silver lodged in my thigh. I growl and step back from her. We’re going to have to take care of this.
Call Dewey,I order.We need a cleanup crew sent out here to take care of the bodies. And we need a rideshare. Human driver only.
She does as directed, but completely outs my injury to the other alpha, making me sound like a whiny bitch when she says, “He can barely walk.”
I fucking ran on this leg.
Her eyes narrow at me, and she flips me off before turning away. “He needs medical treatment.”
If you can get the silver out, I can shift, and I’ll heal quicker than humans can treat me,I mind-speak to her.
Elena immediately nods, her face growing serious, that nurse mode I’ve seen her in once before immediately snapping on like a glove. She hangs up the phone with Dewey and proceeds to search the warehouse.
What she finds are some tools that look highly fucking unpleasant. There are tongs and a big bottle of whiskey, and a huge, gleaming butcher knife.
I grab the alcohol and down as much of the bottle as possible before Elena snatches it back. “Hey! I need that for sterilization.”
I close my eyes and lay back, digging my claws into the cement prematurely so I can brace myself. I don’t watch, don’t scream, only arch my back reflexively as my mate slices me open.
It’s worse than fire because every movement she makes jostles that damn bullet and singes me further. It’s one thing when you hurt yourself. You’re in control. You know what’s happening. But when someone else does it? Mother fucking torture.
I don’t know if it’s minutes or hours before she’s finished. I slip into shock and float outside my own body for a minute, bobbing like a buoy. But that’s foolish. Dangerous. If another shifter shows before Dewey’s driver, Elena will be unprotected.
I force myself back to reality just as Elena clamps onto the bullet.
My body explodes like a volcano, and I roar in her face as I burn alive.
She ignores my outburst and calmly holds up the fucking shard of cursed metal, saying blandly, “Now shift so we can see if I got it all.”
My wolf takes over from me, and my body—though it can’t get any hotter than it is already—contorts. I shrink and curl up on the concrete with my tail wrapped protectively around myself.
In less than a second, I’ve passed out, unable to fight the healing magic.
I wake up when I hear a car door slam.
Elena.
Protect Elena.
Immediately, I jump to my feet and realize I’m not nearly as tall and intimidating as I want to be. It takes a second before my body realizes that I’m in wolf form with my back arched and fangs out, turned toward the noise, and searching for my mate. My instincts just naturally led me to move, and my brain takes a second to catch up.
I spot Elena just past the table at a huge metal laundry sink cleaning off the tongs—as if that has to be done right now. I notice Brittany’s body has been covered with a pile of blankets and old laundry, so it’s concealed too. Apparently, my mate is nervous about someone walking in here and seeing what’s gone down. But I’m not concerned about that at all. No, I’m worried about her. Why the fuck did she even step away from me? Now, she’s vulnerable.
In wolf form, I leap onto the metallic table, and as I slide across it, I shift into a man. Even though my wolf is huge, I’ve got more options as a man. I can yell out an alpha command or become my beast.
Elena’s gray eyes widen in surprise when she sees me. “Black! What are you—”
I grab the tongs out of her hand and toss them aside as I move between her and the threat. But when someone steps into the doorway, I only scent a human—a young guy in his twenties who’s prematurely balding and hiding it underneath a baseball cap.
He shuffles his feet. “Um, hi. Did you call a rideshare?”
“Yes,” I say firmly.
