Page 66 of Wolf Desired

My hand hit a rock with a sharp edge and I seized it, slicing at the snakes trying to crawl under my skin. I’d kill them all. I wouldn’t let them possess me. I wouldn’t let anyone possess me, not Knox or Sterling or even a god.

I controlled my own fate no matter how lonely or pathetic it was.

Frantic, I slashed and swatted and fought. I freed my other hand and the smoky darkness tried to capture me again, but I writhed and twisted, avoiding its sticky grasp as more snakes tore at my skin.

Sterling stepped out of the grove, his eyes bright with a wicked smile, ghostly red rams horns curling from his temples like the depiction of Tzanagoth in Anakar. The terrifying power I’d sensed when he’d tried to get me to step into the rip and burn myself up, howled with the wind, suffocating and crushing, stronger than even Cyrus’s alpha power.

“Yes,” he cackled, his eyes bright with manic glee. “Bleed for me. Bleed!”

The snakes tore into my flesh and I screamed and screamed and—

— jerked awake.

Oh God.

It was a dream. Just a dream.

The reek of rotting food and piss hit my nose, then the metallic tang of blood. My head felt heavy, my body numb, even as my pulse pounded hard and fast.

I stood at the end of the alley, brandishing a broken bottle edged with blood, confused about how I’d gotten there and why I held the bottle.

Something plopped on my sandaled foot and I dragged my gaze, my thoughts working in slow motion, down down down my body.

Blood soaked my dress and rushed down my mutilated left arm. Everywhere there’d been a snake trying to possess me there were dozens of ragged slices, so many slices, so much blood, so—

Sterling’s wicked laughter roared through me even though I was awake and the horror of what just happened stole my breath.

“Took you long enough,” he taunted. “The sacrifice is now complete.”

To be continued…

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