Page 141 of The Piece You Stole

The wind tugs on my hair, combing through the dark strands as the cool air kisses my cheeks. I draw in a deeper breath, inhale sweet mint and the wild floral scent that seems to surround me, letting the hard stone path ground me. As some small bird chirps high above me, I stand with my back to the door, eyes closed, arms wrapped around myself, and chest heaving.

Breath by breath, minute by minute, the panic invading my mind releases its hold on me.

I open my eyes, tip my head back, and peer up into a faded blue early morning sky. Must be five. Maybe six. Not being a morning person makes it impossible to know which.

But the sky isn’t important. The chirping bird I can’t see, even though it sounds like it’s right above my head isn’t important. What is important is why I would sleep with Aden and Kade and have a panic attack the next morning.

“Am I broken?” I whisper the words because I need to hear them out loud for them to feel real. “Is that why?”

I want them. Mindandbody.

But then why am I reacting like I’m back with Rylan and his pack? Why does my body act as if it wasn’t what I wanted at all?

I blink, and I’m back in the shower. Not in the Cerberus with Kade stroking me into a climax that nearly frazzled my mind. I’m surrounded by cold white marble with threads of black and silver woven through it.

Rylan’s bathroom.

A large hand collars the nape of my neck and presses my cheek on the wet marble.

“No.” Shaking my head so violently that I blind myself with my hair, I start moving.

Ineedto keep moving before it’s all I can think.

“You won’t ruin this,” I whisper, louder now. “I won’t let you.”

It’s too cold to be out in a barely buttoned shirt and bare feet, but I refuse to let the cold chase me inside when I’m like this.

I cling to the memories of last night to warm me when I get too cold. Aden’s kisses explore every inch of my skin. Kade whispers praises in my ear as he fills me past the point I thought I could take…and gives me more pleasure than I could have ever dreamt of. I swim in delicious memories, let them fill my mind until I don’t hear the birds trilling around me, or feel the hard stone path beneath my feet.

And the cold? What’s that? How could a girl be cold when she’s being embraced by two men like Kade and Aden?

“They’ll kill you, too.”

I shriek, spin around, and stumble away from the voice coming from so much closer than it should.

It’s not Rylan.

It’s not even Dariel.

But that’s about all I have to be grateful for because the thin dark-haired man with a short dark beard, narrowed murky-blue eyes, and hard mouth doesn’t like me, and if he could hurt me, he would. I know the signs.

I edge back a step. “Who are you?”

Mirroring me, he inches closer. I search for the wolf in his eyes, but I don’t find it. He’s dressed in a black cotton t-shirt and leather pants that hang oddly off his too-thin body, but he’s human.Something else to be relieved about.I’d put him in his late twenties or early thirties, but with the strands of gray threading his hair, he could be older.

“They killed Monica.” The man with the unblinking eyes I don’t trust mirrors each step I take back to the house. “And they’ll kill you, too.”

There’s no doubt in my mind whotheyare. The hounds. I don’t have to ask who Monica is. Or was.

“How did you get in here?” I ask, edging back, my eyes darting behind him. Did he come from around the side of the house, or through the black ivy gate somewhere back there?

As he prowls closer, I remember not all shifters are predators and not all humans are safe.

“You should run while you can.” He offers me a thin smile, almost as thin as the skeletal hand he stretches toward me. “If you come with me now, then—”

“Angel, get inside.”

Suddenly, Kade is tucking me behind his back before I realized he was there.