Page 63 of The Awakened Wolf

“You never wanted this life,” she said, eyes widening. “You can’t be mad that I took something you didn’t want.”

I swallowed a clod of guilt in my throat. I had just literally just went on a rant about how it should be okay for me to admit that I didn’t want that, but did that really mean I couldn’t be mad that she’d stolen it?

“Okay, but if you do want it, then you have to take all parts of it, Kiana,” I snarled, stepping an inch from her face. “Not just the power. It is my hope to have children with Sebastian one day, but it is not now, nor will it ever be, my job to have an heir for you. It’s not even like you don’t have a suitor. Kenzo would drink poison for you.”

“I’m not taking a mate!” Kiana roared.

“Then you’re not getting an heir!”

Kiana stamped one foot. “I’m your Alpha, and I say—”

There was a loud screeching noise, and the tram shuddered to a stop. I froze, except for my eyes, which flew to Sebastian. He looked like a statue—a terrified statue. I started toward him and a loud bang rang out, and the tram flipped onto one side. I screamed, along with my sister and Sebastian, as we hit the floor. The tram was swinging—dangling, I realized—from one cable.

Leto, help us, I prayed. This couldn’t be happening. Another loud bang ripped from outside, and we fell. We flew up and slammed into the top of the tram car as it plummeted toward the river. My stomach dropped as my screams bounced off the walls. We hit hard as the glass shattered, sending the three of us slamming into the dirty water that poured in. The tram began to sink into the East River, taking us with it.

I couldn’t see anything. Between the midnight hour and the rising water, I was blind and fumbling. I reached out, swimming and grabbing at once, hoping to find purchase. A metal bar, a seat, a window. Sebastian. Something.

My hand connected to what felt like a window frame, and I pulled myself through, ignoring the shards that sliced my thin human skin. But a tug on my foot stopped my progress and my hope. I reached down, searching for whatever held me fast to the sinking tram car, and swallowed a curse.

A twisted hunk of metal grasped my foot, biting into my ankle like a mythical sea-wolf rising up from the deep. If I shifted, my burning lungs would hold out longer, but I’d lose my foot, maybe bleed out before I breached the river’s filmy surface. I tried to peel back the metal with my hands, but pain shot up my leg, and I realized this was it. This was how I would die.

My wolf howled within me. We weren’t ready for the Yonder Fields.

I sensed a human shape approach, swimming furiously. And then hands, fingers grazing then intertwining with my own, pulling… I screamed, filthy water pouring into my throat before I clamped my lips shut. “

“Foot… stuck…” I gasped the words into my mate’s mind.

Lights danced inside my skull as Sebastian felt his way down my arm, over my ribs and my hip, squeezing first my thigh and then my calf before he found my wedged foot. He twisted it sideways as he pulled back on the metal, and when I felt it give just the tiniest bit, I yanked hard. A jagged edge sliced my ankle to the bone, but my foot came loose with the rest of me. I cried out, releasing bubbles that I swiftly followed to the surface, kicking as hard I could against the suction of the sinking tram.

Eerie metallic groans filled my sensitive ears as I clawed for the surface, and my injured heel smacked into something hard and hairy below. I only registered it as Sebastian’s head when I felt his limp weight drag at my own soul.

NO. NO. NO. NO!

The voices in my head became one. Raw animal power surged through my aching muscles, but I didn’t shift. Instead, I started to flip, fully intending to dive after Sebastian. But two kicks into the turn, a heavy presence loomed over my back, and a moment later, four enormous fangs sank into my right shoulder. Kiana hauled me to the surface, and instinct took over when my nostrils hit warm air. I gasped and coughed, gasped and coughed, desperately trying to bale enough water from my lungs for the oxygen to do its healing work.

Kiana released her grip and nudged her head under my bleeding arm. I clung to her neck even as I mentally pleaded for her to leave me and go back for Sebastian. She paddled in a circle, ignoring me as she got her bearings in the dirty river. My heart reached for the fate bond, as if it were a tangible rope I could use to drag my mate up from the murk, but it was gone. Sebastian was gone. A sob wrenched its way loose, and I buried my face in my sister’s neck, waiting for my wolf to howl, but—

I blinked—the only reaction I had the strength for now.

I don’t know what I thought it would feel like, losing my wolf.

Maybe I’d never let myself imagine it, after a lifetime of having her there to guide me, protect me, urge me to be better and stronger. She was more my sister than Kiana, in many ways. And now she was gone. There was no tug or tear. No sensation at all. Just a hollow emptiness where a warm presence used to live within me.

And pain.

Unimaginable human pain.

My lungs felt shredded, and the gash around my ankle poured blood as I bobbed, exhausted and broken by the thought of Sebastian waiting forever at the edge of the Yonder Field…

“What did you do?!” I screamed, unable to communicate mind-to-mind anymore without my wolf. I slid off her neck, ready to dive down after Sebastian, knowing damn well I couldn’t succeed in this form—I couldn’t survive. Kiana grabbed me again, her teeth cutting into my soft human flesh, and I punched her in the muzzle. She let go with a wounded snort.

“Why would you do that?!” I shouted, salty tears cutting through the river water slicking my face . “Now I can’t even have your precious heir! Did you decide you hate me too much for that too?!”

Kiana’s big blue wolf eyes scrunched and then widened as she finally noticed the blood streaming from the bite on my right shoulder. She shook her head, slowly at first and then hard enough to spray the area around us with a thousand drops of water.

And that’s when I knew: she didn’t do it on purpose.

A second later, Sebastian’s wolf appeared a few feet away in the wreckage and I half-screamed, half-sobbed in relief and horror. I was so glad that he wasn’t going to die at the bottom of the East River. But he was as lost to me as if he had. My body started to fade as I ran out of adrenaline. My only choice was to cling to Kiana’s neck as she swam me toward him.

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