Page 13 of Madness Behind the Mask
A few of the women glance at each other, but all the men move without hesitation. They’re betas, submissives; a wolf pack full of testosterone-filled budding alphas will tear itself apart.But the women have the freedom to be anything they want, and a few of them look uncertain with what we’re doing. I hold the gaze of a red wolf with a black patch between her eyes. She bares her teeth, then she turns and snaps at the women beside her, giving her own commands. A few glance at me in uncertainty, but as one, they turn anddisappear into the trees.
My eyes scan the remaining women. “Find a stick,” I growl. They shift into their human forms, then start to look around the forest floor for thickmakeshift dildosthat will allow them to participate with the men.
I turn my attention back to Sau as the first men reach us. None of them can partially shift, so I raise my free hand and flex my new claws. “Pick your spot,” I say.
Hands grab her everywhere,her body too small to take them all at once.Chest, side,throat, stomach. I shove a clawabove her left nipple, opening up a hole, and she cries around her moving gag.
The men shove each other to be the first, but just as one’s about to enter her, I growl a warning and they all still. Removing my claw from Sau’s pussy, Ishuffle to the same side of her body Vance is on and twist her onto her side so I canline up my cock with the hole I madein her pussy.
“You want to be bred, you little whore? Want your stomach swollen with seed?”
My tip pushes past the tear in her skin,and she jerks on a whimper, trying to get away from me. The edges of the hole rip further, delicate skin shredding beneath my hard thrust.
“Then you can bear my fucking children, and watch as they kill the rest of your family,”I growl, slamming inside her with one smooth stroke. She spasms beneath me, her pain evident in the shaking of her body. But I’m not in all the way, the back of her pussy stopping me. In a moment, I’ll cut her deeper with a claw, tearing into her anal canal sideways, but for now, I’m content to just fuck away my frustration in the hole already there.
The men scramble, hands on their cocks, in an attempt to shove into the hole I made in her chest. A couple grab the flaps of her hands and wrap them around their cocks. But just as the females join us with their sticks, a warning howlcuts through the woods.
My eyes snap to Vanceas we all freeze.The howl waswarning us of witches, our variation of pitch and length giving us a limited range of communication while in our animal forms.
“Shift!” I roar as I drop Sau’s body and start to change myself. As naturally resistant as we are to magic, we’re more vulnerable in our human forms.Vancescreams as a spray of bullets pepper hisshoulders and neck.They’re using magic-enhanced guns to be able to fire so accuratelyand around the trunks of trees. The fuckers might not even be in the woods. Caden Davenport’s telekinesis has a long range,which is why I hoped to end their marriage before it began.
I whip my head around as my maw extends andfangsdropthrough my gums.My claws dig into the earth as I release Sau’s broken body to search the trees around us. Long range or not, Caden can’t aim without eyes on the area, and there isn’t a whiff of another type of animal nearby. Soif he’s not using a familiar, thenhe has to be using a scry.
My gaze darts through the branches until I spot a sheen of the air flickering like a summer hazeabove us and to the right. So slight, it was easily missed in our overconfidence that they wouldnot enter these woods.Growling, I run towards a tree beneath the scry even as another warning howl is sounded by the same wolf, which means the witches are not aiming for her.
They’re focusing all their magic on thewolvesaround Sau, the majority of whom haven’t finished their change. It’s a process that gets faster with age and power,butvery few of us live that long.
Launching myself at the tree, I jump at another and pushoffthat one too,zigzagging up to the scry.Bullets curve around branches to aim straight at me. I reach out a clawedhand, only needing a single swipe through the scry to break it. Pain explodes in my side as a bullet enters and starts to burrow towards my heart.
Growling, I slash my claws through the rippling air, hoping the fucker can see the murderous promise in my eyes. A chill raises the hairs on my arm as I start to fall back to the ground, and therest of thebullets continue upwards, no longer moving at unnatural angles.The one inside me stills too. The scry broken, I land on all fours and turn towards Sau. They’re not going to save –
She’s gone!
Snarling, I run over to where she was, but I don’t need to sniff the area to tell who was here. There’s only one way theycould’vemanaged torescue her. David Shadow came in under all our noses,using the camouflage of night and moving branchesand sucked her into his shadow. If hetookanyone else into the Plane of Monsters, they’d already be dead, but the Shadowsaresomehow able to enter that plane and survive. The bullets were merely a distraction, not meant to do much damage. The scry was in the exact right position to get me away…
“Anton…” Vance’s voice cuts into mythoughts and building rage at losing Sau just when I was about to have her.
Twisting on my feet, I turn to him, my eyes widening when I see he’s still in his human form. He should have changed by now. He knows he’ll heal faster as his wolf.
And that’s when I smell it.
That’s when I see it too.
Andfeelit.
The slight burn in my side. The weakening of my muscles. The retreat of my wolf. They’ve laced the bullets with a potion that smells of bitter almonds and the sick sweetness of death. One dosage does not feellike it isenough to kill us –the poison inside me is weak– but therearesixin my brother-in-law,andeach hole has green lines branching out from it.
Myheart racing, I dig a claw into my side, fishing for the bullet. I drop it on the ground as I shift and fall to my knees beside him.I turn him over to see glassyblueeyes staring up at me.
“Just hold on, Vance. I’m going to get these out.” My throat tightens, and I shift one finger back into a claw, but he shakes his head ever so weakly.
“No time…Kill them,An...”
My arms tighten around him as I feel his life bleed out ontothe damp ground. His body stills. His chest no longer moves, and I screamoutmygrief,whichdoesn’t seem to end.
I’ve lost everyone and everything. My entire family in one day. My past wishes for peace,my future hopes for what could be. There is nothing inside me but this hole that is filling all too quickly with a rage that feels good enough to keep.
“I will, Vance,” I promise as I kiss his forehead before laying him on the ground and standing. “I will kill every last fucking witch in the Shadow Domain.”
